VioletGiraffe wrote:

Like being able to browse the web and download files out of the box. Or being able to connect a USB thumb drive to a PC that is supposed to have USB support.

That's not Windows 98's fault. It can browse the web out of the box and if you use a correctly formatted USB drive that should also work seamlessly. But all the variables have changed, mostly for the worse. Obviously wireless adapters need drivers that weren't around at the time of release. Web standards are so messed up that no browser more than a few years old can render modern web sites, and they have implemented severe client side processing loads that are far beyond the power of computers meant to run Windows 98.

There's a few mostly DOS games that won't behave in XP; other than that it's rare to have issues; XP can run almost everything 98 can. Running Windows 98 is more of an "experience" than a necessity.

hwh wrote:

There's a few mostly DOS games that won't behave in XP; other than that it's rare to have issues; XP can run almost everything 98 can. Running Windows 98 is more of an "experience" than a necessity.

Thanks!

hwh wrote:

That's not Windows 98's fault. It can browse the web out of the box and if you use a correctly formatted USB drive that should also work seamlessly.

I didn't blame Windows 98 for anything, it did what was made to do, no more, no less. And I certainly didn't intend to complain, was merely sharing my fresh experience. However, what you said should work simply did not. USB keyboard works in BIOS setup but not in Windows; USB thumb drive's activity LED didn't light up after inserting it. I followed a popular guide for installing USB mass storage drivers, and now the system locks up when I insert the USB stick. And it's formatted in FAT16B, doesn't get more compatible than that. I do find this all odd since it did install USB host controller drivers right out of the box, and it's supposed to support HID devices like a keyboard, so dunno what's up with that.
And as for the browser, the built-in IE starts up on a page inviting me to register with MSN, and it's looking for a modem. I cannot proceed without it, despite already having Internet access by means of PCI Wi-Fi card. Finding a browser capable of working with modern web was a fun challenge and only mildly frustrating: half of the suggested browsers don't work because they're using Win32 APIs not available in 98 SE (maybe they would work with that NT kernel emulator thing), but I still found a decent browser pretty fast.

Playing Win98 games on XP is like playing XP games on Win10 today. It occasionally works without issue, it's often glitchy or needs "tweaks", and it sometimes doesn't work at all.

kolderman wrote:

Playing Win98 games on XP is like playing XP games on Win10 today. It occasionally works without issue, it's often glitchy or needs "tweaks", and it sometimes doesn't work at all.

I don't recall issues with XP-era games on Windows 10, and the couple older games I tried also run just fine (Half-Life, Star Craft) - which is not to say there aren't any, but I doubt it's a common occurrence.
Could you please recall a game that is flaky on Windows editions later than 98? I'd love to give it a try on the different OSes and different computers around my house.

There's a bunch. Look at nglide, dxwnd and dgvoodoo 2 for just video related issues.

See my compatibility list for others which sadly doesn't have as much 9x info....yet.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

Could you please recall a game that is flaky on Windows editions later than 98? I'd love to give it a try on the different OSes and different computers around my house.

Dungeon Keeper 2!
It tends to crash randomly in Windows versions later Win98. (never tested WinME though)

DosFreak wrote:

There's a bunch. Look at nglide, dxwnd and dgvoodoo 2 for just video related issues.

Got it, thanks.

DosFreak wrote:

See my compatibility list for others which sadly doesn't have as much 9x info....yet.

WOW, that list! Goodness, I can't imagine how it's possible to test that many configurations even if you had a 20 man team. The list itself is barely viewable online on my Ryzen 7 computer, and sorting only worked in Microsoft Excel Mobile - other programs can't handle it. You must be a superhuman to have done this job.

1541 wrote:

Dungeon Keeper 2!
It tends to crash randomly in Windows versions later Win98. (never tested WinME though)

Thanks a lot! That looks like a fun game that I missed back in the day.
Apparently, it did have problems, but there's a patch (possibly unofficial) that fixes them. Also, GOG sells it and I bet that version runs flawlessly on Windows 10 or it wouldn't be on there.

Well, thanks for taking the time to convince me I do need Windows 98 after all. Gonna find a way to fix those quality of life issues, then. Hopefully it will be a fun challenge, not a frustrating one.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

Apparently, it did have problems, but there's a patch (possibly unofficial) that fixes them. Also, GOG sells it and I bet that version runs flawlessly on Windows 10 or it wouldn't be on there.

It used to work fine until Nvidia broke it again: "NOTE: Requires NVIDIA drivers 337.88 or OLDER to work properly on NVIDIA cards".

Obviously, not a problem if you don't have a modern NVIDIA GPU...

Most early windows games work fine on XP. The issue with playing older games on widnows 7 or windows 10 is that microsoft dropped support for directx 8.1 and earlier (and even direct draw in windows 10) and instead is using a compatibility layer. Windows XP doesn't have that problem. You can run into a host of other software compatibility issues, but for the most part windows XP is fundamentally compatible with windows 98 software.

It is not, however, compatible with all windows 98 hardware. That is really the different IMO.

The biggest advantage to windows 98 is native DOS support, and support for older video cards and sound cards. If you want to use a 3dfx or Aureal Vortex 2, than windows 98 is the way to go. There are also some proprietary APIs, like ATI CIF, powerVR, and Metal, that didn't survive into the XP era. Windows 98 is popular for retro enthusiasts because it is so flexible. Not good necessarily, but it can run lots of old software on old hardware.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

kolderman wrote:

Playing Win98 games on XP is like playing XP games on Win10 today. It occasionally works without issue, it's often glitchy or needs "tweaks", and it sometimes doesn't work at all.

