Callahan wrote:

I haven't tested but there also is somekind a driver from scitech "snap graphics". They supports even gf6600 and radeon x850,as they wrote. Posted here:
ftp://alter.org.ua/incoming/soft/vbe/snap318/snapfaq.htm#p3

It's accelerated, but 2D only, IIRC.

Just out of pure curiosity: why would you want any Windows based on the NT structure for your retro rig? Many games of those days just refuse to run on Windows NT. Why not go Windows 98 instead?

I will admit, I have never actually used Windows NT 4.0. The first computer I got was in 1999 and it had Windows 98 on it. To date, I think 98 is still the best Windows Microsoft ever released (twice). I agree that I might be somewhat biased here due to the nostalgia factor but from what I've read, a lot of people would agree with me on that.

Windows 98 is compatible with the vast majority of 90s and early 2000s games. It also has a really good DoS support, which makes it even better. I was a total noob back when I got my first PC. In fact, the first time I've actually used a computer was the day it got delivered. I had no idea that there is such a thing as a compatibility problem and I sure as heck didn't know how to deal with one. (In fact, at the time, I thought opening more than three windows was overheating the monitor. And yes, I was one of those idiots who though the computer is in the display itself. I was 7, though.)

The important thing is: I never had a compatibility problem those days. Not once. Every single thing I installed on that PC just worked. Zero problems.

I'm sure by now you see my point. Again, I'm just curious.

Just of pure curiosity:
would you use windows 98 on a computer with dual Ppro/PII/PIII cpus?
With single pentium pro i use w98 or w95... of course.
NT4 is little playable... but if playable is stable as a rock.

Yes, it's very stable. Windows 98 was horrible in that respect. I've been using NT 4.0 a couple of days and the only crashes I've had have been USB-related, which is forgivable since the OS wasn't designed to support it.

Yasashii wrote:

Just out of pure curiosity: why would you want any Windows based on the NT structure for your retro rig? Many games of those day […]
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Just out of pure curiosity: why would you want any Windows based on the NT structure for your retro rig? Many games of those days just refuse to run on Windows NT. Why not go Windows 98 instead?

I will admit, I have never actually used Windows NT 4.0. The first computer I got was in 1999 and it had Windows 98 on it. To date, I think 98 is still the best Windows Microsoft ever released (twice). I agree that I might be somewhat biased here due to the nostalgia factor but from what I've read, a lot of people would agree with me on that.

Windows 98 is compatible with the vast majority of 90s and early 2000s games. It also has a really good DoS support, which makes it even better. I was a total noob back when I got my first PC. In fact, the first time I've actually used a computer was the day it got delivered. I had no idea that there is such a thing as a compatibility problem and I sure as heck didn't know how to deal with one. (In fact, at the time, I thought opening more than three windows was overheating the monitor. And yes, I was one of those idiots who though the computer is in the display itself. I was 7, though.)

The important thing is: I never had a compatibility problem those days. Not once. Every single thing I installed on that PC just worked. Zero problems.

I'm sure by now you see my point. Again, I'm just curious.

I agree about Win 98se being way better in general for games. The only reason I personally would use NT for a gaming rig would be because Win 98 does not support SMP processing and if you have a board that supports 2 CPU's as I do you don't have many choices for a retro rig OS if you want to take any advantage of the 2 CPU's. Windows 98 will work fine on such machines but only "see" 1 CPU. Not that many games from thew era take any advantage of that.

2fort5r wrote:

A lot of games from that era want DX8 and don't support OpenGL.

You write mid to late 90ies. NT4 was released 1996, just after Win95 and long before Win98. DirectX8 was released end 2000/beginning 2001, so if what era do we speak here?

A lot of games from that era want DX higher than 3.0 and don't support OpenGL.

NT4 is easier to view the current web with then 9x.
Still not great, but Opera supported it the longest.
Its just nice to install alongside with 9x, doesn't take much drive space, and its something different.
I wouldn't ever suggest as using it exclusively to play old 9x games on.

Personally, I used to get furious with Win98 and I'd still avoid it when possible. The Win98 era is when BSODs were becoming such a rampant nuisance that everybody started to complain about it, and the reputation has stuck with Microsoft ever since, even though switching to the NT architecture fixed that problem long ago.

