Dual PII & Win98SE

^whitey^ · 17-09-2003 9:00pm #1

Getting a free dual PII mobo and 2x400 PII's what OS should I use .... will 98SE recognise/ be compatable with the mobo?

feylya · 17-09-2003 9:02pm

AFAIK, Win98 cannot see the dual processors. I think it'll only see one if it sees any at all. You're better off using NT4/2000/XP/Linux.

^whitey^ · 17-09-2003 9:05pm

Which one would ya reccomend lads?

SouperComputer · 17-09-2003 9:39pm

forget 98 and ME, youll be running a single PII400

2k would be a nice OS on that rig.

linuxwise, bang a disk of knoppix in, youll have a workin OS that suports your hardware in under 3mins!

RicardoSmith · 17-09-2003 10:02pm

I find that XP Pro (XP home doesn't use the 2nd CPU) with all the visual crap turned off is quicker than NT or W2K on a slower older machines. More compatable with older games too! Otherwise stick Linux on there. Though this is the "Windows" OS forum!!!

sceptre · 17-09-2003 11:31pm

Any NT-based OS (NT4, 2000 or XP (just pro as Ricardo mentioned)) will be happy recognising both processors. I'd stick 2000 on there myself but to each his own.

SouperComputer · 18-09-2003 9:52am

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
I find that XP Pro (XP home doesn't use the 2nd CPU) with all the visual crap turned off is quicker than NT or W2K on a slower older machines. More compatable with older games too! Otherwise stick Linux on there. Though this is the "Windows" OS forum!!!

I would argue that for XP to run well on an older machine, you would need more RAM generally speaking.

Triple boot the MOFO, then you can play claasics such a GL Quake with ease

"Otherwise stick Linux on there. Though this is the "Windows" OS forum!!!"

isnt linux a rippoff of windows, LOL!

.

RicardoSmith · 18-09-2003 9:37pm

I agree that XP, NT and W2000 are all much better with more Ram. But even in machines with low ram I find XP quicker. Its also has a much better vesa mode driver for playing older games. Games that NT and W2K don't and never will support. If you bring XP uptodate with all the patches you find it works with more games especially older ones than it did when it was originally released. Lots of my old windows 98 only games that I couldn't play since I dropped 98 now work fine under XP.

My sis uses XP home on an old Celly 500 with 192mb of ram and its very usuable. Quicker than W2K which I used to have on it. I also stuck XP home on a friends PII 400 laptop also with 192mb of ram and that was light years faster than the Windows ME they had on there previously.

At work I'm stuck on a PIII 700 with 128mb running NT4. Its incredibly slow compared to Xp on slower hardware.

^whitey^ · 18-09-2003 11:52pm

Thanks for the replies lads think i'll lob on XP Pro and then get my hands on another hard drive and dual boot it with linux, knoppix sounds very usefull.

Just hope the mobo fits in me case :rolleyes:

SouperComputer · 19-09-2003 12:12am

unless the HD you have is REALLY small, you can dual boot them anyway.

install windows 1st, on a fat32 partition. then use linux if needed to resize the partition and use the free space.

this is assuming you dont have partition magic.

drop into the shop and ill give you a copy of knoppix

^whitey^ · 19-09-2003 10:14am

Yea i know and yes my hard is really small only 4 G :rolleyes:

po0k · 20-09-2003 4:05am

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
My sis uses XP home on an old Celly 500 with 192mb of ram and its very usuable. Quicker than W2K which I used to have on it.

Turn off all unnecessary shit in both OSes and then compare.
I use Win2k because I don't like XP.
It gets in the way most of the time and just looks too much like a Tellytubby reunion for me to sleep easy at night.

Knoppix though - thumbs up

RicardoSmith · 20-09-2003 9:12am

Originally posted by SyxPak
Turn off all unnecessary shit in both OSes and then compare.
I use Win2k because I don't like XP.
It gets in the way most of the time and just looks too much like a Tellytubby reunion for me to sleep easy at night.

Knoppix though - thumbs up

You do know you can turn off all the telly tubby crap so its exactly like w2k (only better). Personally the XP theme is very poor usability wise. I find newbies can get to grips with the classic windows much faster then with XP. The UI design of XP is very bad. They've mixed and used icons, graphics, text and links interchangably so that the've blurred the distinction between them all. Which was a really poor design. But thankfully you can turn it all off. I can't think of one good reason to keep W2K on a machine. XP does everything so much better.

Capt'n Midnight · 20-09-2003 11:35am

Is there any way to set windows classic as the default for new users of XP ? - preferably without using profiles.

Of course there are still niggles with the XP gui - search is buggered and selecting files on the desktop with the mouse is a bit naff...

RicardoSmith · 20-09-2003 11:52am

With out using profiles I dunno. I just set the clasic theme and thats the way it stay. Yeah search is a bit buggered. Whats with that? Whats the problem with files on the desktop?

phaxx · 20-09-2003 12:08pm

I think he means the way you click and drag to select a group of files, and how XP uses a solid line and shades the selection area, rather than just a dotted line in every previous version.

I dunno, I kinda like that.

Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with 2k on all my machines at the moment, I have no reason at all to upgrade.

Anyway, whitey, lots of ram, use 2k or xp, whatever your preference is.

RicardoSmith · 20-09-2003 12:42pm

This seems to be a work around the problem of flie searching

http://www.dacs.org/archive/0212/feature4.htm

Capt'n Midnight · 20-09-2003 1:18pm

Opps sorry I meant selecting files WITHOUT the mouse is a bit different - click on a file - hold down shift and use the cursor keys to select files - it selects full rows of stuff on the desktop rather than one at a time when you go up/down.

When choosing which version of windows to use remember the licencing constraints.
OEM can only be installed on the motherboard it was shipped with. If an OEM is upgraded to something else you can't use the OEM on any PC

RicardoSmith · 20-09-2003 1:34pm

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
Opps sorry I meant selecting files WITHOUT the mouse is a bit different - click on a file - hold down shift and use the cursor keys to select files - it selects full rows of stuff on the desktop rather than one at a time when you go up/down.

When choosing which version of windows to use remember the licencing constraints.
OEM can only be installed on the motherboard it was shipped with. If an OEM is upgraded to something else you can't use the OEM on any PC

You can buy OEM version of Windows in many places with other equipment other than motherboards. CDdrives, HD's etc. its all farcial when you consider MS can sell it for peanuts in other markets when they are facing serious competition. Certain eastern counties spring to mind. Personally I'd love to drop MS for linux and open source but the software I need isn't on that platform yet.

Dual PII & Win98SE

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