Doppler wrote:

I wonder whats the best way to reduce RAM from 4GB to 512MB for Windows 98SE? I red that I can do it by creating a ramdisk, but are there any better methods?

HIMEMX. There are many threads about this.

Secondly, which partition size would be the most appropriate for 98SE? 120GB? 137GB? or less?

However much space you need. There is a patch available for partitions larger than 137 GB.

Which partitioning software should I use to properly create a partition? FDISK which comes with 98SE or something else?

The version of FDISK included with 98SE is buggy when it comes to large partition sizes, so you're probably better off using something else.

Could you spare some info where to find partition size path? or with which phrases to look?

Doppler wrote:

Could you spare some info where to find partition size path? or with which phrases to look?

What exactly have you tried? 😢

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=98se+patch+available+for … ger+than+137+GB.

Maybe this is just me. Is there any reason you can't just put 1 512MB or 2 256MB in duel channel modules in there. Use that 4GB of RAM for something that will actually use it. Only reason I can think of is if you are duel booting it. As far as partition size is concerned i've used the max 128GB without any problems you just need disk management tools outside of the ones included in Windows 98 in order to not screw it up. I believe the max that windows 98 can manage without third party tools is either 32 or 64GB I can't remember which.

I would be curious to know what video card he intend to use with that setup.

Yeah I forgot to mention - it will be a dual boot (xp) system. Want to play everything from 1995 to 2005.
GPU will be 6800GT. Bought one a couple of days ago but it turned out that it was damaged. There are whole lots of damaged 6xxx - need a lot of luck to get a flawless one.

To limit memory in Windows98SE, open up system.ini file (which resides in WINDOWS directory) using a text editor and under the [vcache] section, add the line "MaxFileCache=524288" without the quotes.

Depending on the hardware, Windows 98 may not boot after installation with that many (4GB) RAM. Sometimes, it might boot. But it's a good idea to limit the memory available to Win98 by adding the above line.

Config.sys

1Device=HIMEMX.exe 

(https://sourceforge.net/projects/himemx/)

System.ini

1[386enh]
2ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1
3MinSPs=16
4MaxPhysPage=20000 
5; this MaxPhysPage results in 512MB accessible
6DMABufferSize=64
7
8[vcache]
9maxfilecache=65536 
10; 64MB should really be adequate

This is a combination of parameters I saw mentioned on MSFN.org and they have worked for me with several systems with 2GB RAM.

Safe mode will not work and I haven't tried to fix that.

Win98 setup will also break if you have >1GB. In order to fix that, boot with HimemX loaded and then create the C:\Windows\system.ini file as above and Setup.exe will use it.

Also, while it is tempting to try to allow more than 512MB be usable, I advise against it because the OS can become unstable in ways not immediately apparent. You really won't need more than 512MB RAM with Win98 for gaming. You probably would be happy with 128MB. 😀

I got a 6600gt as it is the fastest unmodded fanless gpu on a win98 machine as this computer is used to play music on the sblive's emu10k and play quake and duke. About the 6800gt it is noisy