Disruptor wrote on 2022-09-30, 17:24:

256 MB is barely enough for the last updates in Windows 2000.
I don't recommend to use less than 512 MB in XP at all.

+1

I think the same. Our family's Pentium III 733MHz was quickly upgraded to 768 MB after upgrading from 98SE to XP..
And that was before SP2 was released.
The PC the was used for office use, it was no hot-rod PC.

Seriously people, please don't make the mistake that you equal period-correctness of XTs and Windows PCs.

DOS applications usually do either fit in memory or do not.
DOS doesn't use swapfiles (unless you use an LIMulator with HDD support).
But Windows does! Massively. Since Windows 3.0, at least.

So please choose RAM wisely according to your PC's and application's actual needs, not according to period-correctness. Leave a headroom, also.

Just remember MS Vista. The official specifications were nowhere realistic. Way too low!
Vista was a complex, powerful OS in need for powerful hardware.
Just like OS/2 Warp was in the 1990s!

Someone who lives in the future, has no experience and believes the official story
will nothing but be disappointed, if he/she/they will go the period-correct way.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-09-30, 13:00:

I had a roommate running an early 233mhz PII , he had to max out ram but it worked

Can confirm, I was also running XP with a P2 233mhz and it works. Though I don't remember if it had 128mb or 256mb ram. And gaming was slow for the most part.

Bendejo wrote on 2022-10-01, 05:39:

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-09-30, 13:00:

I had a roommate running an early 233mhz PII , he had to max out ram but it worked

Can confirm, I was also running XP with a P2 233mhz and it works. Though I don't remember if it had 128mb or 256mb ram. And gaming was slow for the most part.

May I join? I don't mean to annoy anybody (I'm posting a bit too often maybe), but..

My first XP machine was a Pentium 166 MMX with 64 MB RAM, an old Compaq I think.
If it wasn't for the SCSI drive, it woukd have been unusable slow.

However, there's something I feel that I must mention.
Multitasking was faster than on 98SE with same hardware. Despite the low amount of RAM.
At the time, I got SNES 9x running on this PC with XP.
With Windows 98SE, it did not work. Same goes for several MZ-700 emulators.
I remember MZ700WIN in particular displaying characters mirrored etc, if it ran at all.
These emulators just didn't properly run with Windows 98SE, on said PC.

I think that's something remarkable.
Windows XP was dreadful slow on underpowered hardware, but it kept running.
With Windows 98SE on the otherhand, I had seen freezes, slowdowns and bluscreens.

So the underlying Windows NT 5 architecture was still worth it, despite the resource issues.

This is unrelated but:
So I need to hard reset windows 98se like 5 times to progress through the driver update process after reboot to be able to go through the dialogs with either the mouse or the keyboard.
I tried to launch ms-dos version of memtest86+ to verify the mems, but it would just never start up, I can try to write the usb image/iso(as long as it's a hybrid iso it will work) variant and try a couple of memtest86+'ses versions in place of a system image as I need to re-install a system for a bios update onto the sdcard anyway.

/quote

This really sounds like bad or mis-seated ram. Or a dead 2032 battery, though that is usually on older boards than this. Try one stick at a time, different combinations, etc.

Cobra42898 wrote on 2022-10-01, 13:06:

This is unrelated but: So I need to hard reset windows 98se like 5 times to progress through the driver update process after reb […]
Show full quote

This is unrelated but:
So I need to hard reset windows 98se like 5 times to progress through the driver update process after reboot to be able to go through the dialogs with either the mouse or the keyboard.
I tried to launch ms-dos version of memtest86+ to verify the mems, but it would just never start up, I can try to write the usb image/iso(as long as it's a hybrid iso it will work) variant and try a couple of memtest86+'ses versions in place of a system image as I need to re-install a system for a bios update onto the sdcard anyway.

/quote

This really sounds like bad or mis-seated ram. Or a dead 2032 battery, though that is usually on older boards than this. Try one stick at a time, different combinations, etc.

I passed memtest; Yes the 2032 battery is dead but when it has constant AC power nothing gets lost, it can still hold settings somehow for sometime;

I need to hard restart, because the chipset driver removes the usb controller driver and puts it's own, this also kicks off the usb keyboard+mouse, so until windows 98 se shows the message that it's recognizing a USB mouse/keyboard, when that happens I either get a working KB/Mouse or need to hard reboot to get it working;
Like the way I see the process:
Windows 98 se will find one device, and either find the drivers right away and get onto the next;
Or ask me "so where are the drivers for it" (and it doesn't try to look for them first in C:/Windows);
And when I reset it goes over the same devices but in a different order so I am able to maybe get the USB mouse/keyboard detected or the USB controller on one of the reboots first thing as it boots up;

It has nothing to do with the ram, but with the fact it can no longer use the old drivers for USB and needs to go through it's ritual of detecting new devices and stalling if it can't find a driver for one;

Jo22 wrote on 2022-10-01, 03:33:

So please choose RAM wisely according to your PC's and application's actual needs, not according to period-correctness. Leave a headroom, also.

Seconded. IMO period correctness is great for collecting but not quite so for using.

I'd bet the majority of VOGONS users have at least one Win98SE build for Win9x games but I don't think anyone would actually enjoy playing (not benchmarking) Win9x games on a 80486DX2-66; even a Pentium III Katmai cannot guarantee running any Win98SE game to its full potential.