MartinC wrote:

I’m looking to make this machine usable in the modern Internet while retaining it’s vintage feel and hardware (where possible)
- Upgrade primary video card to a modern GeForce for Flash, HTML5
I was thinking a 6800 Ultra?

Your prerequisites are really tough for a usable modern internet experience considering your setup.

1. Geforce 6 series don't seem to have much support for hardware acceleration for video playback let alone flash videos.
2. If you move to Geforce 8 series or newer which may have better acceleration support and hardware for video decoding, then you don't have Win98 driver for that card.
3. As you said, the additional compatibility layer will lead to overhead and is not going to help when the native experience is itself suspect. On the other hand, native web browsers may not have much in terms of acceleration.

Something's got to give (from your side) 🙁 .

gandhig wrote:

Your prerequisites are really tough for a usable modern internet experience considering your setup. […]
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Your prerequisites are really tough for a usable modern internet experience considering your setup.

1. Geforce 6 series don't seem to have much support for hardware acceleration for video playback let alone flash videos.
2. If you move to Geforce 8 series or newer which may have better acceleration support and hardware for video decoding, then you don't have Win98 driver for that card.
3. As you said, the additional compatibility layer will lead to overhead and is not going to help when the native experience is itself suspect. On the other hand, native web browsers may not have much in terms of acceleration.

Something's got to give (from your side) 🙁 .

I guess that's the fun in it, I am pretty set on Windows 98 SE, that is the whole mystic, I think so anyway, so I search.....

There is a lot of conflicting information on the Internet about the driver support for modern cards under Windows 98, this seems to also be true (conflicting information) of vintage video cards such as the the Voodoo 1 and 2, too bad there is no central database with accurate information, these things are very much forgotten in time

Well after some Googling, redirects and broken webpages I found official AMD, Windows 98 drivers that support ATI x1900 series cards, the consensus on the Net seems to be that the x1950 is the best of the DirectX 9 cards (DirectX 9 being the last supported DirectX version in Windows 98), this card *seems* to support DxVA which *should* allow accelerated video decoding on media sites such as YouTube, as stated above all this is pretty hit-and-miss so unless I get to try it myself I won't know if it works or not

I also found that Nvidia Geforce 8000 series drivers for Windows 98 are available however there would be no DirectX 10 support so the card is arguably working at a disadvantage and not really best suited for this system

I'll do some hunting on eBay and see if I have any luck with the x1950 or maybe even an overkill GeForce 8800

With Win 98 and depending on the games you are running you may have to go back as early as the lastest detonator drivers to actually get the games to run without problems. This means the FX series is the last generation of NVidia cards that you can run on 98 and run all games without issues. I tried to use a 6800 Ultra in my 98 machine and ended up not being able to run some early software. Eventually I went back to the 5900 I have and I really think if your not going to go AMD that is your best choice.

You're in for a very rough time MartinC. I tried this back in early 2011; to make a long story short: I failed miserably and just gave up 😵

Your biggest obstacles will be HTML5 and Flash. Either they won't work, or will be so buggy and crash-prone that it will not be worth the effort 😖

Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that you somehow succeed where I failed so badly.

Good Luck.

As a compromise, you could dual boot Win98SE and Lubuntu, Xubuntu, or some other reasonably lightweight Linux distro. That way you can have Windows for classic gaming goodness, then quickly reboot into Linux when you want to surf. I've built machines like this before, and they are definitely still possible. More practical than trying to modernize Windows 98, IMO.

The main sticking point will be RAM. Linux might not eat up that much ram, but Firefox and Chrome certainly will. I'd want 512 MB as a bare minimum. 1 GB or above would be better, but then you run into problems with Windows 98.

In any case, using a modern Linux distro would mostly avoid problems with Flash and the like. Should certainly be better than Windows 98, anyway. Pre-SSE CPUs are starting to have issues with modern binaries, but a PIII Coppermine should be fine.

MartinC wrote:

I guess that's the fun in it, I am pretty set on Windows 98 SE, that is the whole mystic, I think so anyway, so I search.....

I do really like your attitude in trying to achieve the improbable and having fun with it, seems to match with mine(but at a lesser level of improbability).

