[Jlo555]

I said this in a previous thread, but I think it would be a good discussion. I'm sure that there are people here who run windows 98 on a relatively good computer and want to play the latest computer games. But have people checked recently at the system requirements for games like grand theft auto san andreas or battlefield 2. San Andreas requires windows 2000/XP and Battlefield 2 requires XP. It is only recently that I started noticing the OS requirements on computer games suddenly take a turn from supporting 98SE-XP to only 2000/XP or just XP. Until a couple of years ago (imo anyway) windows 98/ME were the best OS's for games, they supported old games and the newest games. It seems like companies like rockstar etc. have simply stopped caring about older OS's, because I tried san andreas on windows 98, it works, but it just runs horribly, on fairly good hardware. Has anyone else found this as frustrating as I have?

[miko]

well yeah, i raised an eyebrow when SA came out. afaik it's the first big game to go XP only,
i have the other 2 and they run great on 98SE.

there's not much we can do if the manufacturers are going to drop it.

it doesn't really bother me that much as i'm a 'retro gamer' i have loads of games installed i've yet to complete and i'm also into emulation (about 25 different systems and 1000's of games) i could be playing till i'm dead without buying anything new.

it's not all bad, in this months issue of PC Format (UK) Dungeon Keeper 2 is No2 in the 'Management' (God) games recommended top 5, just behind The Sims (as it has been for ages), this is probably my all time favorite game but afaik it just won't run on XP.

i actually class systems by Direct X, my current system with 98SE is my DX9 box, all components are compatable and capable. when DX10 comes out and the specs are outlined i'll probably upgrade (OS included) but i will probably aim to have that system 64bit with a 64bit OS.

so now i won't be buying GTA:SA till then so Rockstar will be getting about a fiver out me then instead of the £35-40 they could have got out me now...

This post has been edited by miko: 05 August 2005 - 07:19 AM

[Jlo555]

I know for a fact that windows 98SE supports directX 9.0c, and because of that, today's games should run just fine with the OS. The hardware manufacturers (at least some) are still writing drivers for windows Me, which for the most part are still comaptible with 98SE. I remember reading just recently from ATI that they would continue making drivers for windows me, which are backwards compatible with 98SE, regardless of them not being WHQL certified. So, the way I figure it is, if the hardware manufacturers are still writing drivers for the OS, why don't the game developers write games that are compatible with the OS?

This post has been edited by Jlo555: 06 August 2005 - 03:01 AM

[MDGx]

With the right hardware [fast video controller + enough video RAM, fast CPU, enough RAM, fast HD controller + HD, modern PCI/USB/external sound card] you can run any game that can be made [or forced] to install on 98/98SE/ME.
Actually, on same PC hardware [in most cases I've seen anyway] 98SE runs the same game faster than XP, because average user [unlike tweakers] will always have more overhead [lots of background services (enabled by default) that slow down gaming performance] if using XP, 2003 or Vista.
As far as I'm aware, DX 9.0c [except for NTx Unicode specific bits of code unavailable on 9x OSEs, which as far as I know doesn't prevent 9x OSes from playing games] can handle any modern game u throw at it, no matter if it's 9x or NTx.
The only Win32 OSes I wouldn't use for gaming are NT4 and 95/OSR1/OSR2, because of obsolete [or lack of] hardware support.

OpenGL games are a little different though, because video controller manufacturers usually develop their own OGL APIs and distribute them with their customized video drivers [NVidia has NVOPENGL.DLL for all 9x OSes]. For example, I run Quake 3 Arena [with current patch] on 98SE in OGL mode + all options maxed out without a hitch.

When Doom 3 was 1st released [August 2004], somebody started circulating a patch [hexed MSI file if I recall correctly] to force it to install on 98, 98SE, ME + 2000. Google it if you want it.

But because MS [and everybody else, of course, followed suit] stopped supporting 9x OSes, nobody makes their games compatible with 9x anymore.

