Darkman wrote:

the only reason ME exists is due to the cancellation of Neptune

ME was in gestation many many months before Neptune, starting development almost immediately after Win98SE

leileilol wrote:

Darkman wrote:

the only reason ME exists is due to the cancellation of Neptune

ME was in gestation many many months before Neptune, starting development almost immediately after Win98SE

you sure? I always thought ME was rushed out due to Neptune going into development hell.

All this talk about 98se being sluggish on Pentiums really has me puzzled.

I've been using a 486 DX4 100MHz w/ 16mb ram with Win98se for DOS gaming, web browsing in Windows, writing MIDI music in Windows, and more.

- DOS games are lightning fast - I don't see how the overhead from Windows is affecting the game's frame rate at all. (Duke3D comes to mind. It smokes on that machine!) Maybe the next time I have the machine hooked up I should restart in pure DOS and see if Duke3D runs any better?

- Using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 to write MIDI music is also lightning fast and you really forget you're using a 486.

- The only thing that's nearly unbearable is using the web, but that shouldn't be a surprise considering the awful bloated state of the modern web. I can log in to Gmail in Firefox 2 which does take a few minutes, but I think popping-in some more ram would make the web much faster on this machine.

Overall, the Windows shell is totally usable on this 486. Maybe we all got a little too used to Win98 being so lightning fast on our Pentium 3's back in the day that we can never go back to anything less? I can tell you that if I build another high-end 486, I wouldn't hesitate to use Win98se again. I consider 98se to be the ultimate DOS-based OS and I will be using it on any vintage boxes I build. Next I'd like to try it on my 486 DX2-66 and see how it holds up.

And regarding 95 vs. 98, I tried using 95 on my Pentium for a while and I got annoyed with how much less compatibility there is for drivers and applications on Win95. There is a lot of hardware that supports 98 and not 95. I was hell bent on sticking with 95 for a while because I was trying to make it just like my original Pentium, but I gave in and upgraded to 98. That machine is a Pentium 166 w/ 32mb ram and 98 runs great. 😎

Got a phone that can take videos? Take some recordings of this "lightning fast" Windows 98 and upload it on YT. I think this is a very subjective matter. I find everything slow, Core i7 with SSD, still not fast enough. If I have to wait, it's too slow 😀

You all talk about Win98SE, but what about the Win98 First Encounter.?
Is Win98 FE as fast as win98 OSR2.x ?
And what about OSR2.0 revB compared to the revC OSR2.5 ??

First Encounter 🤣. Someone's played a little too much Serious Sam 🤣

JaNoZ wrote:

And what about OSR2.0 revB compared to the revC OSR2.5 ??

I did not do a direct comparison of Win95b vs Win95c, but the 0.2 fps gain in GLQuake with Win95c over Win98SE-Lite was enough to encourage me to stick with Win95c over Win98SE on my hyper-486's. Even using Win98Lite does not bring back the look and feel of Win95c when the unofficial service pack is installed. The successful installation of USB for mass storage devices in Win95c killed the need for Win98SE.

My only real complaint with Win95c and WinNT4 at this point is the inability to click on an open taskbar item and have the window minimise. It is a bit more effort to move the mouse to the top right of the screen each time to hit the window minimise button. Perhaps someone knows a fix to implement this feature, that is, without installing IE4's web integration.

win95 does feel much quicker on a p1 compared to 98se. I prefer 98se because it seems far more stable and the hardware support is nicer.

With almost every old harddisk win95 runs fine while 98se feels much better when i use the ``newer`` ide drives (80gb and above 7200rpm drives).

My 233mmx runs 98se very nice and quick enough for me, but the k6-3 and p3 system do it certainly better and are the systems of choice for this os to make it run fast.

It is the same thing for xp: runs very usable on a p3 but it flies on a fast p4 or athlon xp (and PERFECT on a athlon64 or core2duo).

meljor wrote:

win95 does feel much quicker on a p1 compared to 98se. I prefer 98se because it seems far more stable and the hardware support is nicer.

^^ That is EXACTLY how I see it 😀

I use 98SE for pretty much everything because it makes it easier to compare results. Also, I got my automated installation CD, which makes my life easier.

