[eidenk]

I'd pay £30 or maybe even £50 for working drivers that would harness all the power of a dual core chip into 9x and the apps it runs.

Is it theoretically possible to write such drivers ?

This post has been edited by eidenk: 04 September 2006 - 05:56 AM

[nitroshift]

I think the OS has to recognize both cores first of all, which 98 doesn't...

[Fredledingue]

Such driver should emulate one core while working with two. That could be very complicated and unstable.

or

use w98 + some apps with one core and other apps with the other core. The second core would work as separate hardware, like the processor on your graphic card.
That would not exploit the full resources of both cores all the times when only one app is running.
But dual core on xp already don't use the full capacity all the time and is already working somehow like that.

IMO, with the second solution it should be possible to create something different that would fit on w98.
What you need is only a team of programmers working full time during a year.

[eidenk]

Fredledingue, on Sep 4 2006, 08:32 AM, said:

But dual core on xp already don't use the full capacity all the time and is already working somehow like that.

I know and it's a pity.

[jimmsta]

I have an Athlon X2 3800+, and have run Win98SE on it... and of course, to my dismay, it does not see two processors. NT 4 would probably see them, because it was designed with SMP cpu's in mind.

Since Win9x is dos-based, of which, as far as I know does not support more than 1 cpu.... If you wanted to write a driver to support the second core, you may have to write a patch for IO.SYS so that it fully initializes the second core, and assigns resources to it.

I don't even think FreeDOS supports dual core cpu's yet. It's just not needed. Win9x's kernel would need to be SMP-aware, and be able to fully multitask on multiple processors in order to utilize its full potential. (Which, as far as I know, it isn't designed to do this).

This may be a pipe dream. There's too much that would need patching, and modding. Although I do wonder about WinME...

[Acheron]

I can't imagine Windows 98 supporting Dual-core. You can't even properly dualboot any Windows 9x OS next to eachother (Windows 98 next to ME or 2 Windows 98 OS-installs).

This post has been edited by hp38guser: 04 September 2006 - 02:57 PM

[MDGx]

9x [95/98/ME] OSes cannot be moded without entire core re-writing to recognize and [what's more difficult] use 2 or more cores or 2 or more separate CPUs.
Only after such core re-write a dedicated driver could theoretically be used for this purpose.

NTx [NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista] OSes have completely different core architecture, and code for more than 1 CPU recognition and SMTP usage has been included early on.
Example:
Windows 2003 server datacenter edition 64-bit [X64] can recognize up to 64 CPUs or cores:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003...datacenter.mspx

Dual-boot of more than 1 9x OS is possible [no matter the number of CPUs or cores, because the 9x OS will recognize + use only the 1st one], if adequate multi-boot loader/manager is used [examples]:
http://www.mdgx.com/dos.htm#DOS
See XOSL, GAG + BOOTMGR [all free(ware)].
Or one can create custom batch files to multi-boot 9x OSes, since they all use same boot record [WIN40].
For example, for testing purposes, I multi-boot 98FE, 98SE + ME within the same partition, using only batch files. Partition/drive used doesn't matter if enough disk space is available to accomodate all those OSes.

HTH

This post has been edited by MDGx: 04 September 2006 - 04:24 PM

[Nakatomi2010]

My recommendation is to get a copy of XP and use it and if you have software that NEEDS to be run in a 9x based environment just use Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 software which is free through Microsoft now....

[LLXX]

Is it possible for user-level software to independently detect and use two cores?

I'd just prefer one very fast core over two.

[Nakatomi2010]

Supposedly AMD or Intel was working on something called Mitosis, which was supposed to be a reverse hyperthreading, meaning that both cores would act as one...

Supposedly, I seem to remember reading something about it awhile back, then nothing...

[oscardog]

I will probably get flamed for this but I have broad shoulders, the advantage win9x has is the ability to be all things to all men or to be targeted to a specific task, you have dual + processors I boot via network cards, other pcs to do complex mathematical computations as and when needed. I think its called clustering and saves you an amount in power consumption plus noise and gets the job done. My present system used for the purpose has no difficulty working with music, editing videos etc etc ( I do not play games) converting videos when needed switches to clustering (very rarely). For example clustering 8 1ghz pcs (as needed) with passive cooling might not make us the second class citizens you know.

This post has been edited by oscardog: 04 September 2006 - 05:53 PM

[MDGx]

oscardog:

What OS are your clusters/blades running, if not talking just theoretically? A retail/custom Linux distro perhaps?

[eidenk]

To those who advise me to use XP, it's not even the solution as most programs can't use the two cores on XP and probably it is the same with Vista, as noted by fredledingue.

As I understand it, the typical setup is to run the OS on one core and the apps on another one.

Any app that has not being written with specific code for supporting dual cores can't benefit from them and it's a real pity.

Specific code must exist in apps themselves so that they can use two cores and there aren't many so far. Just very high end products have that support.

There is no way I know to switch mode where the dual core is used as if it was a cluster and all the computational power can be piped into anything.

[oscardog]

MDGx, on Sep 5 2006, 01:48 AM, said:

oscardog:

What OS are your clusters/blades running, if not talking just theoretically? A retail/custom Linux distro perhaps?

It a complete heath robinson affair, all are minimalistic win9x systems, well motherboards stacked together sharing power supplies (not necessary on small farms)http://www.burningis...o/power/psu.htm and activated via wol on a switched network. Controlled by my win9x server which holds the over the air wintv mpeg2 captures which i encode on a very regular basis. Depending on the pending recording status on the server, and the size of recordings pending to be encoded the 9x systems are started as and when needed and piped the theroa parameters. This leaving my server free to continue recording/encoding itself.
I acquired an awful lot of motherboards and cpus suitable for the 9x system and after reviewing vidomi some years back decided to put them to some use.
I just thought that other people might possibly have older systems they could use in a similar fashion and negate the lack of dual processor support and offer an alternative to that nasty xp word (application/programming experience permitting)
Being also a friends of the earth kind of guy/tight devil I like to have control over my power consumption also

This post has been edited by oscardog: 05 September 2006 - 06:19 AM

[eidenk]

Thanks for the mitosis reverse hyperthreading hint. I found that thread that is quite interesting :

http://digg.com/hardware/AMD:_Reverse_hype...st_single_core).