I dare anyone with a Pentium 2 or slow Pentium 3 and 128mb memory to try to run "Enemy engaged - RAH 66 Comanche versus KA-52 Hokum"
If your HDD is a sub 10GB 5400 rpm drive it will be extra fun 😀

The game only needs a 266 MHz CPU, 64MB memory and a video card with 4MB memory... 😀

RacoonRider wrote:

I went from 256MB to 768MB on PII-450 Deschutes. Just because I can. No difference at all. No crashes either... Am I doing something wrong? Windows 98 SE + Unofficial service pack.

Using an unofficial service pack likely fixes the addressing issues that prevented Windows 98 from accessing more than 512 MB of physical RAM, though I can't say for certain.

only my tualating has 512mb because of the dualboot with xp. Every other 98se pc i have runs fine with 128mb and 256mb. Most games i play require far less. Back in the days a lot of 98 machines came with 32mb default, so even 128mb is 4x more.

A lot of the older socket 7 boards are limited to 64mb (cacheable) and they work perfectly with 98se.

My choices for my systems:

p100 - 32mb
233mmx - 64mb
k6-3+ - 128mb
p3-700 - 256mb
tualatin - 512mb (also for xp and 512mb is board limit)
athlon xp - 1gb (also for xp)

meljor wrote:

only my tualating has 512mb because of the dualboot with xp. Every other 98se pc i have runs fine with 128mb and 256mb. Most gam […]
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only my tualating has 512mb because of the dualboot with xp. Every other 98se pc i have runs fine with 128mb and 256mb. Most games i play require far less. Back in the days a lot of 98 machines came with 32mb default, so even 128mb is 4x more.

A lot of the older socket 7 boards are limited to 64mb (cacheable) and they work perfectly with 98se.

My choices for my systems:

p100 - 32mb
233mmx - 64mb
k6-3+ - 128mb
p3-700 - 256mb
tualatin - 512mb (also for xp and 512mb is board limit)
athlon xp - 1gb (also for xp)

Im using as much memory as the boards can cache up to 256MB. For faster P3 systems 512MB. For any system that runs XP 1GB+.
I always expect my systems to be responsive at all times. The waiting for something to load part of the retro computing experience I can live without.

That is the main reason i use more modern harddisks for my systems instead of ``period correct`` ones.

Using a more modern 7200rpm 80gb or 160gb drive instead of the normal 6gb (or whatever) makes a huge difference in loading times. Helps way more than adding ram.

I believe 512mb is useless for 98se when used for games of that time. 512mb became ``recommended`` for most games around 2005 and those run best on xp anyway.

meljor wrote:

That is the main reason i use more modern harddisks for my systems instead of ``period correct`` ones.

Using a more modern 7200rpm 80gb or 160gb drive instead of the normal 6gb (or whatever) makes a huge difference in loading times. Helps way more than adding ram.

I believe 512mb is useless for 98se when used for games of that time. 512mb became ``recommended`` for most games around 2005 and those run best on xp anyway.

Well the same goal with different paths to reach it. I use old somewhat slow 10 - 40 GB drives in many of my older systems.
I agree that Windows 98 dosnt really know what to do with memory over 256MB but when playing flight sims it seems beneficial.

For win98 512mb would be the best bet. 512 is more then what most setups would need and it keeps things simple.
Now I have 1gb in my win98 system, I had 1.5gb of ram in the system. The system was unstable unless if 512mb of the ram was isolated, like with a ram drive.

Even in the review of the pentium III 1ghz Anandtech used 128mb and win98se.

512mb was used in the review of the p4 3ghz 800fsb processor (windows xp).

There are allways high end systems in their reviews, most people used FAR less......

I use an i5 system with 16gb for today's games. When i rebuild this in 2030 with 64gb ram it won`t run today's games any better. 16gb is a lot today, and so was 128mb back then. 256mb is overkill and a really save bet.
512mb is the MAX the OS could handle normally and that says a lot.

The question was ''sweet spot'' and i believe 128mb is.

Thank god we didn't need more ram in the 90's, memory was VERY expensive!

Interesting. This is what I found.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kG8LcWfruOAC … t%20spot&f=true

nice read!