My original plan was:

486 dx4 100 : pure dos
p75 : win 3.11
mmx : win95
k6 : win98se
p3 : win2000
p3 tualatin : millenium
Athlon xp : windows xp

Now, i don`t have a use for the 486 and p75 as they are to slow for my needs (will play with them for fun). Athlon does run xp and the rest just all run 98se as it is the most useful os for those systems and old games.

Maybe i will do dualboots or build one pc with every os on it but for now they keep me pretty busy with 98se. I also like to use 3dfx cards in every system and think that drivers work best in 98 as well.

chinny22 wrote:

Still, WinME needlessly took a lot of the advanced features from power users, backward compatibility wasn't quite as good as 98 or 95 and I remember at least initially WinMe had faster boot times but was slower once in I only boot once a day so would prefer the other way round thanks!

I think 98SE got the balance just about right. if not using some version of Windows lite (which is cheating in my book, but very nice)

Which 9x OS do you think is best?

[ROTT] IanPaulFreeley wrote:

All this talk about 98se being sluggish on Pentiums really has me puzzled. […]
Show full quote

All this talk about 98se being sluggish on Pentiums really has me puzzled.

I've been using a 486 DX4 100MHz w/ 16mb ram with Win98se for DOS gaming, web browsing in Windows, writing MIDI music in Windows, and more.

- DOS games are lightning fast - I don't see how the overhead from Windows is affecting the game's frame rate at all. (Duke3D comes to mind. It smokes on that machine!) Maybe the next time I have the machine hooked up I should restart in pure DOS and see if Duke3D runs any better?

- Using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 to write MIDI music is also lightning fast and you really forget you're using a 486.

- The only thing that's nearly unbearable is using the web, but that shouldn't be a surprise considering the awful bloated state of the modern web. I can log in to Gmail in Firefox 2 which does take a few minutes, but I think popping-in some more ram would make the web much faster on this machine.

Overall, the Windows shell is totally usable on this 486. Maybe we all got a little too used to Win98 being so lightning fast on our Pentium 3's back in the day that we can never go back to anything less? I can tell you that if I build another high-end 486, I wouldn't hesitate to use Win98se again. I consider 98se to be the ultimate DOS-based OS and I will be using it on any vintage boxes I build. Next I'd like to try it on my 486 DX2-66 and see how it holds up.

And regarding 95 vs. 98, I tried using 95 on my Pentium for a while and I got annoyed with how much less compatibility there is for drivers and applications on Win95. There is a lot of hardware that supports 98 and not 95. I was hell bent on sticking with 95 for a while because I was trying to make it just like my original Pentium, but I gave in and upgraded to 98. That machine is a Pentium 166 w/ 32mb ram and 98 runs great. 😎

I'd like to see how that machine performs. Do you have a way of capturing footage from it?

[ROTT] IanPaulFreeley wrote:

I've been using a 486 DX4 100MHz w/ 16mb ram with Win98se for DOS gaming, web browsing in Windows, writing MIDI music in Windows, and more.

- DOS games are lightning fast - I don't see how the overhead from Windows is affecting the game's frame rate at all. (Duke3D comes to mind. It smokes on that machine!) Maybe the next time I have the machine hooked up I should restart in pure DOS and see if Duke3D runs any better?

- Using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 to write MIDI music is also lightning fast and you really forget you're using a 486.

I have this 486 VLB, now equipped with a Cx5x86-100MHz. Also with 16MB (60ns), but with a fresh install of Windows 95 (4.00.950B), using video mode 1024x768x8.
The idea was to run TIE fighter floppy from within Windows 95, as to avoid EMM386. Yet this did not work good enough as I noticed a few sound hickups, about every 5 to 10 seconds.
My latest conclusion: Run demanding games, such as 3D games, from the DOS prompt instead.
Winplay3 needs Frequency set to half to play a 128kbps MP3. Winamp 2.05 just manages a 128kbps MP3 at full quality, but only by buffering the entire MP3 in memory. In comparison: MPXplay in DOS properly plays a 256kbps MP3, when set to buffer the entire file.
Tom's Windows Midi player runs smooth, as long as you don't start another windows program while playing.

gerwin wrote:

Run demanding games, such as 3D games, from the DOS prompt instead.

