There is? I thought the RAM slot under the keyboard was the same one as under the laptop itself.

Windows ME gets funky if you go past 1GB, doesn't it?

Yeah, same as with 98SE IIRC.

notsofossil wrote:

There is? I thought the RAM slot under the keyboard was the same one as under the laptop itself.

Windows ME gets funky if you go past 1GB, doesn't it?

as with 98SE theres patch for ME that would allow it to works with 2GB RAM.
If you're using OEM version of winME that version may already include the patch,
I do remember some OEM did patch the win ME installation .CAB files so it would use the patched kernel that optimized for specific computer configuration instead,
which usually fix some issues that would appear if it was installed with retail winME installation CD instead.

All this talk of Windows ME is making me feel nostalgic. Once I finish my 486 build I might load ME and its tweaks on another SD card in my Pentium III machine.

I really like ME, it's fits the time frame of my interest in Windows machines pretty well(Y2K-ish), it's stable(far more so than 95 or 98, at least on the systems I have in on(correct era)), has good in built driver support for correct era builds and has USB drive support, very convenient. I have it on a Celeron 466 MHz, K6-2 450 & 2 Cyrix MII machines, the lack of DOS doesn't bother me as I have a 386,486 and K5 166 for that, never found a DOS program I want to run that they cant handle easily.
One other thing I will say is that ME handles hardware changes far better than 98SE, I have swapped video cards dozens of times in my ME machines without issue, first swap or 2 in 98 and it's a ruin.

Here's a problem that comes to mind:

Win ME ships with DirectX 7.1 and you're supposed to use WDM drivers with it. WDM drivers for old sound cards often have buggy 3D audio. Early WDM drivers were just not great. Aureal cards don't even have WDM drivers that are usable. Using VXD sound card drivers beyond DirectX 7.0a can cause freezes with some games.

In a case like that, clearly Windows 98SE fits that need better.

I'm not saying Windows ME is better than 98SE, they just fit different needs.

swaaye wrote:

Here's a problem that comes to mind:

Win ME ships with DirectX 7.1 and you're supposed to use WDM drivers with it. WDM drivers for old sound cards often have buggy 3D audio. Early WDM drivers were just not great. Aureal cards don't even have WDM drivers that are usable. Using VXD sound card drivers beyond DirectX 7.0a can cause freezes with some games.

Swaaye,

You do bring up a valid point. I will say though that, after tweaking the resources on my AWE64, my games still ran perfectly fine on the WDM drivers for the card. Fortunately, I feel the Creative drivers were more mature than say Aureal drivers were at the time.

At any rate, YMMV.

mattrock1988 wrote:

I feel the Creative drivers were more mature at that point than say Aureal drivers were at the time.

Windows ME release date - September 14, 2000
Aureal Defunct - September 21, 2000

It could be the reason. Thanks to Creative...

Well... yeah... Creative pulled a real shit move suing Aureal.

Aside from Microsoft's effort to kill DOS which is quite evident from this version, as a Win9x based OS, it is quite solid. Even more stable than Windows 98, more so in newer systems. And it boots quite fast too.

I didn't like the default desktop icons set, though. (Which can be changed, btw.)

Why is it automatically an "effort to kill", when something is old and obsolete?

I understand why /we/ like DOS, but really by 2000 its time was up.

Well, in this case it seemed a very artificial move to block the pure DOS mode, given that it was still there under the hood. Nothing really changed, except the ability to easily set BootGUI=0. So the question is - why?

dr_st wrote:

Well, in this case it seemed a very artificial move to block the pure DOS mode, given that it was still there under the hood. Nothing really changed, except the ability to easily set BootGUI=0. So the question is - why?

One less feature to certify, test, and provide support for.

In theory, this is true, but in that specific case? Certification was not a topic back then, testing - what's there to test that hasn't already been tested? Support may be the only thing.

dr_st wrote:

Well, in this case it seemed a very artificial move to block the pure DOS mode, given that it was still there under the hood. Nothing really changed, except the ability to easily set BootGUI=0. So the question is - why?

If I draw my own conclusions:

Microsoft already wanted to move on from DOS back in 1987, when OS/2 was supposed to be the "follow up" of DOS. They even ran advertising campaigns stating that "DOS is dead".
With DOS, Microsoft had competitors in the market (most notably DR-DOS) which potentially hurt their sales.
That is why Microsoft eventually released MS-DOS 5.0 & 6.0 (up to 6.22), even though the original intention was to stop at version 4.0.