I searched trough one of my old magazines from 95-96. Brand new pentium systems sold with 8-16mb ram. It is funny that today we see it as a ''problem'' that pentium1 boards mostly do not support over 64mb, or super socket 7 boards don't cache beyond 128mb 🤣

For a lower end PIII I'd recommend 128MB (450-600MHz), and 256MB for the higher end CuMines and Tualatins. Period games really don't need more.

I would using 384MB for a slower Pentium III system(also slower windows 98 se machine) if i would make an faster (the fastest windows 98 se machine) i would do 512MB if you dont want to have the problems with the memory maximum limit.

Mister Blunt wrote:

For a lower end PIII I'd recommend 128MB (450-600MHz), and 256MB for the higher end CuMines and Tualatins. Period games really don't need more.

128MB thats a little bit to many.. I know back in the days already using 256MB because otherwise windows 98 se was really slow with al of its updates.

Stock pentium II / III systems came already with 128MB when you bought a system like that.. That was the standard size memory machines had from factory..
Only some lower-end machines had 64MB from factory installed..

Stock pentium II / III systems came already with 128MB when you bought a system like that.. That was the standard size memory machines had from factory..
Only some lower-end machines had 64MB from factory installed..

Actually many lower-end Pentium II computers came with only 32MB of ram back then. As a matter of fact, my first computer was Pentium II 233 MHz and it only had 32MB of ram when I bought it.

Personally, I have 386Mb installed right now on my vintage system (DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.1 Dual Booting with Windows 98.) The only issue I've had at all is a few DOS games have problems with too much RAM. OK, one single game so far - Wing Commander Privateer. I fix that by using XMSDSK to eat up all the RAM above a certain amount for those games. My Windows 98se install runs smoothly and without any problems so far. From what I've read, without aftermarket patches (I think they are actually 3rd party, but not sure,) Windows 98 cannot handle RAM over 512Mb (so that's my personal limit.) But I've never read anywhere about Windows 98 having any problems with RAM up to that amount. It's been my experience that with Microshaft's design philosophy, for their 32-Bit Windows', it's best to take it to that OS' limit.

Also keep in mind that Windows 98 really has major problems with CPU speeds over 2.1Ghz. There's a fix, but I'm unclear as to the actual process of installing it (as Windows 98 won't even finish installing.) Personally, considering the games designed for Windows 9x, I don't see a need to go past either of those limits, and you'll save yourself a lot of hassle by doing so. My vintage system's board has a hard cap CPU limit of 1.4Ghz, so that's good. It has a RAM limit of 768Mb, but I'm not planning to go over 512Mb.

Been doing a search on the side, and fixing that for 1Gb or less at least, is a lot simpler than I thought. Still a bit of hassle, so I would say 512Mb with a 2.1Ghz processor is probably the best for Windows 98. But then, I'm not trying to build a period accurate system - I just want my ISA cards to work 😀

I once had (well, still have, but not active anymore) a Pentium III 733 Coppermine machine with Windows 95, 98 and XP multi-booting. The mainboard is a Gigabyte VIA Apollo Pro with 133MHz FSB, with maximum 1.5GB RAM limit.

I tried many different configurations and find out that:

1- 1.5 GB memory installed (512 x 3, max allowed by the board) does not allow Windows 9x to boot.
2- With only 1 GB memory physically installed, both Windows 95 and Windows 98 can boot, providing that you made the necessary changes to their respective system.ini files (MaxPhysPage= and MaxFileCache= parameters).
3- There are many references on the net describing all the hooplas and 3rd party patches that allow you to use your Windows 98 machines with so many GBs of RAM, if you have any reason to take this road.

In the machine I described, with the above mentioned parameters, limiting Windows 98 to a little bit less than 1024 MB and Windows 95 to about 512 MB, and limiting the cache sizes accordingly, was what solved all my problems after so many trials. Just google it, you will find how to arrange the parameters for specific sizes. The same machine was also booting Windows ME, MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11, OS2 Warp 4, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 and BeOS without any problem.

But at the end, I did all these just to have at least 1 GB RAM for Windows XP on the same machine. As far as I get from the more knowledgeable people around here, there is not much practical gain in going with 256+ on Windows 95 and 512+ for Windows 98. My two active retro rigs at the moment have 256MB (Windows 95) and 512MB (Windows 98) RAM and are very happy. They required no adjustments or patches or hooplas either during installation, or during normal running.