Right off the bat I see it has too much RAM. I think Windows 98 croaks over 1 GB of RAM

That machine is more suite for a modern OS like Windows 7

I would run XP on it. Windows 98SE would have a lot of downsides, and it will be tricky (perhaps impossible) to find all drivers. XP can run almost any Win9x game.

The Dell Inspiron 8100 is probably one of the best laptops for running Windows 98-era games. It comes with a GeForce2Go which is a GeForce 2 MX derivative. That means you get TnL. 😀

The Inspiron 8100 is also the Latitude C810. They're clones of each other.

The Latitude C840/Inspiron 8200/Precision M50 would also be a good option. Salvaged a few of them at work (to use at work). I absolutely cherish the 1600x1200 screen and double-bay design.

1 side bay for the DVD drive / floppy drive / HDD caddy
1 front modular bay for the DVD drive / floppy drive / 2nd main battery
1 front bay for the main battery (basically, the 'extra' battery and the main battery are the exact same models)
obviously, 1 hdd. IDE44, not SATA.

So yeah it's possible to run 2x dvd/floppy/hdd caddy or 1x dvd/floppy/hdd caddy + battery or any combination thereof. 😁

C810/Inspiron 8100 is PIII-M with GeForce2Go, C840/Inspiron 8200 is P4-M with GeForce4-440Go

It is truly a gorgeous notebook indeed. I'd refurbish one but I only collect laptops that have keyboards with keys on the far right (home/pgup/pgdn/end) which are a necessity for my typing style.

smeezekitty wrote:

Right off the bat I see it has too much RAM. I think Windows 98 croaks over 1 GB of RAM

Limiting the RAM is a fairly trivial exercise. I like HIMEMX.

Jorpho wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

Right off the bat I see it has too much RAM. I think Windows 98 croaks over 1 GB of RAM

Limiting the RAM is a fairly trivial exercise. I like HIMEMX.

Seems like a waste. Makes more sense to run an OS more appropriate for the hardware like Xp or even newer

Get a 512MB pre 2001 class machine for 98

smeezekitty wrote:

Get a 512MB pre 2001 class machine for 98

I have to assume that you assumed that such a machine can not have any other OS in addition to win9x. 😉

Also, why the "pre-2001 class" limitations, if you could have some newer stuff that have proper working win9x drivers?

smeezekitty wrote:

Seems like a waste. Makes more sense to run an OS more appropriate for the hardware like Xp or even newer

It might make more sense to run an OS appropriate for the software one wants to run – and XP isn't always the best choice in that regard.

I suspect notebooks with GeForce 6xxx graphics hardware are hard enough to come by these days and that one cannot afford to be too choosy.

archsan wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

Get a 512MB pre 2001 class machine for 98

I have to assume that you assumed that such a machine can not have any other OS in addition to win9x. 😉

Also, why the "pre-2001 class" limitations, if you could have some newer stuff that have proper working win9x drivers?

In general hardware more to age is likely to have better 9x drivers
I find some newer hardware that supplies 9x drivers are actually unstable/poorly tested
Its true you can dual boot, but you will need a decent size HDD

IIRC it has been posted several times that Windows 9x doesn't work with PCI-E (either altogether or especially with PCI-E video cards). Windows 9x working with GeForce 6600 probably refers to AGP. If you can't find the relevant thread(s) maybe somebody with personal experience could answer here?
Also cards up to GeForce FX have better compatibility with older titles.
An older model would probably suit you better.

smeezekitty wrote:

In general hardware more to age is likely to have better 9x drivers
I find some newer hardware that supplies 9x drivers are actually unstable/poorly tested
Its true you can dual boot, but you will need a decent size HDD

HDD is relatively easy to replace/upgrade. "Newer" and "more to age" is kinda unspecific, as is the "unstable/poorly tested" comment.

Anyway, try IBM Thinkpad T42(p) with ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 for an example of a notebook with Win9x drivers readily downloadable from the manufacturer's website (well, Lenovo in this case, not IBM). This was a 2004/2005 model IIRC.

Just for reference, some of the AGP modules one might be interested in for win98:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce4- … Go.24902.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-F … 650.2151.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-F … 700.2150.0.html
http://www.gpureview.com/mobility-radeon-9700-card-18.html
http://www.gpureview.com/mobility-radeon-9800-card-19.html

The last notebook I ran Win98SE on was a eMachines M6805. That's a Mobile Athlon64 15.4" DTR notebook with a VIA K8T800 chipset and Mobility Radeon 9600, Realtek AC97 (great EAX support in XP btw), and VIA Rhine II 10/100.

The only thing that I couldn't get working was the Broadcom 4306 wifi, and that is in fact the main reason I don't mess with 9x on notebooks. Wifi support is a hurdle. If you can find a driver, you might still find no support for WPA/WPA2 for example. And DHCP causes a 30 second boot delay if it can't get an IP, which it can't with Wifi until the OS is up, so you want to use a static IP (uhg).

You'd want to dual boot because Win98 has so many caveats. GUI rendering (incl web page rendering) performance is abysmal on 9x. Can't access Win Vista/7/8 network shares. Etc. It's only enjoyable for old games. But then there's the reality that almost all games will work fine with XP anyway!!

swaaye wrote:

The only thing that I couldn't get working was the Broadcom 4306 wifi, and that is in fact the main reason I don't mess with 9x on notebooks. Wifi support is a hurdle. If you can find a driver, you might still find no support for WPA/WPA2 for example.

You'd want to dual boot because Win98 has so many caveats. GUI rendering (incl web page rendering) performance is abysmal on 9x. Can't access Win Vista/7/8 network shares. Etc.

I agree with all your points except the network share part. I haven't had many problems accessing my Vista shares on 95,98 or even 3.11

smeezekitty wrote:

I agree with all your points except the network share part. I haven't had many problems accessing my Vista shares on 95,98 or even 3.11

Seriously? I suppose it might be with Win7 and later. What happens is, on the 98 machine you browse network neighborhood and connect to a share. It eventually pauses and finally errors out, perhaps after showing a partial file listing. I spent a lot of time reading forum posts about it but never got it working. I just use a USB stick for transfers / storage now.

Note that SAMBA does work so if you have Linux running somewhere you're good for using that as network storage.

If the chipset has Windows 98 drivers, then yes (and it still might work without chipset drivers). And as for ram, you'll have to know how to edit the system.ini and system.cb files of windows 98 (located in the windows folder). If you don't set the cache setting, you'll have problems; and you have to do it after the first reboot (boot into dos prompt) during a fresh install. If you know what you're doing and set the vcache properly, Windows 98 will run just fine with 2GB of ram, but no more than that (the system arena can only deal with up to 2 gigabytes of ram). If you use more than 2gb of ram, you need to replace himem.sys with himemx.exe; I use this just fine with 16GB of ram on my AM3+ system.

I wouldn't even try to get win9x online.

archsan wrote:

I wouldn't even try to get win9x online.

Why? its not that difficult your limited to older browsers even with kernel ex installed, but with adblocker or noscript you can get around to download sites and find the files you need usually. If that fails forced to reboot into XP or puppy linux.

Whats really fun is trying to surf the net with windows 3.11 😈

^Security. And I don't have that hobby. 😀