Win98 -> WinME/Win2K?

[JamesA]

MURC-Y People,

I know this has probably been asked numerous times. I know I can search this fine forum for the answer(s) to my question(s) given enough time and a good search criteria. But, uh, I am not smart. I cannot come up with a good search criteria, nor do I have the time. (Work to do. Baby to tend to. Wife to be with. Housework to do. et cetera.. et cetera.. et cetera).

So, I am relying on you and this forum's email notification "feature" to get some answers. (Hopefully, the signal to noise isn't going to be bad...)

Here's my current situation:

<tt>
1. My 2 SCSI-UW HDDs are dying. (You know, the grinding metal sound is occuring frequently now.) They are about 2 years old. Their combine volume is about 11GB.

2. My Win98 DVD setup is a little bit of a mess thanks to Zoran (and maybe Cinemaster/Ravisent/whoevertheyarenow). I cannot play any DVD period. I used to be able to. Now I can't. Uninstalling all DVD apps ain't helping. BSOD is ALWAYS the end result of my attempts to play DVD. Of course, this could be a weird SCSI I/O problem that manifests itself out of some troll's butt. Who knows.

3. I am very poor. God just gave me a daughter (and I need to start saving for her college education). So, I don't think I can maintain my SCSI habits. ATA drives can be found at half the price and double the capacity. None of the EIDE ports on my ASUS-P2B are used now. I have IRQs to spare.
</tt>

Hence, with this is in mind, I think, for my birthday, I am gonna get a giant ATA drive (about 30GB?), whack Win98, and install....

Win2K or WinME?!

(Dualboot/BootManager/SysCommander are not options I want to consider.)

I <u>occasionally</u> bring my work home. My work requires the use of MS SQL Server 7.0, ColdFusion Server 4.5, and some sort of webserver. Right now I am running with Win98+PersonalWebServer (ouch).

So, again, Win2K or WinME? Please advise.

Thank you sooo much.

Sincerely,

JamesA

[JamesA]

Ooops. Forgot to mention... I need Half-Life, and Diablo2 compatibility. Yeah. I <u>occasionally</u> have time for this two games. How I manage that? I dunno.

JamesA

[Gurm]

Don't be ashamed. In fact, I recently decided NOT to go SCSI. I was happy with the performance, but not the NOISE. I had two IBM (you know, IBM... quiet... right?) 10k RPM 18GB drives. They SUCKED. I mean, fast, but the high-pitched whine could be heard from outside!

So now I'm running IBM 7200RPM ATA-100 drives. Fast. No, not AS fast, especially not when performing multiple file-transfers at once. But not slow, either.

Just make sure to go with good IDE. Get an Ultra-100 controller from Promise. You'll be glad you did. They're cheap, too - less than $50.

Anyway, do Win2k. Don't do ME, it's just silly. It looks like Win2k, but it isn't as nice.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[kjliew]

If I were you, I would have seriously considered dual-boot. Win2k will be your main working platform, and Win98SE/Me to be the gaming platform.

I am using the similiar configuration at home with addition of RH6.2 Linux on secondary HDD.

1st HDD 6.4G
- 256MB (FAT16) Boot partition. (C
- 2.8G (NTFS) Win2k
- 2.0G (FAT32) Win98SE
- 1.0G (FAT32) Shared Data (Win2k/98SE/RH6.2)

2nd HDD 1.7G
- RH6.2 Linux (NFS)+ 64MB swap partition.

All of these can be accomplished without any 3rd-party bootmanager. Win2k's NTLoader is sufficient. And each OS resides in its own preferred file system.

[JamesA]

Gurm,

Strange, my once healthy IBM UltraStars 7200RPM (they are the ones that are dying) were very very quite inside my external drive enclosure. The &quot;price&quot; you pay for 10K rpm..

Anyway, w.r.t. Promise's ATA controller, will it play nice with my Adaptec 2940UW? (Or should I say, will the Adaptec be nice to the Promise controller?) I still have a very very very old Plextor 6x SCSI CD-ROM drive (bought it when it first came out!), the Pioneer 6X SCSI DVD, and the discontinued SyQuest SyJet 1.5GB SCSI to attach to the AHA-2940UW.

What about driver support from Promise? Promise's driver support in the past was quite hairy. (Back in the early days of the first Pentiums, Promise cards gave quite a bit of grief for some of my pals then.) How is it now? What about OS support? (e.g. Linux? Win2K (how good is it?))

