Windows 98 drivers?

Digital X · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:24

I have a sealed genuine copy of Windows 98, both the cd and floppy included.

What drivers, if any do I need to download ready, or will what's on the disc be enough to get up and running?

Sorry this must sound silly. Thinking maybe USB, HDD etc?

something daft already!! · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:27

Good luck getting modern hardware working with it. I doubt very much if you will find many working drivers. Why bother? 98 was nasty back then and even nastier now.

joeyjojo · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:30

What hardware? Unless it's a similar vintage you might not get some components to work at all. Even the CPU might not get all the cores working. 98 was only dual core I think. XP home was limited to 2.

Try it and let us know!

Digital X · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:33

Sorry should note I am using old hardware as well.

DOS gaming

I have a Riva TNT2, 256MB RAM etc and a Pentium 3.

malachi · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:46

You wont know till you try. Too vintage for any of us to know. DosBox and all that.

Armageus · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:54

Is it 98 or 98se (second edition). Either should boot from CD and install (assuming the bios allows cd booting)

You will need to install all drivers after it is installed though chipset->graphics->usb->lan->sound.

Digital X · 29 Nov 2016 at 18:58

Second Edition.

SimonC · 29 Nov 2016 at 20:23

I threw away my copy of windows 98SE and 95 a few years back.

Seems like a lot of hassle, can't you try and install it on a VM?

And I always thought SE meant special edition, learn something new everyday.

Deleted member 77746 · 29 Nov 2016 at 20:31

Don't even waste your time unless it's for education lol

Digital X · 29 Nov 2016 at 20:35

Sorry if it bothers you? I want to build a DOS PC. I am going to build one.

I am just asking for assistance.

Mr Blonde · 29 Nov 2016 at 21:02

You'll stand a better chance of some things working if you use an old motherboard (say pre 2005) as the CD may have some of the required drivers on it for it. You'll also likely need an IDE hard drive and CD drive.

There's likely a few dedicated individuals and sites out there that can help you more with all of this.

darael · 29 Nov 2016 at 22:12

Any reason you don't want to use XP? With the theme removed, I'd say it's better than 98 by a country mile.

Clav · 30 Nov 2016 at 09:45

Your best bet is to use the driver CD's you hopefully still have for your stuff. Other than that you'll just need to google your hardware and hope the drivers still exist.

ron3003 · 30 Nov 2016 at 10:04

It's been a while but as I recall you'll need a floppy drive installed and the Win98 boot diskette in order to load a dos environment and get the pc to see the cd rom drive first of all.

AtreuS · 30 Nov 2016 at 10:45

ron3003 said:
It's been a while but as I recall you'll need a floppy drive installed and the Win98 boot diskette in order to load a dos environment and get the pc to see the cd rom drive first of all.

Sounds right from my crusty old memory.... floppy boot and let it find the cd then run from command line if i remember right.

Will also help if you install MS dos first, getting very old dos games to work will need an edited boot disc with drivers for the sound card etc and free mem. ( who remembers getting elite frontier to work! )

Most mainboards from the P3 era used onboard sound that had drivers for MS-DOS however finding the right ones might be a struggle now. Usually they were soundblaster or Ad-lib compatible, the drivers were anyway in ms-dos.

Good luck

Doogles · 30 Nov 2016 at 12:44

I'd keep the disc sealed just for historical reason, then consider selling it when I'm an old man in 2070, if I make it that far!

ubersonic · 30 Nov 2016 at 12:49

digitalx said:
Sorry should note I am using old hardware as well.

DOS gaming I have a Riva TNT2, 256MB RAM etc and a Pentium 3.

I have an identical spec system (Compaq Deskpro SFF) making up my Win98 legacy gaming box.

You should be able to boot from CD if your board is P3 era, after installation you need to find a copy of the "Windows 9x Power Pack", it will add USB support as well as updates (Win update no longer works with 9x) and lets you add ME kernel features. If you want to use the web (wouldn't advise it) then SeaMonkey 1.1.19 is the newest compatible browser revision (but still won't load a lot of modern sites).

As an added piece of advice if your looking to build a 9x/DOS gaming machine, replace your HDD with an IDE to compactflash adapter and a 8-16GB branded CF card. You should be able to pick both up cheap and this will give you massive speed improvements over an old PATA drive with no compatibility issues.

sirlemonhead · 30 Nov 2016 at 17:34

Ask here, you'll get all the answers you need http://www.vogons.org

asim18 · 3 Dec 2016 at 03:33

Actually that website has been around for over a decade and it's the top result you don't even have to search for any words suggesting downloading lol. It's got nothing to do with piracy. If you simply visit the homepage, you can see Microsoft themselves have drawn the line at Windows XP.

But fair enough if you don't want that link here, just thought I'd let you know I honestly didn't think it was piracy, let alone illegal

.

mistersprinkles · 3 Dec 2016 at 04:58

check out driver identifier and PCI database for drivers
Good luck. This kind of thing is a pain in the arse to get done.