And don't even get me started about old DOS games support in NTx opposite 9x.

[atomizer]

Jlo555, on Aug 5 2005, 01:55 AM, said:

...Has anyone else found this as frustrating as I have?
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

well sure, it's frustrating for those that want to use old OS's, but look at it from a developers point of view; you want to build the game that blows all others away and takes advantage of the latest technology. do you want to use a "brand new in 1985 OS" as a platform, or the latest and greatest tools available?

i used to be one of the "98 rocks for gaming" guys, until i learned enough about XP. now there's no way i'd run anything older. still, if you think that things are moving just too fast in the computer tech world, i'd have to agree. you can build a kick-@$$ box today and 3 months later it's old news. so yeah, it is frustrating in a way -- at least from a hardware standpoint. as far as OS's though, why even bother to hang on to 95/98/ME when the later flavors of NT do everything better IMO?

BTW, if you want to check out a TOTALLY fun FPS that can run on just about anything (multiplatform), is free and open source, check out CUBE. i have at least as much fun with that as i do with HL2, Quake and any Unreal game.

[Jlo555]

Most of today's hardware will run OK on windows 98SE. So, if the hardware is compatible with the the OS, then why shouldn't the rest of the software be? And I do think that if dx9.0c works on 98, then the newest games should run perfectly with 98.
Oh, and running old DOS games on 2000 or XP has proven to be a frustrating experience. I still to this day play GTA2, which I know rockstar made compatible with 2000/XP, but it plays a lot slower and laggier (imo) on the NT os's. I've also tried the original Sim City on both 2k and XP, and the font is... well scribbles and a bunch of crap. (You'd have to see for yourself.) Game creators should still write games compatible with 98SE anyway that way people can have backwards compatibility with DOS games and be able to run highend games like battlefield 2.
Oh, and XP's compatibility mode is terrible; it hasn't worked with one single DOS game that I've tried with it (just a little fyi.)

[somewan]

MDGx, on Aug 7 2005, 01:10 AM, said:

And don't even get me started about old DOS games support in NTx opposite 9x.

atomizer, on Aug 7 2005, 01:33 AM, said:

as far as OS's though, why even bother to hang on to 95/98/ME when the later flavors of NT do everything better IMO?

As MDGx and others have noted, the NT-series does not offer the degree of backwards compatibility that 9x does (better than Win3.x and under some conditions better than DOS itself). That goes not only for games, but many other DOS programs as well If I were ready to move on (for reasons of system stability, etc.), the destination would be Linux/BSD/Unix combined with an emulator such as VMware (for running DOS / Win9x / XP, etc in virtual machines).

Admittedly, I'm a bit unusual, in the sense that I know the *nixes better than NT/XP, having had a foot in that world since the mid-90s. I certainly understand that most Win9x users would feel more at home with XP, but for me, it's merely an unfamiliar, incompatible, closed and costly operating system that offers few or no benefits.

[atomizer]

yeah, sometimes i speak before i think. the DOS issue is certinly a valid point. so is the cost.

[Jlo555]

Sorry I took so long to post again, I've been gone for a week.
I think the next project for the 9x/ME fanatics should be to make tweaks and patches to make the newest games more compatible with older windows OS's. (I can't try to do this myself very effectively because I have very little knowledge of the win9x kernel/system files etc.) It's easier said than done, I know.

[Controller Khan]

Time is money and so developers don`t test their games under Windows 98.
Also a lot of API under Windows 98 sucks more than under Windows 2000 & XP,
so developers use the API available under Windows 2000 & XP and don`t
invest time getting things working on Windows 98.

If Developers e.g ID Software & Epic make Multi plattform Games it`s
more likely that this Games run under Windows 98.

Quake 2 now openspource runs even on Beos 5, which is a almost unknown
Operating System.

Unfortunely most Developers don`t care about Multi plattform.