I can see Win98's appeal though for also serving as a DOS replacement, with everything on a shared FAT32 drive. I might try using it that way some time. There's also some games that just refuse to run on anything else. So for the right situation it has a place, and it's usage certainly fits with the theme of this site.

When possible, I prefer to use NT4 on Pentium era machines, and Win2k on P2 and later. I've never tried any WIndows with Pentium Pro so I don't know which I'd end up preferring.
Win98 and Win2k perform about the same IMO, other than RAM usage, which I've never had a shortage of. Win95 and NT4 are faster thanks to the older interface without IE integration.
However, my past use of NT4 has been on machines where I didn't care about games. I did run Age of Empires for a few minutes on an NT4 laptop, just to see how it would run, but that's about it. It seems many games of that time period had a fallback mode for NT4, even though they otherwise wanted a later DirectX version (5 or whatever it was). But I'm sure there's also plenty of late 90s games that lack this support.
I have wanted to try an NT4/DOS dual boot with a Pentium Pro board I have, but that board is not working so that killed the idea.

Yes Flight Simulator 98 complains about DirectX but still installs/runs smoothly. If features are missing they're not noticeable.

Was the device manager really necessary? If you wanted to see which HDDs are on the system, go to Disk Administrator and SCSI Adapters; multimedia cards, go to Multimedia in the Control Panel; graphic cards, use Disiplay Properties. Windows NT Diagnostics would indicate which IRQs and memory addresses devices were using, similar to XP's System Information. I used Windows NT 4.0 from 1998 to 2003 on my everday use computer. Uptimes of 5 months or more were not uncommon.

Actually NT4 has a device manager, however it looks different. You can reach it in the control panel as "Devices".
Looks like this

feipoa wrote:

Was the device manager really necessary? If you wanted to see which HDDs are on the system, go to Disk Administrator and SCSI Adapters; multimedia cards, go to Multimedia in the Control Panel; graphic cards, use Disiplay Properties. Windows NT Diagnostics would indicate which IRQs and memory addresses devices were using, similar to XP's System Information. I used Windows NT 4.0 from 1998 to 2003 on my everday use computer. Uptimes of 5 months or more were not uncommon.

Its a pain to have have it organized in one place.

Have you considered Windows 2000? Its a little heavy (especially in RAM)
But it is much more stable than 98
Runs many 9x games and programs while also supporting newer programs
Can run directx 9 but also supports OpenGL if the graphics driver does

W2k got one serious requirement for run smoothly: fast vga card, including dx7 compatibility. This is serious problem when i want to run pentium pro type pc (CPQ PWS5000) with pci slots only and obsolete bios that don't detect anything newer than GF2...

Not to mention APM support without ACPI...

W2k doesn't need a DX7 card.
It runs fine on many old cards, that have drivers for it.
PCI TNT1\2 would be fine for example, or a Rage Pro 128, even a PCI Voodoo3 or Banshee.

It doesn't need power management support either. It just won't sleep or power itself off.
It will display "Safe to turn off your computer"

The only thing it really needs is a lot of RAM

AlphaWing wrote:

W2k doesn't need a DX7 card.
It runs fine on many old cards, that have drivers for it.
PCI TNT1\2 would be fine for example, or a Rage Pro 128, even a PCI Voodoo3 or Banshee.

Explorer runs not too fast without dx7 vga... only classic desktop without effects runs ok.

smeezekitty wrote:

It doesn't need power management support either. It just won't sleep or power itself off.
It will display "Safe to turn off your computer"...

This statement bothers me when i see it on screen...

Callahan wrote:

Explorer runs not too fast without dx7 vga..

I thought it ran smoothly on Rage Pro back in the day, and you don't require a Geforce256 for menus to fade smoothly. It's a software effect

leileilol wrote:

Callahan wrote:

Explorer runs not too fast without dx7 vga..

I thought it ran smoothly on Rage Pro back in the day, and you don't require a Geforce256 for menus to fade smoothly. It's a software effect

No, explorer effects, icons listings, start menu etc. are accelerated by ddraw.

Then turn them off?
You don't need effects to use the computer.

This statement bothers me when i see it on screen...

Why? Windows 95, 98, NT4 or even XP will do that when there is no soft power capability.
Its a minor inconvenience but ALL systems without soft power will do it