Aureal Vortex soundcards have crappy drivers for anything that's not Win9x. So if you want to experience A3D in its full glory, you're pretty much stuck with Win98.

You can also run most DOS games effortlessly under Win9x and enjoy General MIDI music using your favorite sound card wave table. Lastly, emulators may not be able to replicate the capabilities of certain sound cards with perfect accuracy e.g. if you're running Final Fantasy VII on an AWE64 and it loads multiple, custom soundfonts into memory to achieve superior music quality.

For word processing, in my opinion, the MS Office 97 - 2003 experience remains unparalleled in terms of elegant simplicity and usability. But you can get that with any current version of Windows (or Linux with WINE for that matter).

Don't forget the bragging rights, so you can tell everyone on the Internet that your gaming experience is of greater "purity" than everyone else's. 😜

A virtual machine running XP appears to be a useful solution for running many older games these days, and for games that insist on Windows 98 with hardware acceleration, there's PCem – provided your PC is powerful enough to run it at a good speed. So, perhaps a better question would be: are there any worthwhile games that haven't been ported or modded one way or another that also won't cooperate with PCem?

I tend to have Win98 installed on many of my DOS computers just so I can use a thumb drives and some of the better and easier to use system utilities and file managers, but if Win98 works well enough on that machine I will install Win9X games on it, I also like to have Win3.1 installed on them has well, basically get has much "retro" use out of the old computers has I can.

This is relevant:
https://youtu.be/iBf147TMT5A

Glide games, voodoo cards, a few games hate XP. Take Starfleet academy it works in XP but joystick support breaks

Special hardware.

My Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro and the Force Feedback Wheel can somewhat run on Windows 10, but I cannot adjust the force levels, deadzone and other tweaks - they just work like a general joystick and if that configuration isn't great there's nothing I can do about it.

(I also had to build a converter from Gameport to USB because the last version that supported the Gameport was Windows 7 32bit with an unofficial support pack.)

Also, D3D on a Voodoo 2 SLI setup only seems to work on Windows 98. With XP, it's Glide only.
Not that I really need it, but it's fun to play around with it and see what the cards can do.

What are your opinions on the subject?

You can make Core 2 abomination for combined win9x/win2k experience.

I can think of a few reasons to keep a good Win9x machine around but am sure would be poo-poo'd for my reasons 🤣. If you have the space then I say yes ! There is more to having a Win9x system than just gaming, as everyone above already pointed out... and all excellent reasons!

realistically for what I tend to run I would be fine without the old hardware and OS, but I do find it fun and nostalgic to play with the old hardware, and at times it simplifies things quite a bit with no need for patching or emulation and playing things just right.

schmatzler wrote on 2020-07-08, 21:11:

Special hardware. […]
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Special hardware.

My Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro and the Force Feedback Wheel can somewhat run on Windows 10, but I cannot adjust the force levels, deadzone and other tweaks - they just work like a general joystick and if that configuration isn't great there's nothing I can do about it.

(I also had to build a converter from Gameport to USB because the last version that supported the Gameport was Windows 7 32bit with an unofficial support pack.)

Also, D3D on a Voodoo 2 SLI setup only seems to work on Windows 98. With XP, it's Glide only.
Not that I really need it, but it's fun to play around with it and see what the cards can do.

the sidewinder software tends to work OK with windows XP at least it does with my FFB wheel (it's a windows 98 version but it seems to include some kind of 2k support and installs and works with some issues that you can workaround on XP), but yes, on Vista and higher you are stuck with more generic drivers that don't allow you to change settings which kind of makes it useless.
and you are correct, D3D support is missing on windows 2000/XP with a voodoo2, they never released official drivers for XP or even 2000 for it I don't think.

A Windows 9x system (with ISA slots) that can also run DOS games is quite useful, IMHO . With a bit of care, you can cover 1990ish to 2001ish on a single machine with a Tualatin P3/Celeron using only SETMUL (when required) . If you can play with FSB speed too, you can probably cover the late 80s too (my interest in that period is limited to Sierra titles, so this may not be entirely accurate) .

For nearly everything newer, a current machine/OS would do .

Just my two cents .

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-07-08, 19:11:

For word processing, in my opinion, the MS Office 97 - 2003 experience remains unparalleled in terms of elegant simplicity and usability. But you can get that with any current version of Windows (or Linux with WINE for that matter).

Agggghhhhh.. NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Converting Access 97 DBs and code to work with newer versions are the things nightmares are made of.... Same goes for some VBA code.

Plus the older versions are super buggy. It wasn't until Office 2013 hit that it started getting really acceptable bug-wise. 2016 was even better though the interface is not my favorite.