MartinC wrote:

I also found that Nvidia Geforce 8000 series drivers for Windows 98 are available however there would be no DirectX 10 support so the card is arguably working at a disadvantage and not really best suited for this system

Did you mean the unofficial drivers? DX10 is not at all a bother like many have said in other threads considering the severely limited performance you can get out of the P3 setup in that context.

MartinC wrote:

x1950 is the best of the DirectX 9 cards (DirectX 9 being the last supported DirectX version in Windows 98), this card *seems* to support DxVA which *should* allow accelerated video decoding on media sites such as YouTube

Depending upon the implementation of the acceleration function in X1950, this might help in decoding and rendering(fullscreen only) of flash videos, but unfortunately Vista & above is required to accelerate compositing leading to a complete(well almost) web browsing experience.

Shagittarius wrote:

With Win 98 and depending on the games you are running you may have to go back as early as the lastest detonator drivers to actually get the games to run without problems. This means the FX series is the last generation of NVidia cards that you can run on 98 and run all games without issues. I tried to use a 6800 Ultra in my 98 machine and ended up not being able to run some early software. Eventually I went back to the 5900 I have and I really think if your not going to go AMD that is your best choice.

Interesting, did not expect this to be an issue. I will still have my Voodoo2 SLI cards and Glide installed which is enough of a compromise for me but I do now wonder how much of an issue this may be...

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

You're in for a very rough time MartinC. I tried this back in early 2011; to make a long story short: I failed miserably and just gave up 😵
Your biggest obstacles will be HTML5 and Flash. Either they won't work, or will be so buggy and crash-prone that it will not be worth the effort 😖
Good Luck.

I hope your wrong 😀 I have done some more researching, Opera 11.x and Flash 10.x is reported to work well with KernelEx

maximus wrote:

As a compromise, you could dual boot Win98SE and Lubuntu, Xubuntu, or some other reasonably lightweight Linux distro. That way you can have Windows for classic gaming goodness, then quickly reboot into Linux when you want to surf. I've built machines like this before, and they are definitely still possible. More practical than trying to modernize Windows 98, IMO.

The main sticking point will be RAM. Linux might not eat up that much ram, but Firefox and Chrome certainly will. I'd want 512 MB as a bare minimum. 1 GB or above would be better, but then you run into problems with Windows 98.

In any case, using a modern Linux distro would mostly avoid problems with Flash and the like. Should certainly be better than Windows 98, anyway. Pre-SSE CPUs are starting to have issues with modern binaries, but a PIII Coppermine should be fine.

This is a good idea, I will make a dual boot Windows 98 + Lubuntu system a backup option incase I am unsuccessful. I have 768MB of RAM (and have the patched Windows 98 to prevent any issues) so expect the hardware to be well suited for a Lubuntu based system

gandhig wrote:

MartinC wrote:

x1950 is the best of the DirectX 9 cards (DirectX 9 being the last supported DirectX version in Windows 98), this card *seems* to support DxVA which *should* allow accelerated video decoding on media sites such as YouTube

Depending upon the implementation of the acceleration function in X1950, this might help in decoding and rendering(fullscreen only) of flash videos, but unfortunately Vista & above is required to accelerate compositing leading to a complete(well almost) web browsing experience.

Well there are 2 options on the software side for GPU acceleration of multimedia; DxVA (supported under Windows 98) and WebGL (supported under Firefox 4) , what makes you think these options would not work under Windows 98?

Keep in mind that not every app runs 100% under KernelEx like it would under it's native version of Windows. On the KernelEx page they will tell you what will and won't work. Their documentation of which versions of Firefox work and which features are buggy under KernelEx is pretty extensive as most people do use it specifically to bring newer, safer browsers to older versions of Windows so they get a lot of feedback from users about web browser incompatibilities.

MartinC wrote:

Well there are 2 options on the software side for GPU acceleration of multimedia; DxVA (supported under Windows 98) and WebGL (supported under Firefox 4) , what makes you think these options would not work under Windows 98?

