Looking at Win9x the solution is simple. You can have multiple different Win9x on the same system.
Let's say you installed one with DX6. Then you switch to ms-dos mode and archive the whole windows folder to some archive, like Win98_DX6.rar.
After this you can boot up the DX6 Win again and install DX7. Then archive that to a file.

In the end, just make a boot menu where you extract the preferred win setup again and run it right after that. This can of course tweaked that you only extract if the version changes compared to the previous choice. You can also archive current version snapshots on shutdown and so on...

Wait...what? Extracting and archiving on each boot? Isn't that a bit ridiculous?

senrew wrote:

Wait...what? Extracting and archiving on each boot? Isn't that a bit ridiculous?

It's actually brilliant 😀 I was doing the same back in the day - you never know when the windows registry will fail you, so the safest bet was an archived backup 😀

Besides, on somewhat modern machines (e.g. hard drives) the whole archive+restore thing lasts a minute at most. Also, you dont do it every time - you only do it when you need a change or modification.

I see, yeah. Ok.

What about the video card shuffle? There isn't one card that will satisfy game needs from 95/96 - 2001 or so.

You could go with a Voodoo 5, although 2001 games will be stressing it. I prefer a GeForce 2 or 3 or all the way up to series 6 and perhaps a Voodoo 3 PCI to tag along.

I've found that installing anything newer than DirectX 7 on 98SE/ME with a NV card causes instability. Sometimes DirectX will not function again after you quit a game (until you reboot). For more details on my fun here look up my Homeworld thread.

I've settled on DirectX 7 being the newest I install unless I use a card other than NV.

You don't have to archive and extract. Just keep different 9x versions on different partitions and switch between them with a bootloader like Grub.

senrew wrote:

I know that DX9 breaks palette texturing, so I relegate any games that require that to my XP machine and leave it at that.

It's hard to keep track of all these things. I might have thought those were video card problems and not DirectX problems.

Once you've "relegated" the games in question, do you ever actually play them..?

Hrm, dosrar sfx would indeed be a very interesting solution. I was thinking more hotswap HD bay... but that could be very interesting indeed. I will have to give a go at that. 😁

as for GRUB, I've experienced it, and several others have lately, of it corrupting installations. I don't trust it anymore, there is some serious bug in it somewhere.

GRUB? I've used that for ages without any problems. I used to keep a Linux partition around for that purpose, but I switched to GRUB4DOS a while back.

There are just two important things to keep in mind: Windows 9x can only boot from an active primary partition, and whichever partition it boots from is going to be identified by Windows as drive C. Accordingly, you have to be careful how you partition your drive and where you install everything.

For instance, you could have two primary partitions, each with a different Win9x installation, and an extended partition containing one logical partition. The partition you select to boot using GRUB will be drive C, the logical partition will always be drive D, and the inactive Windows partition will be drive E.

EDIT: To be clear, you can in fact toss GRUB entirely in this situation: all you need is FDISK or a suitable alternative (Norton GDISK is pretty handy) to switch which partition is active, and that's the partition that will boot.

Jorpho wrote:

senrew wrote:

I know that DX9 breaks palette texturing, so I relegate any games that require that to my XP machine and leave it at that.

It's hard to keep track of all these things. I might have thought those were video card problems and not DirectX problems.

Once you've "relegated" the games in question, do you ever actually play them..?

Heh, yeah, they get played. Just tried installing Jedi Academy on my p3-933 with a Radeon 9700 Pro. The game *will* run just fine on there, but right after install it asked me to install Directx 9.0c....fuuuuck that. Any games that require dx9 I move straight over to my XP machine.

My issue is with this particular p3 machine. It's a VIA Apollo133 chipset, and runs just fine so far, except with certain games. They do range from early win95 games up through roughly 2000 or so date wise, and while some work just fine, others don't. I don't remember if I installed any specific dx versions. I did a clean win98se install and then added the 2.1 pack. I don't know what version comes stock with 98se or if the unofficial sp adds anything newer, but if it does, that's what I've got on there now.

