Any REAL problems running 98se on latest hardware?

[mikeford]

I am putting together a couple of these Fry's $65 combo's (AMD 1800+ and ESC motherboard) and I was wondering if there is any sane reason not to use good old CHEAP 98se on them?

The most maxed out I have for any of them planned is 384 MB ram, 80 GB HD, and a Gforce3 ti4200.
I do plan to put some kind of Linux on one, but I am only thinking now of the MS issues.
What exactly can't 98se do anyway?

 

[segask]

there is a 512 mb ram limit, and I beleive a 2gb filesize limit, and its not as stable as xp.

 

[Doh!]

You'll be fine.

 

[Nothinman]

Because Win9X sucks, MS has deprecated it and it won't be supported much longer.

 

[DOSfan]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because Win9X sucks, MS has deprecated it and it won't be supported much longer.

Because Win-anything sucks. But that is just me.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: segask
there is a 512 mb ram limit, and I beleive a 2gb filesize limit, and its not as stable as xp.

Umm, the FAT16 2GB partitionsize limitation was cleared in Win95 OEM Service Release C which introduced FAT32.

The FAT32 filesize limitation is 4GB, but you'll really only hit that with DVD ripping and DV applications (Which are all aware of the limitation and slice up everything into 4GB files).

FAT32 cluster sizes get really wastefull at 80GB and NTFS makes much more sense.

 

[THUGSROOK]

FAT32 has a 4gb limit, but Win98 has a 2gb limit.

the 512mb ram limit can be bypassed with a simple tweak so it can run 1gb ram.

 

[CZroe]

No, technically and functionally it's 2 to the 32nd power minus 2 bytes. AVI1.0 had a 2GB filesize limitation and AVI encoding is one of the primary applications where users run into either limit. One of the first applications to push this into mainstream was DiVX + DVD ripping so mainstream users finally started hitting both limits at once. I DID read that native DOS couldn't access more than a 2GB file mentioned in the same breath as FAT32, but Google only returned this one result and it WAS NOT CLEAR that it wasn't reverting to talking about FAT16.

The memory tweak sounds cool. Perhaps I'll start throwing in gobs of RAM into an old fileserver of mine...

 

[mikecel79]

The memory tweak sounds cool. Perhaps I'll start throwing in gobs of RAM into an old fileserver of mine...

Why bother putting lots of RAM in a file server? It doesn't use it anyways. Also the memory tweak will let Win98 use over 1GB of memory but MS doesn't guarantee that it will be stable.

 

[Nothinman]

Why bother putting lots of RAM in a file server? It doesn't use it anyways.

Sure it does, for filesystem caching which is exactly where you want it on a file server. That way reads are served from memory instead of disk and writes can be held in memory longer, both of which can help performance a lot. Novell used to recommend that you have enough memory to hold like 25% of your filesystem in memory for best performance on their file servers, although that's almost impossible now considering they're Intel only which limits you're memory availability greatly.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Why bother putting lots of RAM in a file server? It doesn't use it anyways.

Sure it does, for filesystem caching which is exactly where you want it on a file server. That way reads are served from memory instead of disk and writes can be held in memory longer, both of which can help performance a lot. Novell used to recommend that you have enough memory to hold like 25% of your filesystem in memory for best performance on their file servers, although that's almost impossible now considering they're Intel only which limits you're memory availability greatly.

Exactly. The question is, why use Win98 for a file server? Other than the drives and RAID5 controller, it's an ancient system cobbled together from spare parts and it needed every ounce of performance it could get. It'll be piping 133MBps through Gigabit soon... I'm also going to demote my P4 1.3GHz system to the fileserver soon and get everything backed up onto DVD then go NTFS

 

[Chaotic42]

It refused to install on my system (in my sig)

 

[drag]

Use linux.

It's cheaper then win98, has better performance, virus free, more stable, doesn't need to be defragged, journalling file system, more versitile. ETC ETC ETC.

Samba's suppose to be faster then Windows file servers anyways.

Any reason why would you actually want to use windows 98?

BTW, don't bother with installing X or configuring desktop. Just do a minimalist install and install Samba and ssh. Administrate it over the network. You don't even have to waste a monitor and a keyboard on it, just sitting there doing nothing.

 

[drag]

Here. Check this out.

It will turn any PC into a Linux appliance.

Gateway, firewall, e-mail server, virus scanner, file server, web proxy, banner blocking, printer server, DHCP server, Apache web server, intusion detection. Etc etc.

The home edition is free.

And it's all configurable thru a remote web browser.

 

[mikeford]

Linux or my favorite flavors NetBSD and FreeBSD, are no brainers for a server, but other stuff they flat aren't going to work.

I have an All in Wonder Radeon I want to put in a AV system to do tivo stuff, and the Linux choices are not ready for prime time.

General gaming, and my own preference for general use is Mac OS 8.6, then windows, and last Linux. My mac use is really down mostly because I am too cheap to buy hardware in the same class as I use on my PCs (ie main mac is a 5 year old Starmax with a 266 mhz upgrade, so surfing and a bit more is much faster on a pc, even if it may be easier on my mac.)

So anyway I want to run maybe 4 or so PCs on 98se, and it sounds like there is no real problem doing it.

BTW I bought up 3 sticks of the weird KT133 SDram, each is 512 MB, so if it works with the motherboard ok, is a single 512MB stick OK ?

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: mikeford
Linux or my favorite flavors NetBSD and FreeBSD, are no brainers for a server, but other stuff they flat aren't going to work.

I have an All in Wonder Radeon I want to put in a AV system to do tivo stuff, and the Linux choices are not ready for prime time.

General gaming, and my own preference for general use is Mac OS 8.6, then windows, and last Linux. My mac use is really down mostly because I am too cheap to buy hardware in the same class as I use on my PCs (ie main mac is a 5 year old Starmax with a 266 mhz upgrade, so surfing and a bit more is much faster on a pc, even if it may be easier on my mac.)

So anyway I want to run maybe 4 or so PCs on 98se, and it sounds like there is no real problem doing it.

BTW I bought up 3 sticks of the weird KT133 SDram, each is 512 MB, so if it works with the motherboard ok, is a single 512MB stick OK ?

No problem with win98, other then the fact that it's win98.

For a home file server, 512 ram? Hell, 64 megs is "enough".

Well for a tivo-like dodad, maybe check out mythtv. It does the PVR thing, with "live" pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding, and stuff. Plus it can handle multiple TV cards and stuff, so you can record and watch at the same time, or do the picture in picture thing. It's still pretty beta, but it still works ok.


Of course with the all-in-one stuff, your probably right. Oh well, sell it on e-bay and get a gforce and a couple tv cards instead. (just make sure that they support sending the sound thru the pci stuff instead of the line out, unless you want 2 sound cards, too)