Nodoyuna wrote:A question about this; will late Win98 games run well on XP?
There will always be exceptions, but yes, in general most later games will be compatible with Win98(SE), Win2k and WinXP.
The problems are mostly with early Win9x games, especially in the Win95 era.
Nodoyuna wrote:1) DOS 6.22 - can run DOS and Win3.11 games, with the option of also playing Win95 games and early Win98 games
Not sure if I understand you here...
You mean a "DOS 6.22"-targeted machine on which will also install Windows 95 or Windows 98?
Because DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 will not run any Win9x games.
Nodoyuna wrote:2) Win9X - as the DOS machine won't run late Win98 games, a Win9X with Win98SE machine will run Win95 and Win98 games, leaving out WinME
'Win9x' means the branch of Windows that was based on the technology started by Windows 95. As such, WinME is also a 'Win9x' version.
The other popular branch is known as 'WinNT', which supplanted the Win9x branch for home users/gamers with Windows XP, although technically Windows 2000 could also be used as a gaming OS already (unlike NT4 before it, it had full DirectX support, on par with the Win9x branch).
As far as I know, there is no software that ONLY runs on WinME, but not on Win98SE.
There's either software that runs on Win9x (but not on NT-based versions), where Win98SE is the best option, and software that requires newer functionality than Win98SE, in which case a WinNT version, such as Windows 2000 or XP is the best choice.
It all has to do with the timeline...
First there was DOS as a gaming OS
Then came Windows 95.
Windows 98 and 98SE improved on Windows 95.
Then Windows XP supplanted 98SE as the home/gaming choice.
Because of this history, both WinME and Win2k are somewhat 'orphaned'... Win98SE is the 'pinnacle' of Win9x, and Windows XP is the 'pinnacle' of Windows NT (at least for DirectX 9 and earlier).
The other OSes don't add much. WinME is mostly a 'stripped' version of Win98SE, with the look and some of the functionality of Windows 2k ported to the Win9x branch.
And XP superceded Windows 2000 completely. Since Windows 2000 was aimed at professional users only, it was never a popular gaming choice. XP can run anything that 2k can, and is also more compatible with Win9x-oriented games.