Personal pref would be to burn CDs or DVDs on modern systems. Less chance for cockups

gmaverick2k wrote on 2023-01-08, 10:45:

Personal pref would be to burn CDs or DVDs on modern systems. Less chance for cockups

That is my personal preference too, but I understand the motivation to get it working in Windows 9x. This is Vogons, after all. 😉

Besides the already mentioned CDRWin and Nero, other popular options were Roxio WinOnCD and Padus DiscJuggler. Not sure whether CloneCD and Alcohol go back as far as W98 but might look into those too.

I also remember using CeQuadrat PacketCD. Basically, it allows you to treat a CD as a big floppy, implemented by gathering write requests and committing them on request to a multisession disc.

NB: None of those are specific to CD-RW; the only difference would be a way to erase a disc, but I don't recall which ones had that.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-01-08, 15:57:

Not sure whether CloneCD and Alcohol go back as far as W98

CCD probably does (after all "everyone" used it for PS1 discs as much as DiscJuggler was for Dreamcast), A120 does and it's now freeware: http://www.filefacts.com/alcohol-120-retro-edition-info !
(Didn't even know it was a recording software, only heard of it as a virtual drive tool...)

We mainly used Easy CD Creator 4, which came with our first PC as part of a NEC CD-RW drive we never had (it rather had a NEC DVD-ROM and Philips CD-RW), however I dug it out two months ago and it doesn't work with my only remaining IDE recorder, the eMac LG/Apple combo drive - and Nero 5 thinks it's 417x (fower-one-seven) speed...

After that it was all Nero 5.5/6/7 (all OEM) depending on which disc was found first after reinstalling the OS 😁

Alistar1776 wrote on 2023-01-08, 09:33:

darry wrote on 2023-01-08, 08:42:

I've heard of people reading while taking a dump. Writing is a new one for me. ;) […]
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I've heard of people reading while taking a dump. Writing is a new one for me. 😉

Joking aside, if Windows keeps crashing while using the drive to write, there may be something wrong with the hardware or software side.

Are you overclocking and are chipset and/or IDE controller drivers installed ?

EDIT: And make sure DMA is enabled for both hard disks and optical drives in device manager.

Ive upgraded the HDD from 60gb to 120gb now, and am installing the unofficial SP3. Drivers for chipset and IDE are installed. the processor is at 930mhz, the listing I bought it from said 933, but came to me configured for 750, so im not really sure if its OC or not. Ill double check DMA settings when I get a chance.

Personally I don't trust SP3. I would have just installed Windows, Nero and tested. but lets see how this goes

chinny22 wrote on 2023-01-09, 16:40:

Alistar1776 wrote on 2023-01-08, 09:33:

darry wrote on 2023-01-08, 08:42:

I've heard of people reading while taking a dump. Writing is a new one for me. ;) […]
Show full quote

I've heard of people reading while taking a dump. Writing is a new one for me. 😉

Joking aside, if Windows keeps crashing while using the drive to write, there may be something wrong with the hardware or software side.

Are you overclocking and are chipset and/or IDE controller drivers installed ?

EDIT: And make sure DMA is enabled for both hard disks and optical drives in device manager.

Ive upgraded the HDD from 60gb to 120gb now, and am installing the unofficial SP3. Drivers for chipset and IDE are installed. the processor is at 930mhz, the listing I bought it from said 933, but came to me configured for 750, so im not really sure if its OC or not. Ill double check DMA settings when I get a chance.

Personally I don't trust SP3. I would have just installed Windows, Nero and tested. but lets see how this goes

I have found the unofficial SP3 for Windows 98SE to be unstable for the main updates. Other updates, like performance tweaks, WinTop, Time Zone updates work OK. But the main updates have, so far, resulted in a reinstall. Unofficial SP3 often hangs with some kind of call for "WinOldApp." When I kill this process, it will continue. The unofficial Service Packs for Windows 95 and ME, on the otherhand, I've never had an issue.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-01-09, 16:40:

Personally I don't trust SP3. I would have just installed Windows, Nero and tested. but lets see how this goes

its went south a few times. Resulted in reinstall. What ive found, is after installing SP3, run the windows setup again, and it seems to fix itself. Not a complete reformat and reinstall, just simply running setup again after the SP3 install.

Deep Burner. Freeware, and portable. Supports cd, dvd, multisession, it can do audio cd from mp3. (New versions will not work from 9x.)

cdrfte is an open source CD/DVD/BD burning application for Microsoft Windows. cdrtfe is a win32 frontend for the cdrtools (cdrecord, mkisofs, readcd, cdda2wav), Mode2CDMaker, VCDImager and other well-known tools.
You can burn data discs, Audio CDs, XCDs, (S)VCDs and DVD-Video discs. It supports creation and writing of ISO images and bootable discs. Disc images and Audio CDs can be written simultaneously to multiple writers.
cdrtfe has a multi-language interface.
cdrtfe 1.5.8 legacy Setup (for Win98/ME/2k)