One could maybe wrap some API function like the wine project for Linux.
I think there is windows port of wine but I haven`t tried it
(I`m migrating to GNU/Linux)

for MSI use MSIExtract and you have a cab file,which setup inside.

For maximum compatibility with Win3.1x and Dos I recommend OS/2,
IBM fullfiles promises unlike M$, one promise was that any application will
work no matter how old it is ( Many firms still use Dos Applications as they
work and work )

[RJARRRPCGP]

It sucks that people are compiling apps with code that's for NT only!!!

[miko]

as far as games go 98SE can pretty much do anything XP can (DX9c, OGL & .net etc),
and i suspect it'll stay that way up until DX10 (or what ever they eventually call it) on Vista.

gotta face it though, most development machines now will be running XP and like has been said,
it's mostly the extra testing that they can't seem to be bothered with (time is money etc)


NT only games (sigh) who'd 'a' thunk it...

[Link21]

RJARRRPCGP, on Aug 15 2005, 02:05 PM, said:

It sucks that people are compiling apps with code that's for NT only!!! 
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's a good thing and should have happened years ago. Windows NT and Windows 9X were made so differently that it is highly likely that applications being developed that are cross compatible with two completely different OS platforms has probably hurt performance and stability the last few years. Windows NT is far superior to anything piece of sh*t Windows 9X based OS.

I mean, do you see software written for the MAC that is still comptaible with MAC OS 9 or below? No. All MAC software written these days are for MAC OS X only. The same should be the case with Windows PCs. All software should be for Windows 2000/XP only. That way, we will obtain superior performance by utilizing the features of a native NT based OS.

Let Windows 9X die. It should have died years ago. It's only purpose should be for running legacy games and applications that flat out won't run on an NT based OS. Dual boot if you have a need to run legacy applications that flat out won't run on an NT based OS. In NO way should one be using POS Windows 98/ME for running today's software on today's hardware!! Forcing that kind of compatible only hinders the superior performance we could be having in today's computing world which is sad.

[Jlo555]

What's sad is how closed minded you are about software. A lot of people still have the philosphy that win9x plays games a lot better than NT ever did. Actually I still have that philosphy about all games created up until 2003. Frankly, I see no performance difference (with the same hardware) on applications that have switched to 2000/XP compatibility only (such as all Adobe products.) San Andreas was meant for only 2000/XP, but when properly configured, it runs exactly the same on 98SE as it does on XP Pro. MS programs meant for only 2000/XP or just XP (imo) suck, such as office 2003. The only thing that changed was the GUI and they integrated DRM into office. The same is true for WMP10.

[Link21]

It's the superiority in the kernel and memory management that make Windows 2000/XP so much better than POS Windows 98/ME. I mean lets face it. Windows 98/ME aren't even native 32-bit operating systems. Should we still be running resource intensive applications on an OS that isn't even natively 32-bit. Of course not.

Linux is a quality OS. If DirectX games and other applications were all ported natively for Linux the last 10 years as they are for Windows, performance would have probably been a lot better than it ever would have been on any MS Windows whether 9X or NT based. but if we have to cling to the MS OS world, at least use an OS that doesn't suck like Windows 9X. Windows 9X is actually what gave Microsoft a bad name for having an inferior OS compared to what others had to offer. That is why I say trash it.

Why in the heck didn't MS design a real 32-bit OS 10 years ago. The fact that Windows 95 was originally native 16-bit with 32-bit extensions has thus reduced performance and stability for all 32-bit applications and multi tasking the last 10 years.

Read what this thread and article below to find out why POS Windows 9X/ME should have died a long time ago when it comes to 32-bit computing. But the sad thing is, if it weren't for Micro$oft's control freak manipulative practices, the whole PC industry would have been using a real native 32-bit OS the last 10 years. Other compnaies had an OS based on real 32-bit architecture which was ready for universal compatibility for the home consumer market. But it never stood a chance because of MS's vindictive business practices, even though their were far superior technologies.

