Brave dude tries to use Windows 98 for his daily life, gets a big surprise

BGR News, via Yahoo ^ | February 28, 2017 | Mike Wehner

[Right-wing Librarian]

Ah, the old card catalog.

Decades ago, as Librarian in an elementary school, my volunteer aide and I used to chuckle over one particular spot in the S-Si drawer.

When opened, the cards would always seem to fall open to the same, worn and wrinkled, brown-from-dirty-fingers card whose subject heading was SEX EDUCATION. (Nothing to clutch pearls about ~ just health education books about the human body!)

[Kommodor]

But could he get it to talk USB? I have an old Win98 box lying around, but it’s just not worth the bother anymore, not even for Wing Commander...

[Salamander]

I have a couple Dell Inspiron 8400 laptops still running it just fine.

[Salamander]

I have several other laptops/PCs running XP and couple desktops stashed away with Win 2000 Pro on them.

[I never throw away computers]

:D

[ADemocratNoMore]

Just a few assorted comments on this thread...

My first machine was an Apple II followed by an NEC PC8801 running PC\M followed by an Amiga 1000, an Amiga 2000, a few more 1000’s and 2000’s, (we used to buy used systems to get all the software the sellers threw in with the hardware when they wanted to sell them), Win 95, Win ME, Win XP MCE, Win 7 and iPad, Android and Winbook tablets. I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two as well.

The Windows XP fork and subsequent versions had their roots in AmigaDOS.

Until recently I would occasionally see machines running DOS, usually in commercial environments.

I've been told about a businessman who paid in the low five figures of an s100 bus machine with a custom software package (accounting maybe?) He ported the software over to a modern Windows machine but had to keep the original machine running in a closet in order to fulfill the terms of the contract with the software house.

[ADemocratNoMore]

Oh yea - It’s a damn shame that everybody killed their card files. Too bad somebody didn’t have the foresight to keep both systems running concurrently.

[ADemocratNoMore]

> NEC PC8801 running PC\M

Brain fart - I meant CP\M

[lbtbell]

Why not? It’s awesome. I use it to this day for scanning, word processing, and I can even edit music and videos on it. I do, however, use Linux for web surfing because there are far fewer Linux viruses out in the wild, compared to any version of Windows.

But I’ve never upgraded Windows beyond 98SE, though I would have liked to try XP. Beyond that version, it’s all bloatware.

[lbtbell]

I loved that screensaver, but it caused a lot of issues. Finally had to uninstall it.

[lbtbell]

Putting 98 on a newer machine wouldn’t work, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it wouldn’t have the drivers for modern monitors, printers, or any other peripherals. Second, Win98 and Win98SE can only recognize a limited amount of RAM, so even if you installed more RAM on an older PC, Windows wouldn’t even be able to use it, unfortunately.

[Pelham]

he would but he can’t locate a 300 baud modem

[Zack Attack]

For his next trick, run Netscape 1.0 as his main browser LOL

[Daffynition]

Back in the day, when I was a student in Boston, it was de rigueur to do research at the BPL [Boston Public Library]. Finger flip through the cards, with a scrap of paper and that short yellow pencil;

bring your request to a desk, where a bespeckled lady handed off your paper[s] to someone who in turn, brought it to *some* mysterious *someone* in the stacks [whom you never saw]; after a few minutes, appeared a pile of books in a tray;

and off you'd go.

For some reason, I recall that there was a ten-book limit to number of books you could check out.

Those were the days! I think your learning was *elevated* when you were in those hallowed halls. Almost like being in a cathedral.;)

[Daffynition]

There were a few *hold-outs*; the librarian in Chester, CT absolutely refused to modernize; she continued to do everything by *hand*.

[Mr Radical]

I remember when the source code for our programs was held on punched cards in trays just like that. It was really annoying when someone pulled too hard on the tray and the cards spilled out onto the floor . . . and the cards got all out of order!

[Prov1322]

I miss card catalogues! That’s how you found neat stuff by ACCIDENT! You look for one item and stumble across another you never knew existed. That happened to me all the time. The university library I used had two millions items in their catalogue. I found treasures all the time using the card catalogue.

That's pretty much how I completed my Dissertation in the late 70's...by card catalogue "accident"!

[rarestia]

bigger SSD, more memory, best AV card it will take, should work just fine...

With the exception of just a few, minor little things:

Windows 98 cannot natively use an SSD, and no SSD manufacturers ever developed drivers for it.

Windows 98 only ran on 32 bit platforms. You're pegged to 3.5 GB of RAM regardless of how much you put into the system.

IIRC, Windows 98 peaked around the time that AGP graphics were all the rage. Since then, no graphics card manufacturer has ever developed drivers for Windows 98. If you can find an AGP graphics card laying around somewhere, you'd be hard pressed to find the drivers on a legitimate site.

And, of course, let's not forget that Microsoft's support of the OS is long since gone. You can't patch the OS. You can't protect the OS with any A/V or malware scanner. Windows 98 is notorious for being very chatty over legacy communications protocols that, if exposed to the Internet, will see your system compromised in less than 5 minutes.

But, by all means, use Windows 98.

FWIW, if you use Windows 98 in an unconnected configuration, it can play legacy games (looking at you FFVII) without skipping a beat. Otherwise, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

[Varmint Al]

I have MS BASIC and still use it with Windows XP Pro which is setup as a dual boot on my Linux Mint KDE computer. MS BASIC will also work with WINE on Linux using the DOSBOX plus WINE. And the old A-Machine runs Windows 98SE and I used to need it to program eProms for packet radio. It was the only machine that was slow enough to reliably burn the eProms. We still have a 2m packet radio network here is the Bay Area on 145.050 MHz.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[Mears]

Thanks.

.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I used Windows 98 about an hour ago.

I have a PC with Win98 on it. It runs one program only; Need For Speed SE. My favorite driving game ever. And it will only run on Win98se or Win95. It's worth keeping those old install disks.