Jaron wrote on 2022-12-16, 22:22:Ok, that's not Tomfoolery, that's Tom, Dick, and ALL the Janes Foolery. I mean, I can appreciate the "Well, why not?" aspect of […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2022-12-16, 21:05:
Jaron wrote on 2022-12-16, 14:37:
Win98 on a Sandy Bridge system? I'm guessing there's some driver Tomfoolery going on there.
That project has been floating around in the back of my mind for years, but has never made it much farther than that because I could just use other computers that are more suitable for 98SE... but this thread serves as a proof of concept, at least up to a 1st Gen core system on a P55 chipset. I'm not sure if a P67 would be different since I haven't looked into it in detail.
Ok, that's not Tomfoolery, that's Tom, Dick, and ALL the Janes Foolery. I mean, I can appreciate the "Well, why not?" aspect of it. But I mostly do experiments to to see if I can make a better or more convenient system, not just because I can. Consolidating retro systems to save desk and storage space is great, but only if it's still simple to use. From the look of things there, that's gone way past my level of "simple enough to use."
Dual-booting XP and 7 is a pretty simple affair since there's so much hardware overlap. And it makes a lot of sense to do since an "overkill" XP system with relatively modern hardware can also serve as a nice mainstream Win7 system if you have some titles that don't like Win10 ( like a lot of GOG versions can be ). Dualing 98 and XP isn't too bad, but it requires a little more thought and effort, and it does limit top-end XP performance. Technically, a dual XP/7 system also limits top-end Win7 performance, but I figure anything that can benefit from more than a GTX 950 or 750 Ti has no problem with Win10. My philosophy is to only make something as old as it needs to be; if a game or program can run well on a newer system, then it goes on the newer system. My XP box has a far bigger library on it because I have only a handful of games that run better on 98.
On an unrelated note, this arrived today. That means all my EAX dreams come true, right?
I agree with pretty much everything you said, which is why I haven't spent any time on the project myself. I have had enough trouble getting, for example, a Dell desktop from the early\mid 2000s that came with XP to work properly under 98SE. Chipset and storage controller drivers can be a HUGE problem especially. Some systems work without much hassle, while others are a nightmare of PnP resources being shuffled around with every reboot, not knowing if everything will work fine or if your video card, sound card or drives will suddenly be totally broken or rendered useless by some fallback compatibility mode.
I'm not a fan of all the background garbage that Windows 10\11 does, but I will say that we are truly spoiled by how modern OSes handle hardware these days. If I have to let MS spy on me in exchange for such conveniences as being able to swap an entire OS SSD to a new (and totally different) computer without any blue screens, hardware\software\driver conflicts or even OS activation issues, I will take the trade off. 🤣
EDIT: Oh, and nice card! I've never used a Prelude but I used an X-Fi XtremeMusic for years, but haven't really bothered with them for a long time now. I have several in my stockpile of cards, but I have yet to run into a situation where I needed one. So few games that I would play used any of their features. I ended up getting an Asus Xonar DX back in ~2009 I think, and I still use that in my main PC (5800X3D, X570, 3060Ti). Still saddens me that hardware accelerated sound is so thoroughly dead. Every time some promising tech pops up that claims to do what our old sound cards did (A3D, EAX, etc.) it seems to fade into obscurity. I read something not long ago about using Ray Tracing hardware for sound, but I don't think anything ever came of it. I think that is, arguably, a far better use of RT hardware than to simply make games run like garbage for improved lighting accuracy.