Return Fire, NFS 3, 4 Porsche are my games that struggle on anything newer then 9x everything else I tend to game in Win2k these days for 9x gaming.
Hardware is also a reason as already mentioned.

Win9x does make things like file management and networking much easier then a pure dos PC, but guess thats changing the question to "any reason to keep a dos pc"

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-07-09, 02:55:

Agggghhhhh.. NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!!!!! […]
Show full quote

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-07-08, 19:11:

For word processing, in my opinion, the MS Office 97 - 2003 experience remains unparalleled in terms of elegant simplicity and usability. But you can get that with any current version of Windows (or Linux with WINE for that matter).

Agggghhhhh.. NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Converting Access 97 DBs and code to work with newer versions are the things nightmares are made of.... Same goes for some VBA code.

Plus the older versions are super buggy. It wasn't until Office 2013 hit that it started getting really acceptable bug-wise. 2016 was even better though the interface is not my favorite.

100% agree with everything after 2003 not been as straight forward to use (icons do make it easier if supporting multiple languages)
Although can imagine trying to go from 97 era Access or VBA to something in support now isn't fun. That stuff would often break in the next version up let alone 20+ years!
For my very basic Word or Excel requirements I'd happily use the older versions but admit usually I use my daily driver with a currant version even though it's right next to a retro rig.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-07-09, 02:55:

Agggghhhhh.. NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Well I'm talking things that a normal consumer does. Which likely does not include database work or VBScript or anything else likely to be buggy in older versions of MS Office.

And regardless of any bugs I'm talking about the overall user interface design. It's nice (as long as you disable Clippy). The programs are snappy. The font rendering on older versions of Windows works well with lower resolution screens, unlike modern OS's and word processing software which aliases everything up the yin yang and looks like fuzzy crap unless you have a very high resolution monitor.

libreoffice?

I had good luck with these opening Office 97 stuff.

Cheers,

It's less hassle to run 9x games on 9x than on Windows 10.

Plus its fun to mess around with 😀

It's fun for the nostalgic feel, the simplicity of software around that time. An OS that doesn't get in your way with ads or try to just be a phone on a bigger screen; software that doesn't require a subscription, games that don't require yet another launcher. Pretty easy to get with a modern Linux desktop distro, even down to the look if you want it.

Others may or may not feel the same way, but I also get some enjoyment in either combining old+new(er) parts, and/or getting older hardware to do things it was just not meant for - forward or backward. Windows 95 running on an Athlon XP with an SSD, for example. Windows XP on an AMD K6. Can I get semi-modern Linux distros to run..can I completely eliminate floppies/optical media and mount images over a network..so on and so on.

But, er, is any of this needed for a specific piece of software or something? No, not really.

darry wrote on 2020-07-09, 02:46:

A Windows 9x system (with ISA slots) that can also run DOS games is quite useful, IMHO . With a bit of care, you can cover 1990ish to 2001ish on a single machine with a Tualatin P3/Celeron using only SETMUL (when required) . If you can play with FSB speed too, you can probably cover the late 80s too (my interest in that period is limited to Sierra titles, so this may not be entirely accurate) .

For nearly everything newer, a current machine/OS would do .

Just my two cents .

For me anything later XP games , Current PC/OS
My VIA c3 800 +V Banshee and ct3670 cover very well games from 1990- 1997 . Also for very old stuff, dosbox.
I really want build a hybrid XP/98 rig, covering 99-2003ish games with extra power. Problem is finding a good mobo.

MKT_Gundam wrote on 2020-07-10, 03:12:

For me anything later XP games , Current PC/OS My VIA c3 800 +V Banshee and ct3670 cover very well games from 1990- 1997 . Also […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2020-07-09, 02:46:

A Windows 9x system (with ISA slots) that can also run DOS games is quite useful, IMHO . With a bit of care, you can cover 1990ish to 2001ish on a single machine with a Tualatin P3/Celeron using only SETMUL (when required) . If you can play with FSB speed too, you can probably cover the late 80s too (my interest in that period is limited to Sierra titles, so this may not be entirely accurate) .

For nearly everything newer, a current machine/OS would do .

Just my two cents .

For me anything later XP games , Current PC/OS
My VIA c3 800 +V Banshee and ct3670 cover very well games from 1990- 1997 . Also for very old stuff, dosbox.
I really want build a hybrid XP/98 rig, covering 99-2003ish games with extra power. Problem is finding a good mobo.

IMHO, XP in itself had too long a lifespan to easily cover in a single build .

EDIT: A P3 1400 is probably OK until around 2001 . Beyond that, you need more horsepower.