From my experience and what I read people had more problems with ME than with 98SE and all that hassle for not much more features or compatibility. People who had a stable 98SE (as stable as the 9x Windows can be) had a very unstable ME. OTOH I had a very unstable 98SE and my ME was running fine 😉
So I'd stick with 98SE

98SE. Always. Never ME.

Zup wrote:

98SE. Always. Never ME.

Dido. ME actually only removed features (DOS prompt) and kept the same buggy core. 😖

I did wonder if the loss of Real Mode DOS would be a bridge too far. I guess for a retro box, it might well be. Thanks all 😀

98SE!

I never had too many issues with ME except that it was a obese hog on the drives. Go 98SE and hope that you got the usb working.

I love using 98 on my old system, I despised ME when my dad got it back when I started college. I was so mad real DOS mode was gone...the only real gripe I have with 98's DOS 7.0 is my AWE32 card's sound configuration program thinks it's a DOS "box" and gives me the "cannot be run in Dos Box mode in Windows" message. (Somehow I've Richard-Pryor'ed my way through this with the autoexec.bat and config.sys, a-la Superman III: How did you do that?? I don't know I just ...did it!)

nforce4max wrote:

I never had too many issues with ME except that it was a obese hog on the drives. Go 98SE and hope that you got the usb working.

First task, as I remember hammering the CD-RWs to get it up and working years ago!
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.
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And now it starts with the msgsvr32 errors.
I just remembered why I was so reluctant to move from a working 95b installation all them years ago.

I like ME for its out of the box high mouse sampling, movie maker and more colors in the systray icons. 😜
I don't like it for its bad tendency to shut down suddenly when there's a general protection error as if it knew nothing

I'd most likely throw ME onto a system with a poor pci or onboard sound card and no ISA where you don't really expect solid DOS compatibility anyway.

leileilol wrote:

I'd most likely throw ME onto a system with a poor pci or onboard sound card and no ISA where you don't really expect solid DOS compatibility anyway.

Ah, now that's an interesting tidbit.
This box is an old HP d530, and indeed has no ISA capability and has on-board sound. I picked this box because it has a 98 supported chipset and can squeeze in 2x Voodoo2 cards with about 2mm clearance, so, SLI box in smallest space possible.
I do have an older box that's been mothballed; P4 1.7, i845 chipset with my old SB16 card in it and a Voodoo 5. I could easily drop the two VD2s in instead and see how that plays with 98.
Last resort is my Dell 200MMX that still has an S3 and my original Orchid Righteous, but that's a monster and I was ideally intending for ths to remain a small box hidden under my desk for when I felt the need for 3dfx loveliness.

enigmo wrote:

Last resort is my Dell 200MMX that still has an S3 and my original Orchid Righteous, but that's a monster and I was ideally intending for ths to remain a small box hidden under my desk for when I felt the need for 3dfx loveliness.

I like the way you build! My Optiplex Gs is very similar to that. I even have an Orchid Righteous myself. Everything else is various sound cards crammed in there. AWE32, Ultrasound, Yamaha XG, Roland, and General MIDI. (I felt the need for extreme variety.)

-Difficulty of Assembly-
Processor installation: Not Too Rough
Wiring/optimization of cable space: Hurt Me Plenty
PCI/ISA Card Space: Ultra-Violent
IRQ Settings: Nightmare!

jmrydholm wrote:

I like the way you build! My Optiplex Gs is very similar to that. I even have an Orchid Righteous myself. Everything else is var […]
Show full quote

I like the way you build! My Optiplex Gs is very similar to that. I even have an Orchid Righteous myself. Everything else is various sound cards crammed in there. AWE32, Ultrasound, Yamaha XG, Roland, and General MIDI. (I felt the need for extreme variety.)

-Difficulty of Assembly-
Processor installation: Not Too Rough
Wiring/optimization of cable space: Hurt Me Plenty
PCI/ISA Card Space: Ultra-Violent
IRQ Settings: Nightmare!

It's actually my old Dimension P133s, but I fed it a 200MMX and an extra 16MB of their damnably expensive proprietary SDRAM back in the day. Come to think of it, it has an AWE32 as well... And come to think of that, I'm sure I fed that a pair of 8MB 30pin SIMMs.
<hastily makes plans to visit parents>

And do you need that many cards? That much audio sounds like a headache of punny proportions!

enigmo wrote:

And do you need that many cards? That much audio sounds like a headache of punny proportions!

I was aiming for turning it into more of an instrument as well as a variety of sound card options. Keyboard Midi controller and all that stuff. Besides, I see empty slots on a board and I just have to utilize them. 😄

jmrydholm wrote:

I was aiming for turning it into more of an instrument as well as a variety of sound card options. Keyboard Midi controller and all that stuff. Besides, I see empty slots on a board and I just have to utilize them. 😄

Sounds like my home server.
Never did find an actual use for that fiber-channel card...

Right, well after a rough evening faffing, both 98se and ME give serious problems when installing. Beginning to suspect a dodgy gfx card. It probably gives a lot away about the state of my store-room when I can be fairly confident I have a spare somewhere! 😁

No... No... Not a busted card. Seems just the Engineering God has taken a dim view of me poking at what was already working OK and decided to throw some troubleshooting mysteriousness into the mix.

There has been some enthusiastic support for ME on this board in the past. MDGX also once came up with a utility called 98SE2ME, which adds all the updated components of ME to Windows 98 SE, but I haven't heard anyone speaking of it for a while and I'm not sure if it is worthwhile anymore.

I use 98SE2ME. I can't really say if it's an improvement over 98SE SP2 (unofficial) but it's nice for a maxed out Win9x rig. Bogs down slower systems though so best to use it with a P4/ Athlon XP or similar.

Well, for the time being it would seem ME did the business for me. Installed fine on my old retro box while 98 blue-screened repeatedly. Don't know what's wrong with the newer one, but as long as one box is up and running that's all that matters.

I see you have 512 MB of RAM installed. In theory, Windows 98 becomes unstable with that much RAM if it is not properly configured, but there seems to be a general lack of consensus there as well.

It has also been suggested that Windows ME also has better support for WDM drivers and ACPI, but as far as the latter is concerned I think you would probably be better off completely disabling any power management features in the BIOS and the OS to avoid any stability issues there.