I don't recall issues with XP-era games on Windows 10, and the couple older games I tried also run just fine (Half-Life, Star Craft) - which is not to say there aren't any, but I doubt it's a common occurrence.
Could you please recall a game that is flaky on Windows editions later than 98? I'd love to give it a try on the different OSes and different computers around my house.

Command and conquer Red Alert won't install on 2000pro/XP. It checks windows versions before it even begins copying.

Cobra42898 wrote:

Command and conquer Red Alert won't install on 2000pro/XP. It checks windows versions before it even begins copying.

Installs just fine on XP if you run the installer in Win95 compatibility mode.

No one talked about hardware yet. I have a Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro.

That joystick does work on Windows XP with official drivers and I have also built a USB adapter to make it work on Windows 10. Technically, it can be used. All axis and buttons work.

But I still prefer to use it on Windows 98 because I can adjust the level of force it throws at me and also, how much force I need to apply to move the stick away from its center position.

On every OS except 98/ME the joystick is extremely hard to handle because all forces are set to maximum. I get physically tired much quicker on newer operating systems. Pretty big value to stay with 98, in my opinion.

Personally I run Windows 98 for Voodoo and Windows 3.x compatibility.

schmatzler wrote:

No one talked about hardware yet. I have a Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro.

Good point!
Windows 7 dropped the gameport support alltogether, right?

I think they dropped the Gameport with Windows Vista, but there is an unofficial "Gameport support pack" out there that works with Vista and 7 to bring it back.

That only runs on the 32bit versions, though.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

I didn't blame Windows 98 for anything, it did what was made to do, no more, no less. And I certainly didn't intend to complain, was merely sharing my fresh experience. However, what you said should work simply did not. USB keyboard works in BIOS setup but not in Windows; USB thumb drive's activity LED didn't light up after inserting it. I followed a popular guide for installing USB mass storage drivers, and now the system locks up when I insert the USB stick. And it's formatted in FAT16B, doesn't get more compatible than that. I do find this all odd since it did install USB host controller drivers right out of the box, and it's supposed to support HID devices like a keyboard, so dunno what's up with that.

And as for the browser, the built-in IE starts up on a page inviting me to register with MSN, and it's looking for a modem. I cannot proceed without it, despite already having Internet access by means of PCI Wi-Fi card. Finding a browser capable of working with modern web was a fun challenge and only mildly frustrating: half of the suggested browsers don't work because they're using Win32 APIs not available in 98 SE (maybe they would work with that NT kernel emulator thing), but I still found a decent browser pretty fast.

I'm not going to be much help here, but I'll make a few generalities: So you "did everything right" and it still won't work. This is because you're trying to do things that Windows 98 wasn't designed for. The hardware and drivers. There is probably a way to get it working; I don't know. Or maybe not.

USB: you already know how arbitrary and finicky it is. There's no reason it should freeze, but apparently there's an issue with the driver or the card if it isn't integrated. The unsatisfying solution is to find other drivers or older more age appropriate hardware that should be cross compatible but obviously isn't.

Browser: again I don't know, probably nothing that happened in the old days when we had analog modems, so we wouldn't see such a scenario. It could be hardware. I don't know why it matters that the browser finds a modem, but at the very least you should be able to set up with an ethernet cable to get past this blockage of identifying an internet connection. Which brings me to the other scenario - I don't know how it goes because it was so long ago and I didn't use DSL in Windows 98, but the system may need a helping hand in recognizing the connection you have provided in internet options, presumably a DNS server.

In XP I have a wireless adapter and checked internet settings; to my surprise it is totally blank (not even "automatically detect settings"). But that doesn't mean anything for Windows 98. IE (although not IE 7 on XP) likely relies on the data in those settings. Using an ethernet cable eliminates or establishes the wireless hardware as a cause of your trouble. I hope you get it going.

It's funny, I know there were little compatibility issues with XP, but I don't remember what they were and why it matters. I never played games with other APIs, so that wasn't an issue for me. I like 98 and the experience it gives but when push comes to shove the forward compatibility of XP became more important to me than the backwards compatibility of 98. The only thing it stung me with is DOS though since you can't unload the OS and it sucks up a little conventional memory.

Installing NUSB is the first thing I do on my Win98 builds after I install the chipset drivers (not least as USB is how I get the rest of the crap on there). I don't think I have ever had an issue inserting USB sticks into after that. Win98 is far more stable today than I remember back in the day, I recall BSODs all the time back then, never see them at all any more.

Shagittarius wrote:

Personally I run Windows 98 for Voodoo and Windows 3.x compatibility.

Yeah I will go to Win9x for old hardware. Aureal, 3dfx, Rendition, Matrox, PowerVR, S3, etc. Once I start to think about DirectX 8 or later games though, off to XP.

Thanks for your feedback!

kolderman wrote:

Win98 is far more stable today than I remember back in the day, I recall BSODs all the time back then, never see them at all any more.

Well, mine is BSODing regularly, and it doesn't display the name of the faulty driver/component, so I have no idea how to troubleshoot it. The only thing I know is it's not the video driver as I removed it and still got the blue screens regularly. Maybe it doesn't like my D-Link PCI card drivers. Is there a standard troubleshooting procedure for the random blue screens?

I gave up on networking (being able to browse local shared folders, or expose my own share to other Windows systems on the network for the purpose of file transferring). From what I gathered it's possible to get it working with Windows 10 after installing SMB 1.0 support on Windows 10, but it's not recommended since that protocol has long been considered insecure (not that I care too much, but still). But I at least need to get USB working, going to give it another shot.

I decided to shrink the Win 98 partition to 5 GB and install Windows XP SP3 to the rest of the hard drive. Man, I forgot how cool XP was at the time! Everything just works out of the box, and even the update server is still up and running and a couple fresh security updates are available, surprised to see that. Poor Microsoft, I feel their pain for having to support this old codebase, but it's certainly good for the users.