Read what it says at these two links below to see why Windows 9X should have died for good long ago:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=34259&st=0

http://www.skrause.o...uters/dos.shtml

[miko]

still calling it POS with every utterance, you need serious help.

that and your in the wrong forum. go home to your first 98's a POS topic = http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=44398

leave us 98se users who actually want to make use of the OS (and follow this topic) alone and take your hate elsewhere outside the Windows 95/98/98SE/ME Support forum.

what a small life to constantly bile over what others do.

[wizardofwindows]

i think links ex gf must of left him for a 98se man lol .Who cares what os ya use ,use the os that best suits your pc hardware and software in 3 years link will be whining that xp is ancient cause hes got vista lol what a noob God i wonder if he hop over to other forums bashing 95 users . i use xp cause i can if someone came out with a convertor that would let me run nt programs on 9x a kernel 32 api device id run 98se in a minte cause its so second nature 2 me .if u never ran 95 98 in its heyday and enter the cyberworld on xp u cant appeciate how far weve come everything we have came from a 9x gui etc ,forget the past and your doomed 2 repeat something something u get the drift in closing link go play on your xbox or go harrass the playstation crowd hey why not tellthe n64 crowd they suck lol u need 2 get more this is the net try bingo your mom would luv the company.

[Link21]

timeless, on Oct 6 2005, 07:10 PM, said:

i think links ex gf must of left him for a 98se man lol .Who cares what os ya use ,use the os that best suits your pc hardware and software in 3 years link will be whining that xp is ancient cause hes got vista lol what a noob God i wonder if he hop over to other forums bashing 95 users . i use xp cause i can if someone came out with a convertor that would let me run nt programs on 9x a kernel 32 api device id run 98se in a minte cause its so second nature 2 me .if u never ran 95 98 in its heyday and enter the cyberworld on xp u cant appeciate how far weve come everything we have came from a 9x gui etc ,forget the past and your doomed 2 repeat something something u get the drift in closing link go play on your xbox or go harrass the playstation crowd hey why not tellthe n64 crowd they suck lol u need 2 get more this is the net try bingo your mom would luv the company.

NO, I won't be saying that!

Windows 9X has always been a complete POS when it comes to 32-bit computing and multi tasking even in it's heyday. I will never diss Windows XP once Longhorn becomes mainstream because Windows XP is still a quality and fine OS. The fact is, I always have hated Windows 9X from the standpoint of being considered a 32-bit and pre-emptive multi tasking OS. It is a horrible OS in that regard compared to what others had to offer. It was only because of Micro$oft's unethical and anticompetitive practices that their OS was by far the most dominant and was the only thing that had almost every software application that existed available for it. It HAD nothing to do with it being the best OS available. There were far better operating systems available, but they were never given a chance because no one had the control that MS had. IBM's OS/2 would have blown MS Windows 9X out of the water from a technical, reliabaility, and performance standpoint if it were given a chance in the market place!!

I have used OS/2 and Linux back in the day. And boy, I felt like I was in heaven when using the very few applications available for Linux and OS/2 that were also available for Windows. I mean the performance was so much better and I could actually multi task without severe performance degradation while maintaining great up time and stability. I always thought of Windows as being tremendously inferior and crappy compared to other operating systems. But when I got on the NT band wagon, I can actually say for once and for all, I used the first version of an MS OS, being Windows 2000 that I can actually say I found respectable and that I liked.

It's Windows 9X and what it was advertised to be (falsely true 32-bit self standing OS) which I am bashing, not older operating systems. The fact that if it weren't for Micro$oft's unfair anticompetitive control over the market place, we would all have been running an OS kernel far superior to anything Windows 9X/ME had the last ten years!! That is really what bothers me. For instance, if the whole home consumer computing world was using some OS based on a quality core like Linux that was realy 32-bit the last 10 years like everyone thought we already were,(because of false advertising on Micro$oft's part), I wouldn't bash older operating systems. I would be praising how far we have came. I've talk to some expert programmers regarding the design of operating systems and sadly, they really believe that the whole home market PC industry progress has been slowed the last 10 years because of Micro$oft Windows being such an inferior OS compared to others. And when they say Windows, they mean because of Windows 95/98/ME based operating systems.