I'm really tempted to build up a p2-400 or 450 machine and peg it at late 98-early 99 for games.

If I had the inclination, I'd go through all the gaming mags and build up a holiday machine for each year based on their ultimate game machine articles and just not play anything but games from that particular year. Not sure the wife will stay married to me if I fill up our computer room with that much crap. She is thinking about having me build a machine for her to play Guild Wars 2 with some people from work though...maybe I can slip in another machine or two...

senrew wrote:

If I had the inclination, I'd go through all the gaming mags and build up a holiday machine for each year based on their ultimate game machine articles and just not play anything but games from that particular year.

I guess what puzzles me is that you not only have so many games that you want to play badly enough that you would go through that much trouble for them, but that you actually have time to play that many games.

This is more of a long term hobby for me. I get maybe a few hours a week tops to just sit down and really play a game.

Anything with a story, I'm under the restriction of only playing it with the wife with me as she says it's like watching a movie for her, so that rules out playing adventure or most RPG games by myself.

I just finished Quake II for the first time ever for me. That feels like a big accomplishment.

Honestly, it almost feels like just getting the damn machines to actually play the games I want is more of the game than the games themselves sometimes. I'll install the game, run it once just to make sure it'll actually play, maybe get through the first mission or to the first save point, then shelve it till I have time to go back to it. I like opening up the folder on the desktop I have with all the shortcuts to the games ready to go. I know all I have to do is grab the CD or whatnot off the shelf and dig into it. That's pretty much been my basis for all the frustrations. I have two sections on the shelf; one for games that ran just fine, one for games I have to go back and figure out why they crashed to the desktop when they started or whatever it was.

RoyBatty wrote:

as for GRUB, I've experienced it, and several others have lately, of it corrupting installations. I don't trust it anymore, there is some serious bug in it somewhere.

Mmm, after 10 years of using GRUB with everything from DOS up to linux/OS X, I have yet to see the corruption you state. Even if it gets corrupt via 3rd party software (e.g. re-installation) or some OS junk/corrupt data, it can be recovered in seconds. 😀

elfuego wrote:

it can be recovered in seconds.

Unless you lose the ability to boot from your hard drive entirely and don't have any boot floppies (or CDs) on hand.

Jorpho wrote:

elfuego wrote:

it can be recovered in seconds.

Unless you lose the ability to boot from your hard drive entirely and don't have any boot floppies (or CDs) on hand.

...and keyboard stops responding, the power runs out, UPS dies, and monitor explodes 😵

What can be done for any computer that fails to boot without any possible boot mediums? Other then removing the HDD and placing it in other bootable machine and fixing it from there (which can be done in seconds for GRUB). 😕

elfuego wrote:

What can be done for any computer that fails to boot without any possible boot mediums? Other then removing the HDD and placing it in other bootable machine and fixing it from there (which can be done in seconds for GRUB). 😕

Fixing it from there might take seconds; removing the HDD and placing it in another bootable machine does not (especially if you don't have the bootable machine handy).

I'm just saying that (in my experience, at least) recovering a corrupted GRUB is an excruciating hassle, especially since much of the time it really isn't very clear what the problem is. GRUB works great otherwise, of course.

Acronis 8 works fine with W9x so the image restore solution could work well for your needs. Install only the OS in C:, put games etc. on D. This way you only image a few hundred megs and it goes quickly. Then build as many OS configurations as you like, making an image of each and saving them on D. After that you use an Acronis boot CD to restore any OS you want.

As pointed out earlier this only takes a few minutes. It's they way I manage system backups to begin with.

As to DirectX I keep v8.0a two rigs:
W95/Virge/Voodoo1
W98se/Rendtition/Voodoo2SLI

and v9.0c on a W98se/P3-1400/V5500 'Glide Rocket'.

8.0a was the last version officially supported by W95 and so far I have not encountered Dx related problems. But 9.0c is needed for a bunch of late glide era games/apps and is pretty stable, so that goes in the most 'modern' retro rig.

tincup wrote:

8.0a was the last version officially supported by W98

I assume you mean 95.