What are some demanding 3D games containing a timedemo that can be run on a 486 to really stress it out?

gerwin wrote:

Winplay3 needs Frequency set to half to play a 128kbps MP3. Winamp 2.05 just manages a 128kbps MP3 at full quality, but only by buffering the entire MP3 in memory. In comparison: MPXplay in DOS properly plays a 256kbps MP3, when set to buffer the entire file.
Tom's Windows Midi player runs smooth, as long as you don't start another windows program while playing.

What is the CPU load when using Winamp? I am surprised you needed to buffer the whole file. Did you see this post? Post your 486 Winamp benchmarks

In that post, I demonstrate that I can use a Cyrix 5x86-100 in Windows NT to play a 128 kbps mp3 at full quality while only using about 77% of the CPU.

Are you using the waveout or directsound out? What are your Cyrix CPU settings? You really need to enable FP_FAST to get a huge boost in FPU performance. I don't really know why Cyrix didn't have this setting on by default; I have never had a problem with it.

feipoa wrote:

What are some demanding 3D games containing a timedemo that can be run on a 486 to really stress it out?

Cannot find the perfect solution for this. A good 486 owns 320x200x8, but still fails to give pleasant framerates in 640x400x8 (4x larger).

TIE fighter CD in 640x400 runs surprisingly well. Quake is made for pentiums, not for 486s. PC Player bench scores way to low on 486s, strangely this is also true in VGAmode.
Doom 'MBF' has some nice 640x400 options, and the timedemo is still functional. It even calculates realtics to fps. I modified the source, it can now run in hires without LFB. It would be nice to add an ingame FPS counter.

The Video Card test in Computer Gaming World no. 125 Dec 1994 refers to some 486 benchmarks that may be interesting.

feipoa wrote:

What is the CPU load when using Winamp? I am surprised you needed to buffer the whole file. Did you see this post? Post your 486 Winamp benchmarks

Where is the CPU load in windows 95? The task manager is much simpler compared to NT.
I saw that post yes, that is why I tried Winamp v2.05 today.

Indeed a 128kbps MP3 also works with a 1024kB buffer. Maybe it is because I installed the proper Windows IDE driver today. Too bad the IDE driver breaks "Exit to Dos".

feipoa wrote:

In that post, I demonstrate that I can use a Cyrix 5x86-100 in Windows NT to play a 128 kbps mp3 at full quality while only using about 77% of the CPU.
Are you using the waveout or directsound out? What are your Cyrix CPU settings? You really need to enable FP_FAST to get a huge boost in FPU performance. I don't really know why Cyrix didn't have this setting on by default; I have never had a problem with it.

Direct-X is not installed. I don't really feel like installing much in windows, the OS runs a little too sluggish on this 486 to work comfortably, In my spoiled opinion. Maybe it would benefit from a better GUI accelerator card.
Cyrix settings are: LSSER (0=enabled) + FP_FAST + BTB, as per your suggestions written in past topics.
Benchmarks here. This is with a motherboard from 1994, not one of those fancy 1996 PCI boards.

Holering wrote:

I think it's BS WinME was tossed so quickly. Windows ME is proof that you can make a next generation OS without removing legacy compatibility, and if it was bad for people (for whatever reason) there was still room to make something similar and better. When microsoft added legacy Microsoft GM Synth and SBPro to Directx, WDM audio drivers had perfect sound for all DOS games; made a huge difference for old cards like the ESS solo which only had FM synth normally. It was very upsetting for me to deal with 2000 and XP removing all DOS support, and even decent Windows 95 compatibility (they add Windows XP mode to Windows 7 but they never added DOS support to XP in the same way. What is up with that?).

How is ME next generation? Or do you just mean "next generation of Windows 9x" instead Next-Gen?
It wasn't W2k to remove DOS support, W2k belongs to the Windows NT line which never head special DOS support. W2k just added a lot of useful stuff to NT 4.0 like USB, Direct3D, a lot of hot-pluggin/less rebooting, and a GUI that looks like ME. W2K = NT 5.0, XP = NT 5.1.

gerwin wrote:

Quake is made for pentiums, not for 486s.