However, I think with the release of Windows 95 & then Windows 98, Microsoft was finally able to steer developers towards writing software & games for the Windows platform, but many users (mostly businesses) still stuck to their old DOS based software (since it was very costly for small to medium businesses to upgrade their entire software & hardware base to run on Windows in just one go).

I think ME was just supposed to be "stop gap" until Windows XP was ready for release, but in my opinion, they could just as well have left it.

jesolo wrote:

If I draw my own conclusions: […]
Show full quote

dr_st wrote:

Well, in this case it seemed a very artificial move to block the pure DOS mode, given that it was still there under the hood. Nothing really changed, except the ability to easily set BootGUI=0. So the question is - why?

If I draw my own conclusions:

Microsoft already wanted to move on from DOS back in 1987, when OS/2 was supposed to be the "follow up" of DOS. They even ran advertising campaigns stating that "DOS is dead".
With DOS, Microsoft had competitors in the market (most notably DR-DOS) which potentially hurt their sales.
That is why Microsoft eventually released MS-DOS 5.0 & 6.0 (up to 6.22), even though the original intention was to stop at version 4.0.

However, I think with the release of Windows 95 & then Windows 98, Microsoft was finally able to steer developers towards writing software & games for the Windows platform, but many users (mostly businesses) still stuck to their old DOS based software (since it was very costly for small to medium businesses to upgrade their entire software & hardware base to run on Windows in just one go).

I think ME was just supposed to be "stop gap" until Windows XP was ready for release, but in my opinion, they could just as well have left it.

OS/2 was a IBM OS not Microsoft.
ME made a lot of sense at the time, it offered a lot of Windows 2000's features but was far more compatible with win 9x software and the hardware that was around at the time. 2k was great, but drivers were a problem and software compatibility took a good while to come together for NT based OS's for the home user.

My ME story:

Back when the first Beta release of ME happened I did the switch and ran it on all of my personal computers, it was buggy, but I think I did it to try and get out of my dos habits, ofcourse in doing so I found it to be a bit of a disaster but I stuck with it, even installed the full retail version when it came out, even tho I installed 98se for everyone els I stuck with ME right up to XP was released, because I never really cared for it, it wasnt great and I never had much fondness for it, and I left it behind.

Its been a long time and I found that I enjoy building and experimenting with older computers far more than newer ones, I revisited ME after installing 98Se on most of my retro rigs, and I must say, after installing the unofficial service pack , it is ROCK solid, detects my hardware better, has less driver problems, and runs usb better, it is by far better in my eyes than 98se , I have no idea why people dislike it so much.

Thing is , I have noticed it is a bit more ram hungry and come to think of it back in they day I ran either 32megs or later 64megs, and I think that is the biggest cause of ME instability.

The biggest problem tho is that it lacks native dos support without lots of patching, and I think thats why its still dreaded for retro enthusiasts, but lets be honest, today we are spoiled for choice, PLOP Boot manager lets you run 6.11 and ME perfectly , so I see this as a non-issue.

BSA Starfire wrote:

OS/2 was a IBM OS not Microsoft.

Co-developed with Microsoft until IBM and Microsoft decided to part ways around 1990 (there were various reasons for this).
OS/2 was originally going to be the operating system for the future but, eventually became Windows NT after IBM and Microsoft parted ways.
A large portion of the code in OS/2 was written by Microsoft and some of this was also used in Windows NT. Hence, why IBM has never released the source code for OS/2 and is unlikely to do so.
But, I'm now diverting from the main topic here.

jesolo wrote:

Co-developed with Microsoft until IBM and Microsoft decided to part ways around 1990, when Windows 3.0 proved more popular (ther […]
Show full quote

BSA Starfire wrote:

OS/2 was a IBM OS not Microsoft.

Co-developed with Microsoft until IBM and Microsoft decided to part ways around 1990, when Windows 3.0 proved more popular (there were various other reasons).
OS/2 was originally going to be the operating system for the future.
A large portion of the code in OS/2 was written by Microsoft and was also used in Windows NT. Hence, why IBM has never released the source code for OS/2 and is unlikely to do so.
But, I'm now diverting from the main topic here.

That's interesting, one of the things I love about this forum, you learn something new everyday!