It is Windows 9X I think is crap, even in its heyday, especially considering what OS core we should have been using the last 10 years had it not been for Micro$oft's unfair monopolistic business practices. It is not older stuff that I think is bad. It is merely Windows 9X and Microsoft's unfair business practices that forced an inferior product to be the dominating force in the market place.

[Chozo4]

Where there is a will there is a way.

There will always be poeple running windows 98 on all systems. If it isn't possible it will be made possible by the large community of windows 98 users. Games even if written only for '2k/xp' will eventually be modified to work on win9x very shortly after it's release providing the fanbase of both the game(s) and the unsupported os (supposedly) have a big enough strive to do it. That strive is very often there in excessive quantities. The MSN forums here and the development of windows98 and linux for example are all great examples of that.

Quote

Windows NT is far superior to anything piece of sh*t Windows 9X based OS.

Heh, and yet windows NT at first took 5 service packs (or more?) to finally become stable and usable. Same thing with windows 9x... it wasn't a charmer first time around untill it become more mature.

Oh sure, you can call it fiercely infererior (POS-ish) all you want but technology advances at the pace of the almighty dollar. Sure, it might be inferior to a [limited] extent but it can do pretty much all the same things the new O/S's can do. As others have already stated before me, when well configured and correctly patched... a win98 system can run as stable and efficiently as an NT based system. Poeple will use what they want on what they want. It is not your choice to say who will use what but rather that of the users themselves and the company driving the technology. If they make all the best right away, the company will end up losing out on the almighty dollar. Reason as you've noticed a slow progression of windows which is basically just the core built on even more. It costs more to build a whole new core than it does to build on it... alot more. Reason there is only 2 windows cores at the moment... DOS and NT. Each were built intially for specific reasons but have since been expanded upon. Reason most games for example are licensed... they are licensing a premade graphic engine (no, im not saying they all use the same one obviously) to build upon due to the time and cost.

Personally, I've run windows 98se on all of my systems without a single complaint and fully satisfied. I run it on my webserver, file server, and main pc with zero problems. Oh, and since I absolutely know it will annoy you to every extent link... This desktop is running windows 98SE with the unofficial Service pack. AMD ATHLON 64 4000+ (San diego core) with 1gb pc3200 DDR Ram and 160gb maxtor. It runs perfectly stable and very responsive. Current uptime is 34 days through nonstop abuse and continues ticking like it was freshly booted. Every game I have thrown at it works like a charm and then some. Like said.. if there is a will there is a way and my will keeps win98 going strong on my end of things.

If you are so concerned about the future of performance and stability... go bash another group of poeple. You're bringing a knife into a gunfight bashing 9x users in a 9x forum. It would be like a (insert non windows os here) user walking into microsofts building and calling them a POS.


Hey, this is a win9x forum afterall

This post has been edited by Chozo4: 07 October 2005 - 12:15 AM

[somewan]

Link21, on Oct 5 2005, 04:26 AM, said:

All software should be for Windows 2000/XP only. That way, we will obtain superior performance by utilizing the features of a native NT based OS.

Let Windows 9X die. It should have died years ago. It's only purpose should be for running legacy games and applications that flat out won't run on an NT based OS. Dual boot if you have a need to run legacy applications that flat out won't run on an NT based OS. In NO way should one be using POS Windows 98/ME for running today's software on today's hardware!! Forcing that kind of compatible only hinders the superior performance we could be having in today's computing world which is sad.

