VOGONS


I wish I had discovered Windows ME sooner!

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First post, by C0deHunter

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Its like a stripped down version of Windows 2000 Pro (GUI), fused with Windows 98SE features! I remember back in the day I heard about it's *instability*, but to be honest it has been playing on my real retro system (my sig) for a month, and I LOVE it!

p.s. If I could only get the START menu *label (side-ways) to display the "Windows Millennium
Edition text"
My Windows ME Start menu: It does not say Windows ME Millenuim Edition!

PIII-800E | Abit BH-6 | GeForce FX 5200 | 64MB SD-RAM PC100 | AWE64 Gold | Sound Canvas 55 MKII | SoftMPU | 16GBGB Transcend CF as C:\ and 64GB Transcend CF D:\ (Games) | OS: MS-DOS 7.1-Win98SE-WinME-Win2K Pro (multi-OS menu Using System Commander 2K)

Reply 2 of 108, by keropi

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ME is ok - as long as you also use WDM drivers and don't mix VxD ones in the system. Most issues in my experience came from drivers

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 3 of 108, by Joseph_Joestar

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For me, the only substantial thing that ME brings to the table is improved USB support, i.e. the ability to use flash drives.

Since I find USB bothersome on retro machines anyway (takes up too many IRQs) I just stick a network card in there and call it a day. If I really need USB for some reason, I can always dual boot 98SE and Windows 2000 and use USB sticks/hard disks from the latter.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 4 of 108, by clueless1

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Yes. I prefer it to 95/98 but only because I play DOS games exclusively on a dedicated MS-DOS 6.22 machine.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 5 of 108, by leileilol

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If you had a SBLive like me then around the WinME launch days (being on the edge of tech and all), getting any DOS TSRs going for sound compatibility is tough as Me viciously eats them from loading, though that's probably nothing compared to worse for the much more praised XP later...

Some of Me's early "problems" were misblamed features from Win2000 no one complained much about in regards to Win2000, like the 'where are my programs'. This was before the SFP 2001 bug though.... and my biggest Me issues personally were just SBLive driver issues, and the unhelpful obfuscation of general protection errors by immediately shutting down. Out-of-the-box ZIP support (as compressed folders, integrated from 98 Plus!) does certainly come in handy though...

Won't be suprised to see more trying out Me after LGR did recently though.... THOSE DARN INFLUENCERS *shakes Cane*

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 6 of 108, by chinny22

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Nah, still can't get into it.
Biggest selling point of Win9x is the ability to drop back into dos, I know you can hack this back into ME or I can just use 98SE.
If I want a more stability I'll go with 2k which play 95% of my games without work around.

I seem to remember Me was quicker to boot but 98 was faster once loaded. but in this day and age with what would have been high end systems don't think that's an issue
I'll admit on PC's without ISA and never boot into dos nothing is wrong with ME.
It's like Vista, yeh its ok, but whats the point?

Reply 9 of 108, by dionb

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kolderman wrote on 2020-05-12, 09:55:

Vista and Me were *hated * when they came out, and there is little reason to try and disprove that opinion.

The list of things hated when they came out and appreciated later in retro circles is quite long, in fact some of the most sought-after stuff is in fact stuff that commercially bombed, frequently for being, or at least being perceived as, complete crap. Sometimes it still is (people pay very good money for Diamond Edge3D cards, or ET cartridges for that matter), sometimes it turns out to have been misunderstood and in retrospect was decent or even quite good. A lot of the reasons - valid ones in 2000 - people hated WinME are no longer relevant. It needs more RAM than Win98SE. So what? RAM is plentiful and costs almost nothing. Early drivers were awful. Newer ones are available and better. No DOS? Just dualboot or use a 486 for that. Backup program was disastrous? Don't use it - don't store any vital data on a 20-year old system in the first place. What you're left with is Win98SE with USB support added and an updated UI. That's not great (I prefer Win2k with the same UI), but nowhere near as awful as someone with a box full of DOS games, all his work on the system and an old Pentium MMX with 32MB of RAM would have felt back then.

Reply 10 of 108, by Grzyb

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If I need DOS, Windows 9x is better.
If I don't need DOS, Windows NT-series is better.
So, what's the point in running Windows ME?

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 11 of 108, by BinaryDemon

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dionb wrote on 2020-05-13, 22:20:

The list of things hated when they came out and appreciated later in retro circles is quite long, in fact some of the most sought-after stuff is in fact stuff that commercially bombed, frequently for being, or at least being perceived as, complete crap.

True, I'm still so tainted by the FX-5xxxx series that I get annoyed whenever they are mentioned in high regard around here. I understand it, for playing games of a certain era the FX cards have a great mix of features. But in 2003 comparing the FX-5xxx's against Geforce4 Ti-4600's and ATI 9xxx at the common resolutions of the day, it was hard not to be disgusted.

So if C0deHunter is happy with WinME that's great. It's just a very lonely island he lives on.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 12 of 108, by leileilol

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Grzyb wrote on 2020-05-13, 22:32:

If I don't need DOS, Windows NT-series is better.
So, what's the point in running Windows ME?

Consider the many 98-2000 gaming peripherals (gamepads, wheels) that don't have NT / W2K support....

Also some video cards around that time, like the Voodoo2 and the Fury Maxx don't fully function on W2K!

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 13 of 108, by kolderman

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leileilol wrote on 2020-05-14, 00:20:
Grzyb wrote on 2020-05-13, 22:32:

If I don't need DOS, Windows NT-series is better.
So, what's the point in running Windows ME?

Consider the many 98-2000 gaming peripherals (gamepads, wheels) that don't have NT / W2K support....

Also some video cards around that time, like the Voodoo2 and the Fury Maxx don't fully function on W2K!

Hmm sounds like a good use case for 98SE.

Reply 14 of 108, by Grzyb

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I think we can all agree that - instead of ME - Microsoft should release something like "Windows 98 Third Edition": 98SE with all the bug-fixes, and built-in drivers for newer hardware.

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 15 of 108, by kolderman

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Grzyb wrote on 2020-05-14, 00:54:

I think we can all agree that - instead of ME - Microsoft should release something like "Windows 98 Third Edition": 98SE with all the bug-fixes, and built-in drivers for newer hardware.

They did - the 2004 update pack. Well apart from drivers perhaps.

Reply 16 of 108, by matcarfer

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kolderman wrote on 2020-05-14, 01:03:
Grzyb wrote on 2020-05-14, 00:54:

I think we can all agree that - instead of ME - Microsoft should release something like "Windows 98 Third Edition": 98SE with all the bug-fixes, and built-in drivers for newer hardware.

They did - the 2004 update pack. Well apart from drivers perhaps.

Which 2004 update pack? for 98se or me?