I used to think that way until I tried a Voodoo3 with GLQuake. Using an AMD X5-160 and a Voodoo3, I could get 27.5 FPS in GLQuake at 640x480 with 16-bit colour. Enabling sound reduces the framerate to 24.5 fps, which is very playable. A Cyrix 5x86-133/4x scores only 0.1 fps better. I do have some tricks up my sleeve to get to 30 fps in GLQuake on a 486 using specific hardware combinations.

Even using a Cyrix 5x86-100, I could get 19.2 FPS with sound on in GLQuake at 640x480x16-bit.

Could you provide more details on your DOOM MBF timedemo at 640x400? I think I'd like to experiment with this. I do not even know how to change the resolution in Doom.

gerwin wrote:

Where is the CPU load in windows 95? The task manager is much simpler compared to NT.

Windows 95 comes with "System Monitor". It is an option to install when you are installing Windows 95. You can also add it later. It looks like this, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9 … tem_Monitor.png
You can change the chart to view just numerical digits. There is another program called Wintop, which comes with the Win95 unofficial service pack, you can can add it yourself. It looks a little like the Windows NT Task Manager. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9 … tem_Monitor.png

Perhaps you can use Wintop to share your CPU consumption in Winamp 2.05.

gerwin wrote:

Cyrix settings are: LSSER (0=enabled) + FP_FAST + BTB

You should also enable RSTK. I sorta recall RSTK having more impact when combined with BTB, however RSTK had limited benefit on its own. All the motherboards I tested also work with BWRT enabled.

gerwin wrote:

Direct-X is not installed. I don't really feel like installing much in windows, the OS runs a little too sluggish on this 486 to work comfortably, In my spoiled opinion.

I personally like to setup my cased system with all or most of the programs I used back when the system was mainstream. That way when I power it up, I really feel like I went back to 1996. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time, especially when I setup multiple operating systems on one machine.

It was interesting to note on my screenshops with Winamp and the Task Manager that using the Direct-X driver resulted in flatter CPU consumption cycles.

Holering wrote:

chinny22 wrote:

Still, WinME needlessly took a lot of the advanced features from power users, backward compatibility wasn't quite as good as 98 or 95 and I remember at least initially WinMe had faster boot times but was slower once in I only boot once a day so would prefer the other way round thanks!

I think 98SE got the balance just about right. if not using some version of Windows lite (which is cheating in my book, but very nice)

Which 9x OS do you think is best?

Plain old Win98SE, It just works. I'm not concerned with better GUI/hardware support of WinME. If I was trying to squeeze performance out of it I would go 98SE lite, but I like the feel of the full OS

gerwin wrote:

A good 486 owns 320x200x8

It seems this is not true. Doom MBF in 320x200, without borders and HUD is taxing enough on the Cx5x85-100. It won't give a steady 35 FPS. (Doom is capped at 35 FPS.) Page-flipping and/or Wait for Vertical retrace makes it worse.

feipoa wrote:

I used to think that way until I tried a Voodoo3 with GLQuake.

Does that not prove the same point, OpenGL is not for mainstream 486's either. Only for select 1996 PCI boards.
Maybe the rendering engine is pentium instruction dependant, and when rendered by OpenGL these instructions matter less?

feipoa wrote:

Could you provide more details on your DOOM MBF timedemo at 640x400? I think I'd like to experiment with this. I do not even know how to change the resolution in Doom.

Vanilla Doom is just 320x200. It is only the source ports that introduced 640x400 etc. AFAIK only the MBF source port retains the timedemo functionality in DOS, combined with 640x400: It is like the TIE Fighter collectors CD is to TIE fighter floppy. 😀
I send you a PM with my maintained MBF executable. I will share this small update in the forums later.

feipoa wrote:

Perhaps you can use Wintop to share your CPU consumption in Winamp 2.05.

Will try, but it will have to wait a little while.

feipoa wrote:

You should also enable RSTK.

Will try, but I already discarded many other register combinations that gave problems.

For SiS 496/497 boards from 1995-1997. There were quite a few varieties of boards. Every SiS 496/497 board I've tried and read about seems to work with Voodoo3's.