Subj : Re: Reinstalling W98
To   : MIKE ROSS
From : Alan Zisman
Date : Sat Feb 12 2005 11:23 am

-=> MIKE ROSS wrote to Alan Zisman <=-

 MR> While you are here, I was upgrading a box dedicated to MIDI from a 486
 MR> DX4-120 + PCI video to a pentium-120 (socket 7) and the o.s. from w3.1
 MR> to w95. I wanted to use w95 because it loads pretty fast compared to
 MR> w98se. Problem is the p120 + w95 exhibits dropped notes with the
 MR> softwave synthesis no matter the resolution quality setting. The
 MR> problem doesn't happen right away but after a few 10's of seconds into
 MR> a song playback when things get busy. I didn't want to upgrade the
 MR> sound card to hardware wave synthesis ($$$).
 MR> [,,,]
 AZ> Sorry... I don't really have anything I could say about this that
 AZ> wouldn't be guesswork. In most case, Win95 drivers will work with
 AZ> Win98SE, so that is probably worth a try.


 MR> Yes, I was hoping it will still work. Do programs run noticeably
 MR> faster under w98se than under w95 or what? I'll load a different hd
 MR> into the p120 and try it then but the time w98se takes to load is a
 MR> dog. I'll try to bare bones the configuration, get rid of networks,
 MR> and hope the loading speeds up a bit. Otherwise the only thing left
 MR> will be the pIImmx+w98se box.

I don't find noticeable performance improvements for W98SE compared to W95... 
if anything, on older hardware, you're more likely to notice the opposite, as 
W98 loads more code. However, with the increasing lack of support for W95, you 
may have no choice.

 AZ> If the 486/Win3.1 box was working fine, why upgrade it?

 MR> The software synthesis for that card adds more than twice the
 MR> instrument sounds and many drum sets (9?) under w95 + pentium. Under
 MR> w3.1 it is restricted to general midi which has about 127 intruments,
 MR> not bad, but only 1 drum set and this is limiting from time to time.

 Hopefully it will work for you!
.... Inet mail to: alan at zisman dot ca
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