Re: OpSys Options

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- Patricia M Godfrey  wrote:

> Well, it
> apparently is possible to buy reasonably new
> hardware that will run Win
> 98. We just got a new machine at the office, and
> while setting it up, I
> noticed that the driver CD had 98 drivers for
everything, even the SATA
> controller.
> . . . but a Win9x installation
> is _not_ rocket science.

I guess this is a YMMV situation, Patricia. The
Shuttle XPC portable I have is a model circa early
2004.  Their CD had W98 "drivers for everything", and
I had put W98 on a number of other (much older)
systems, quite some time ago. Nevertheless, I failed
to attain a successful W98 install on the Shuttle in 3
attempts (wiping the partition after each failure),
before I gave up. Can't recall all the errors during,
but a lot of them were of the something 'Not Found'
variety. I had the feeling that with some later issue
drivers, better hardware detection routines, and a lot
of finagling, a successful outcome could well be
possible . . . but it just wasn't worth my time. W98
itself is effectively discontinued at this point, and
soon will be entirely, I'm sure. I mean, XP is over 5
years old already ! Although it is considerably more
complicated that what W98 era users are used to, W2K
is probably the best remaining option for most
DOS-App-ophiles. It gives up relatively little to XP
in terms of current functionality.

Of course, if you **really** want to run DOS or Win
3.x stuff even better than they ran in their native
environments, there's always OS/2 | eCS. The latter
is not cheap, but the former often turns up on eBay
for peanuts.


Jordan