luckybob wrote on 2024-02-04, 18:40:

I never personally used it during the time

This might be the reason you don't understand it. It was redundant between 98SE, 2000 and XP, short lived, had issues at launched both within and with it's driver support from third parties. By the time these were solved, MS axed it and people moved over to XP.

It's a little bit like Vista. I used it for a year back then right around the time W7 released on a decent for the time PC and it really wasn't a bad experience. That doesn't change the fact, that when it released, it had genuine issues so people stayed on XP and by the time the issues were fixed, W7 (which was basically Vista Service Pack 2) was already out.

Today I risked catastrophic hardware failure by shorting out a motherboard thanks to a non-standard SB-Link pinout on an ESS Solo-1 card.

Fortunately all hardware seems fine. 😅

Standard (Yamaha YMF-724)

Non-standard (Terratec ESS Solo-1):

Finally gave up trying to make my mATX SS7 K6-2 475MHz build play nice with my Sidewinder 3D Pro. Tried the hacked FSB drivers, lowering the actual FSB, different sound cards, and different CPUs. Basically, ruled everything other than the mobo out. I really want a good machine to play Descent 2 on, so kind of a deal-breaker.

So, new plan! Going to build a Baby-AT Pentium system for the purpose. I'm deciding between a ASUS P/I-P55T2P4 or a MSI MS-5129. I don't have a COAST module for the ASUS board, and it's a rev 2.1, which as far as I can tell doesn't support voltages for MMX cpus. So, probably going with the MSI board, which also has onboard USB.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-04, 19:20:

Today I risked catastrophic hardware failure by shorting out a motherboard thanks to a non-standard SB-Link pinout on an ESS Solo-1 card.

Fortunately all hardware seems fine. 😅

How can they even call it SB-LINK with a different pinpoint!

This reminds me of unkeyed horizonal 4-pin USB headers. If you plug it in the wrong way around, the motherboard shorts to ground and powers off instantly.

luckybob wrote on 2024-02-04, 18:40:

I never understood the ill will that ME got. As I recall, the people that had an issue at the time were people that were trying to run it on sub-par systems. I never personally used it during the time, as 98 worked just fine, and i saw no reason to upgrade. I stayed with 98 until games started to "require" XP.

There are also other subtle differences to consider. I made a short list of those I encountered here:

Unique problems of Windows ME as an alternative to Windows 98

I had a myriad of problems with Windows Mistake Edition even though my machine was up to the standards and running 98 like a champion. I eventually changed to Windows 2000

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-02-04, 19:47:

luckybob wrote on 2024-02-04, 18:40:

I never understood the ill will that ME got. As I recall, the people that had an issue at the time were people that were trying to run it on sub-par systems. I never personally used it during the time, as 98 worked just fine, and i saw no reason to upgrade. I stayed with 98 until games started to "require" XP.

There are also other subtle differences to consider. I made a short list of those I encountered here:

Unique problems of Windows ME as an alternative to Windows 98

Fair enough on all points, what operating system doesnt have its own unique bugs and whatnot. but DOS was effectively dead by the time 98 came out. At least for the unwashed masses. I could make counterpoints to the issues bring up, but ME was the transition point where the common rabble were in control. Microsoft needed to protect the computer from the user now. The transition to the HAL in Win2k was just such an step. And it was really needed. 9x crashed when you looked at it funny. 2000 was really stable. (thanks to NT, but that's for another time)

Provided your hardware was designed with ME in mind, you were likely to have an okay experience. I had some friends/schoolmates with it, and the ones that upgraded had issues. The ones that bought systems with ME pre installed had few issues. Ironically, it was VERY VERY much a deja vu situation when Vista rolled its fat bloated ass out onto the scene. Vista is the reason I will never willingly give M$ another dime so long as i draw breath.

I didn't have any major problems with Windows ME when it came with my computer, other than the occasional blue screen, but this wasn't unusual for the time. This was also on a Pentium 4, which tended to be a relatively solid and stable platform anyways.

I've been using WinME on some of my retro rigs for a few years now, and haven't encountered any major issues. I do turn off System Restore right after installing the OS, so there's that.

BTW, one minor advantage of WinME over Win98SE is the ability to turn off mouse acceleration:

This is very useful to me because I like to hook up a modern USB gaming mouse to my retro PCs, if they support USB 2.0. Currently using a Logitech G403 HERO for that purpose, and it works great with the acceleration turned off.

Took the Quadro FX 5600 out of the P4 and installed the GTX 580. one good thing is that its smaller so its fits the case better.
Originally it got 25022 points, then I updated the driver and it got the 25309 . I havent had time to test games with the new driver yet, but Sanity had graphical glitches in cutscenes, so I hope that goes away. Also X 2 Wolverine had bad framerates in certain sections. Hoping to test it more when I get home, also i want to take it out and apply new thermal paste to it

I remember upgrading my 9800 GT to a 560 Ti at the time, and it was an enormous upgrade. The GTX 580 should really stomp some frames.

One thing I hate and I got rid of it in most games when I changed the driver on the FX 5600 is when scrolling horizontally in games, and getting that slight jitter, but its smooth when moving vertically. I was getting that a bit in Medal of Honor with the new card but the older driver. Need to test out how the new driver handles it

Today I dug out my old Mac Mini G4 to install & setup some games and turn it into a Retro Gaming Mac. The Mini was already running Mac OS 9 (from the modified install disc image) and I'm going to try and stick solely to this OS and games that require Mac OS 9 or earlier and resist the urge to dual boot with Mac OS X.

I contemplated upgrading the internal HDD for more storage, but in the end I just connected a 250GB USB external drive to store everything, which should be more than enough space for my needs.

I don't want to bother with actual discs either, so I'm using disc images with the Virtual CD/DVD Utility & Roxio Toast for a couple of disc images that it doesn't like.

Additionally I'm having to deal with the classic Mac OS file type association issues - thankfully there are free utilities to ease this pain somewhat.

Once everything is setup and installed, I'll then start delving into automating things a bit with Applescript game launchers to mount disc images, change resolution & color depth and launch games etc.

Restoring some "twin SiS(ters)" - PCChips M810LR fun.

Also, made a tower of power.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-02-06, 13:26:

Also, made a tower of power.

I like that green / black tower case with the all-seeing eye in the middle.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-02-06, 13:26:

Also, made a tower of power.

It's cool, I would advise additional support though, stacks over 2 high get wobbly, and you don't want them falling over if you get a minor earth tremor or they start digging up the road outside.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-02-06, 13:26:

Also, made a tower of power.

Basically you are He-Man of the Retrorealm? Who is Skeletor, I wonder 😀

At my local second-hand shop, I found (but didn't buy) a compete set of Novell NetWare 2 or 3 (didn't look in details). I don't care about it but it baffles me that these things end up there.

At one point Novell seemed to be shipping a set of disks per license, so you'd see IT closets stacked with these in the 90s, then later, stacked in the hallways or free pile at colleges hoping they'd disappear. Anyway, lots of them kicking round in the day, ppl may have grabbed a couple of boxes from work or school for when they ran out of disks, but being near end of 5.25 era, maybe went un-reused, Novell in particular were slow in adopting the next disk format, there were almost street parties when they shipped on 1.44, but their star was in decline by then.

I still remember that when I started working in IT, the sysadmins had netware 4.11 servers and that an upgrade to Netware 5 was a huge stress for them. No snapshots at the time and it was the company's main file server 😀