Thanks!

JamesA

[JamesA]

Hey Khong Jye,

How're things in M'sia? Been a while since the last time I visited my home town (Kluang, Johor).

I will probably consider multi-os when I know I really really need it. Heck, I used to have OS/2 Warp 4, RedHat Linux, Win3.11+DOS, and Win95 all in one setup. AND, I had a mix of EIDE and SCSI drives. I was in college. I had lots of time (and credit cards) fooling around with hardware and oses (and play around with PartitionMagic (used it since version 1.0 for OS/2)). Anyway, I don't want to mess with that kinda hell right now unless I really really have to.

Thanks for the suggestion though. Keep up the good work at MGATools!

JamesA

[Gurm]

Yes, IBM's 7200rpm drives are very very quiet. Their 10k rpm drives are very very whiney. *pout*

WRT the Promise controller - I think that it's a better controller than the Highpoint. I've used both and tend to think the Promise is better.

As far as drivers, it is a bit sketchy at times. For a while they had their drivers autodetecting the Ultra66 card as an Ultra100 card, but the Ultra100 drivers weren't compatible. Grr.

However, the latest ones seem to be fine. Nice and fast.

And yes, it plays just fine with an Adaptec controller - unless you put them in slots that share a HW IRQ and you're not running ACPI for some reason.

And as far as dual-booting... unless your favorite game (and in my case it would need to be GAMES, and lots of 'em) doesn't run in Win2k, why oh why would you want to run an ugly, shitball OS like Win98 or WinME?

Even for gaming, Win2k is faster, better, and more stable.

Of course, I may be spoiled by SMP, and the way Win2k effectively uses my 512MB of memory. But...

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[JamesA]

&frac12; GB of memory... &lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;... SMP.. &lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&g t;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool &gt;&lt;drool&gt;&lt;drool&gt;

So, uhm, how does one install Win2K fresh on an empty ATA drive connected to a Promise, say, Ultra100? Does the install have any hiccups (i.e. the OS installer goes bonkers and install the wrong driver? Or does it use a generic one, and I have to update it to the latest/correct one)?

Thanks for the attention to this matter, Gurm.

JamesA

[Gurm]

James,

Step 1: Insert Win2k CD.
Step 2: Turn on PC.
Step 3: Follow on-screen prompts.

- Gurm

P.S. Just in case it DOESN'T see the Promise, for whatever reason, make sure the Promise 2k drivers have been unzipped to the root directory of a floppy and have it handy.

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[DentyCracker]

What Gurm said, including the Promise card. Win2K all de way mon.

[JamesA]

Holy Crap!

<a href="http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10261613&loc=101" target="_blank">Maxtor 30GB DiamondMax Plus 45</a> == $150.95

<a href="http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10253470&loc=101" target="_blank">ULTRA100 PCI EIDE CONTROLLER 2CH 100MB/S BUS MASTER 95/98/NT/W2K</a> == $31.68

Thats CHEAP! Should I go for this config?

JamesA

[Greebe]

James, checkout the last CompUSA (or was it Best Buy???) sale bill. I saw a Maxtox 45 gig drive (after rebate) for $120! There extra super cheapy was their house brand 30 gig for $100 (after rebates)

[Marwyn]

Hey, Gurm you miss something 8-), at the start of install Win2k, you have press "ctrl-s" (or something like this, you can see in botom of the screen) and then installer ask you for inserting FD with drivers for your hardware. If you dont do this instaler copy all necessary files and restart, but then show you message "Boot drive is not valid" or something like this.
Sorry if it is wrong with PCI ATA100, but I have ASUS A7V and there is imposible install Win2k without loding drivers at start of install.

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ASUS A7V &#0124; &#0124;| Duron 700@1010 &#0124; &#0124;| TITAN Majesty -&gt; cooling unit &#0124; &#0124;| 128Mb PC133 &#0124; &#0124;| G400 DH MAX &#0124; &#0124;| SB Live! 1024 &#0124; &#0124;| IBM 25Gb &#0124; &#0124;| HP Writer 7100 &#0124; &#0124;| DVD AOpen 1040 (flash Pionner) &#0124; &#0124;| Win2k
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Only one thing is missing in my life. Save button. (bad English I know...)

[Gurm]

No no. Win2k comes with basic drivers for Promise cards. It does NOT come with drivers for the Highpoint controllers found integrated onto motherboards.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.