Make 98se the best it can be.

Factual Questions
1

I’m just an older country boy out in the woods and the fastest possible connection is Widblue Satellite. ( best speed for the $$$ we can get out here, 250 up and 1500 down ) We are so far out that cable, DSL, and fiber optic are never going to get here before I die.

I sorta understand 98 and we have our traveling laptop with XP and I don’t really like it. ( So I do use XP and Grrrr )

We read message boards.
We surf the net.
We visit homepages and view family pictures.
We have a few IM’s
I mess with dig - pictures some and usually post them on my web page as less then 150K so family on dial-up can have reasonable download times.
We do not game.
We do not down load music.
I don’t make videos or run CAD programs.
We go to ‘meta cafe’ every once in a while which is about the most intensive download beside ‘Google Earth’ that we do.

The wife and I both use home made towers, all my hard ware - printer, scanner etc. works fine. See below.
So, what combination should give me the best of 98se? CPU size VS cost?
( Is anything over 1.8 GIG CPU going to give me anything?)

A 10,000 rpm hard drive?
Is the 10,000 RPM one dependable? (scussi?)

A particular MB?

Can I have 2.0 USB, we have 1.1 now but only use it with a dig - camera download thing

Can we do 455 front side buss and would it be worth it?

So, what WOULD you all do? What MB + CPU + Hard drives, ( we have never gone over 20 GIG of used space on any computer. I save stuff off on separate HD’s if needed but … (So no giant HD’s need apply. I prefer dual or tripps and don’t want much on them to keep house cleaning quick.)

We do not leave computers on all the time, no need.)

A brand of HD?

I like fast boot times and a quick computer but do want to stay within reason on the $$$$$ We will have to have two of whatever I decide. Makes things easier to trouble shoot, network, and neither one of us has a ‘better’ one … LOL

So really, all I need is tower ideas.

I like ‘mobile trays’ for HD swapping.

Actually our towers are fine, just need to up the power supplies then I have all the slots I need.

I have dual “A” drives at this time but I could go back to a single.

I have dual CD bays and I could go back to a single combo unit if you all think there is a good solid one out there? ( A do all DVD, CD read, write burner? – would they run on 98se? )

What about side by side wireless. We sit side by side and would that be a problem if we went wireless keyboard/ mouse?

There are a few videos out that seem to be able to only play on XP but other than that, since we are hiding behind a good router/switch and have ZoneAlarm, what would make us fly was best we can for several more years?

What should I do?

Basic computers on hand:
600 Hz AMD slot “A” CPU’s
512 Meg Ram
100 Hz front side buss
Dual HD’s 7200 RPM ( one is a mirror back up )
LAN to router/switch to modem ( we are networked also )
Both have a separate APS power supply and surge suppressors and stuff and such.

2

I used to feel the same way you did re 98se vs XP when XP first came out, but after fiddling with XP had to concede it was a better and more stable OS by an order of magnitude vs 98Se, so I would encourage you to suck it up and get on the XP bus. There is a learning curve to tweaking it but it’s not all that bad.

Anyway re 98Se the main issue for you is staying away from hardware that 98 does not have drivers for which includes a pretty large swath of the latest hardware including video, some audio, large hard disks, a lot of USB and multimedia peripherals etc. I don’t know what 98’s CPU & MB limitations are. Based on experience I’d guess that 98 should support most MB + CPU combos up to 1 Ghz PIII stuff. No clue after that. You could probably get a pair of PCs like this for less than $ 200 on ebay.

The hardware you have on hand is fine for 98. In most cases memory beyond 256 megs is wasted in 98 and 128 megs is all you need for most stuff. The real issue (for me) is USB compatibility. So much of the mission critical crap I hang on my systems these days - (thumb-drives-external drives, wireless mouse keyboard combos, cameras etc) depends on smoothly functioning USB 2.0 drivers auto recognizing and automatically installing USB 2.0 devices. USB with 98 is more involved install wise and less fully supported across the board. Also, assuming you can get a board that supports USB 2.0 (or add in PCI card) and works with 98, USB 2.0 support in 98 is entirely dependent on the peripheral manufacturers drivers as 98 does not (natively) support 2.0

3

Thanks Astro.

More help and info needed folks.

Talk to me.

4

For most of what you do, anything over a 300 MHz CPU isn’t going to mean diddley.

Win98 doesn’t do USB very well.

Win98 has problems if you go over a certain amount of RAM (512 MB, I think). There’s a fairly simple workaround for this, though.

Getting 98 drivers for newer devices (like a wireless lan card) can be difficult.

Windows 2000 or XP with all of the eye candy turned off (so that it looks and feels a lot more like 98 or 2000) will be much more stable for web surfing and much more secure. A lot of IM programs are very poorly written, and I’ve seen them crash a 98 box fairly easily.

SCSI drives perform better in a multi-user environment. In a single user environment, a modern IDE performs just as well. I don’t see any reason for you to go SCSI.

I personally would recommend that you go with either win 2000 or XP, and set them up so that they look and feel like 98 since you prefer that. Generally, the reason to stick with 98 is because you have hardware or software that won’t run on 2000 or XP, and I don’t see anything on your list that is 98 specific. You will need to check your printer and scanner to make sure they’ll work with 2000/XP.

If you really want to stick with 98, make sure that everything you buy has 98 drivers available for it. I’ve got a 3 GHz machine that dual boots 98 and 2000, so if you are careful you can find hardware that will work.

I don’t know what meta cafe is, but for everything on your list except google earth, a new computer won’t be noticably faster than your existing 600 MHz machines.

5

I would have thought Google Earth would be the Win98-killer for you, GusNSpot: it was for a couple of people I know who had been Win98SE diehards. It won’t run at all on Win98 (I assume the reference to it in the OP means that you run it on your XP laptop, or perhaps you meant to say Google Maps, which does support Win98 since it’s just a website not an application).

I too was initially annoyed by XP; particularly the Fisher-Price look, but – as others have said – it’s fairly easy to keep that to a minimum.

There are a few other XP “features” (such as the annoying Zip-file/folder association that slows down searching, and the intrusive Picture & Fax Viewer) that can be turned off via the registry. It’s annoying to have to go through the steps, but the extra stability of XP is worth the hassle IMHO.

[On the other hand, contrary to the experience of others, I personally have never found a problem getting Win98SE drivers for newer hardware such as WiFi cards, but YMMV. A lot more of the newer stuff is natively supported by XP, however.]