You have two issues: DRM and OS compatibility of both the games and the steam emu.

For the first you'll need to use a steam emu and for the second you'll need to use kernelex both on the steam emu and the game.

Check this list for what solution to use for which game
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vogonsorg/O … es_04162023.txt

For old valve HL2 engine based games on 9x that are compatible with 9x it might be possible to use older versions of the ancient steamemu (not smartsteamemu) without kernelex on the emu but I've never bothered.

For hl2 and portal just use the CLI switches to bypass the DRM, for older versions of hl2 you'll need to use revemu. You may need to try older versions of revemu if kernelex doesn't support the latest versions. Also kernelex has had updates over the years so make sure those are installed.

Finally we don't support so called abandonware here, legally (as far as i'm aware) you aren't allowed to share or download copyrighted files unless you are given permission to do so. So both the person who provided files and the person who downloaded them are infringing. It doesn't matter if you own the game, that is not your backup copy (if your country allows you to do so). So I'll keep the thread open for now but no more discussion of such things since every single time threads get filled with people who want to give their opinion on such things and the threads go OT.

Portal, the first one, supposed to be DRM free, while Half Life, the release day version was compatible with W98, but the steam support for that OS was gone by the time Portal released. HL2, the release version should work, but needs to be cracked, but I'd be surprised if Portal is still compatible with W98.

The current Steam version of HL2 isn't even compatible with Windows XP. You need to roll back through Steam's beta feature. In that regard I don't how's Portal. If XP compatibility of the current version is also broken, then it certainly won't work on W98 either, and if it is, is there a rollback option like with HL2

I managed to run Portal on Win98 - needed to install Win98SE unofficial SP 3.24 first, and then KernelEx. It works just fine with Radeon cards (tested with X850 Pro and X850 XT). But with GeForce 7800 GTX, the initial splash screen shows just fine (the bald guy with a valve on the back of his head), but immediately after that the screen goes completely blank (BUT the game loads just fine). i.e. I can head the main menu soundscape, the sounds of the menu options as the mouse hovers over them, but the screen is completely black.

Is there any way to debug the issue?