Yeah DXVA & WebGL will work but there is more to the web than that. Anyway like you said, you can find out only by trying first-hand and I'm sure you will get surprised. I have some experience with my system in the web both under WinXP and Lubuntu. Though mine is slightly underpowered than yours in the hardware department, the overall experience is at best 'poor' with some tweaks.

You will come across threads in this forum where a dual Tualatin struggles in the web. The main thing is the requirement of modern dual-core processor, enough RAM and requirement of SSE2 to some extent which works against our favour in case of non-availability of GPU acceleration. I also didn't have much success in the HTML5 front too. Only youtube flash videos get accelerated in my system that too in fullscreen under specific conditions.

Maybe if we combine forces to find out the untapped regions and the complexity of the underlying factors, something might come out positive though I doubt it. All the best to all of us with P3 systems.

gandhig wrote:

Maybe if we combine forces to find out the untapped regions and the complexity of the underlying factors, something might come out positive though I doubt it. All the best to all of us with P3 systems.

I'll do my best! I just picked up my system from my mum's and it's sweet....I also added a Voodoo1 I had in storage, they are becoming a rare find now

On the x1950 front after some more researching it seems it's not supported with the last Catalyst 6.2 even though it states it is here

Here is a picture of my current video cards (Voodoo, Voodoo2 SLI, GeForce2 Pro)

You can try a slotket in order to use a Pentium 3 S, A few years ago I was able to browse comfortably with that and 512MB of RAM, and unlike you I didn't have the luxury of AGP, I had to use PCI. At the time I was also using Windows XP (for legacy pc's)

But then again, I was never able to get slotkets to work properly, and the computer I was referencing didn't use a slot anyway. I had to use a modified Tualatin that would work on a regular 370, and upgrade the BIOS to work with it.

If flash won't work on youtube, you'll probably have to find a way to download the flv and view it on a media player. That's what I had to do when I used Linux on an ancient iMac.

To be honest I think you should try Win2k or XP, as 9x doesn't have many lifelines left. Should you use 2k or XP you could also use a newer gpu which would help some.

The problem is, that it's very difficult to compromise between nostalgic appeal and crazy anachronistic upgrades. (which are my favorite, bring on the Pentium 3's with USB 3.0 and SSDs)

GeForce 6 is a no-go for Flash GPU; here's the list from nVidia:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpus_supporting_adobeflash.html

And remember that Flash GPU is not 100% acceleration; it's "acceleration assist" - Tom's explains it well here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adobe-fla … ion,2805-4.html

So depending on what you want it to play, it may or may not work properly even with a GeForce 8 or higher (you'll still "feel" the older CPU, lack of SSE2, etc). There should be nothing to worry about with DX10 not being supported though (there shouldn't be any "working at a disadvantage" - plenty of people used (and probably continue to use) GeForce 8, 9, 200, etc (and Radeon 2/3/4k etc) cards under XP for years with no ill effects and no DX10 - as long as you don't want to play DX10 games that is). Support for those cards under 98 may be another question though, as Shagittarius pointed out.

The Radeon will likely do you no good either; AMD doesn't support Flash GPU on lower than Catalyst 9.11/Radeon HD 4000 series (Adobe's "line" is: "essentially the same as Windows Vista with Aero Glass" to support Flash GPU on Windows (https://blogs.adobe.com/penguinswf/2008/05/fl … es_the_gpu.html)). You may have somewhat better luck with Flash GPU on Linux, but I still wouldn't expect killer performance. Regarding the X1950 specifically - keep in mind the relatively high power requirements of such a board, most of which will be on the +12V rail of your PSU. You'll also have to find an AGP variant - most of those cards are PCI Express (and don't be surprised to see the AGP cards with hilariously high prices as salvagers try to take advantage of folks with old machines).

In general I'd say that "realism" is probably the key here - either the machine can be a killer Windows 98 gaming system (sounds like it already is!), or it can run 2000 or XP with newer graphics hardware and still struggle with various multimedia web tasks (honestly the modern web is just too bloated for such a machine, and HD probably will never be on the table for it), as well as the ever-present security concerns still associated with an unsupported operating system.

