WIN 98 on Pentium 3,4 or Athalon 1

[SuperDoc]

I have a friend who wants to get a new computer but needs to stay with WIN 98 SE because of his application software.
He can buy a P3 or P4 or Athalon.
His question was, will they all run WIN 98 SE????
Other question is, "Is he wasting his money buying a P4 and running WIN 98SE???

I wasn't sure how to answer him.
Anyone have experience with these new machines and WIN98SE??

 

[yowza]

Win98 will run ok on it. I think the max mem 98 uses is 128mb so anything above that will not be used. From what I have seen with XP, I will stick with 98 for quite awhile.

 

[Mulga]

98 will run fine on any of the systems mentioned. There is NOT a 128 MB limit on RAM usage in 98, this is a widespread misconception, don't know where it came from but it is incorrect. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[chaosinc]

Mulga is correct about there not being a ram limit with 98.
i run with a gig of ram and use 98se. and 98 will run on any of the processors you mentioned. wich cpu would be a personal choice or money thing. SMILE IT'LL MAKE 'EM WONDER WHAT YOU'RE UP TO!

 

[ITschoolGuy]

SuperDoc-

Your question looks very familiar. I think I may have posted a response a few days ago. Did you put this question in another thread, also?

Anyway, I'll try to briefly summarize what I wrote last time. PIII is pretty much obsolete in terms of being upgradeable. P4 is definitely NOT obsolete but Intel does tend to change socket and memory specs alot, so future upgrades might involve a new motherboard and RAM. Athlon is probably his best choice. In any case, 98SE will run on any of these.

Also, regarding the 98SE memory limit, my understanding is that you can install as much RAM as your motherboard chipset will support but that 98 won't utilize anything over 512MB without a registry patch. Does anybody have any info on this? I'm thinking of starting a thread with this question because it comes up quite often with my clients and I've never found a definitive answer.

That's about it.

Chris

 

[jsgclr]

ITschoolGuy,

Not sure if this article is related to the amount of memory available to use for paging or if this key is for the amount of available memory to the OS for Windows 98.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q181862&

 

[ANFPS26]

Read cdogg's FAQ:

faq615-1638 "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."

 

[ITschoolGuy]

Hello nobrain-

The FAQ you suggested was helpful. If I understood everything correctly, the 512MB "limit" is not actually imposed by the O/S but simply a recommended threshold beyond which it is unwise to go.

Shame on me for not having figured it out earlier as I do have a fundamental understanding of how VCACHE allocates memory space. Now I have a better understanding.

Thanks again.

Chris

 

[butchrecon]

With the enhanced application compatibility in Windows XP would it not be advantageous to test the applications out in an XP environment to see if there are issues. I am willing to bet that most issues can be bypassed. This way there are no issues with Memory, Hard Drive space or CPU in Windows XP that MAY or may not arise from Windows 98SE. James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

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