It's true that portability sometimes results in complications and compromises. NT was designed for portability, and according to the designers' personal convictions rather than reality at the time - it is only recently that hardware has caught up with it. If I recall correctly, version 3.1 was the first to be distributed commercially rather as an internal Microsoft toy. It wasn't until 4.0 that it became widely known - perhaps because compromises were made in order to speed it up - large chunks of the GUI and Win32 subsystem were moved into the kernel or something along those lines.

Regular Windows, on the other hand, evolved step by step, firmly grounded in the realities of the industry. The only thing making the first versions of it different from a DOS shell was the APIs it provided, making it a popular platform for third party applications.

The powers of the 286 awakened dreams of Unix on the desktop, and even whole new operating systems written from scratch - most notably OS/2. The world wasn't ready for either of them. Windows, on the other hand, went on along the path of gradual refinements: In a short amount of time, it was hacked into running in protected mode, through the use of a DOS-extender, allowing it to tap the resources above the 640K and 1 MB barriers, but without tossing away the years of investments of money, time and effort of a whole industy into the PC ROM BIOS and DOS software.

Windows as a 16-bit DOS-extended application, popularly known as "Standard Mode", because a tremendous success, only surpassed by DOS itself.

In the late 1980s, the revolutionary 386, not only introducing 32-bit registers and a 32-bit address space with virtual memory features (paging / swapping) but addressing several compatiblity deficiencies of the 286, prepared the ground for the next step in Windows evolution. The project initially known as Windows/386 saw the birth of a modular 32-bit kernel, introducing features such as pre-emptive multitasking of DOS "virtual machines" (the Windows/GUI part remained 16-bit).

In Windows 3.0, wisely retaining "Standard mode" for 286-compatibility, the new operating mode was introduced as "386 Enhanced mode". The 32-bit loadable kernel modules became known as VxDs (virtual device drivers), the most important of which was (and is) the VMM (virtual machine manager).

In Windows 3.11, which dropped "Standard mode", a glimpse - albeit somewhat buggy and unimpressive - could be seen of a core foundation of the "Chicago" project: 32-bit file and disk access, implemented in the higher level VxDs IFSMGR (installable filesystem manager) and BLOCKDEV, in coordination with more specific modules such as VFAT. Under favourable conditions (such as the availability of the correct hardware-specific drivers) the new components were capable of reducing the amount of system calls passed to DOS and the BIOS to a small fraction.

Initially planned for an earlier release as Windows 4.0, "Chicago" project was delayed and renamed to Windows 95. The enhancement of VFAT and IFSMGR to support long filenames was probably he feature that iimpressed non-technical users most with the exception of the new GUI and shell, but there's a lot more than meets the eye - such as the 150+ services added to the VMM.

The most impressive improvement since Win95 must be the FAT32, which was added not only to the VxD layer but to DOS as well - certainly a greater step than DOS 5 to 6, for example. To further illustrate the flexibility of the kernel architecture, the addition of the peculiarly NT-like driver model known as "WDM" (Windows Driver Model) in Windows 98.

Indeed, anyone who thinks the "weak link" or "dark corner" of Windows 9x is the kernel does,
and/or anything having to do with DOS probably doesn't know what he/she is talking about. The debatable aspect of Windows 9x is actually the Win32 implementation. It does depend too much on 16-bit code - on KRNL386 and other parts of the Win16 code. At the time of Win95, it was an appropriate compromise, for reasons of compatibility as well as a safer alternative to attempting either a complete rewrite or a port from NT, but the Win32 layer ought to have been sorted out gradually over the years.

Quote

It's the superiority in the kernel and memory management that make Windows 2000/XP so much better than POS Windows 98/ME. I mean lets face it. Windows 98/ME aren't even native 32-bit operating systems. Should we still be running resource intensive applications on an OS that isn't even natively 32-bit. Of course not.

If you're referring to the Win32 layer, you have a point, although the problem isn't that the Win32 layer itself is not "natively 32-bit" (because it is), but the extent to which it depends on Win16 components, resulting in limitation (best demonstrated by the RSRCMTR applet.)