From personal experience, a 1GHz P3 with a WildcatVP (uses the Xorg basic VGA drivers) running Puppy Linux (Wary 5.5) was/is okay for basic browsing (you can view sites like Vogons without any problems, but something heavy like YouTube or Netflix is likely to be a no-go; don't even think about HD). I would consider it acceptable as a hold-over or part-time machine for multi-boxing or something like that; it really had no issues with mostly text sites. As far as memory demands, my P3 box "only" has 384MB of memory, and had plenty available even with Puppy booted - with your setup with 768MB you should have zero concerns unless you want to open up (and never close) a ton of applications.

My advice would be to go one of two routes (I guess you could do both if you want/need multi-box capability):

- Use Wary Puppy for web browsing; it'll just require a bootable CD/DVD or flash-drive and will let the machine stay "stock" with Windows 98 for when you want to game. Seems to be less hassle than configuring a multi-boot environment as well. More info about Puppy is here: http://www.puppylinux.com/ (and I suggest Wary Puppy because it's what the developers suggest for older machines)

- If you have the resources, build or acquire a newer machine that can run a newer operating system (like Win 7/8, OS X Mavericks, Ubuntu 14.x, etc) and has a modern processor and graphics controller (even a modern Celeron with the HD IGP will be suitable for modern multimedia and browsing) which will make for a faster/smoother/better browsing experience and still preserve the Win98 box for gaming (and doesn't open it up to all of the bloat and security headaches associated with running 9x or 2000/XP on the modern web).

Another, somewhat perverse option:

- With some minor upgrades your system could technically meet the minimum system requirements for Windows 7 (it would need another 256MB of RAM, may need another hard-drive (depending on how much space you have), and a graphics card that supports WDDM/DX9). I don't want to imagine how sluggish it may be, but if you had a more modern gcard in there it might just work to dual-boot with 7 and 98 - the biggest question is then finding a card that will play nice with both Windows 98 and Windows 7. I've read that GeForce FX has a WDDM 1.0 driver (nVidia lists 96.85 on their website), but have never personally tested it. Might be something to look into.

Very cool machine by the way! How do you have the video routed for all three 3D setups? What does it do for audio? (oh, and it looks like some of your images on the other thread are dead 😢)

Conclusions/Observations:

1. GPU acceleration rocks!!! for Youtube flash videos only in case of my modern GPU, i.e if at all it kicks off.
2. Youtube Flash video performance in Lubuntu is far better compared to WinXP, nil to very less no. of dropped frames and all, but it is really buggy & crashes randomly from my preliminary testing. Fault localization is in progress.
3. In general Lubuntu is snappier for browsing compared to WinXP, though it slows down depending on the websites mostly with lots of pictures and other unknown elements(the very important part, identification of the component culprits, is WIP). Slowing down in the sense that the scrolling stutters heavily, input delays etc. and is subjective.
4. Acceleration of youtube videos in HTML5 player is non-existent in both WinXP and Lubuntu as far as I have tried. I think the video format is webm for which acceleration is not there by default. This needs in-depth study if at all we have to escape the clutches of Flash.
5. I will leave out the gaming part which I will update in my thread later as the title pertains to modern web.

The main difference between our systems is obviously the OS and the PCI GPU(that too with intermediate bridge with its own penalty).

Edit:
Disclaimer:
These maybe downright wrong and will/may change depending on my knowledge bank updates from the WWW(which includes the forums) and to a lesser extent from the subconscious inputs received from fourth dimensional plane, the unexplored 97% of the deeper recesses of the brain(if you believe that) etc.

I've tried a few websites under Windows 98 SE, like Vogons, my favourite computer webshop and such, and all of those work well even on my K6-III with Firefox 3.6.2 or some such old version. It's a native Win9x version at least, as I don't feel any need to use KernelEX. I've not tried installing flash on it yet, but I don't hold out any hopes of that working well 😜
I can however watch videos on youtube on my PIII, as long as I limit them to 360p and can live with the occasional stutter/dropped frame. Again, this is using an old version of Firefox, so security is probably an issue, but then again, this isn't a main system and it has no sensitive information on it (wouldn't use it for net banking or stuff like that), so I somehow don't really think it's going to be a major issue.