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re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:11 pm Posted by C K (6525 messages posted) What game are you trying to run? NT4 isn't plug and play for hardware as is W2K. I had to configure the hardware in NT. Try working with NT and you will be glad for W2K, which had the installing and hardware configuration routines that Win 9X did. I still have a P5A that runs Win 9X and W2K without a hiccup (512 meg of RAM). Finally going to give it away. But it was a great little machine and always stable even if it was a little slow. If you are having issues with your installs on it, you well may have a board that is going bad, or a piece of hardware that is causing issues. I have mine overclocked from 500 to 550 on the processor and not a problem with BSODs or corruption. I did however find that UDMA wouldn't function right in Win 98 or Win NT, but would function correctly with W2K on the ACPI HAL. It was to slow for XP and the Standard PC HAL had to be used as the ACPI HAL wouldn't work. SO the P5A is best suited for Win 9X or W2K, but not NT or XP IME.. You might get lucky to find help with NT4 here, but don't count on it. It was a bear to work with and I for one couldn't wait to see it go. It will NOT be game friendly in my experience. W2K was better, but not as good as Win 98 SE on a good stable hardware platform. IME Games got the proper support in Win XP Home finally. But you needed more hardware horsepower as compared to Win 98. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 10:26 am Posted by Kiwi (2207 messages posted) With the passage of time, in my mind, NT4 had shifted from being truly more contemporary with Windows 3.1, which is where it seems to be technologically (now seen as that, after some research), to have seemed as if it had fit between W95 and W98. But as you say, the prospects of using NT4 are depressing. It really is backward -- not even capable of booting from FAT32 through its last service pack. The game is a flying sim, Freespace -- the SF fighter sim, and in the past, when I've tried anything similar on vastly newer hardware than matches to such games, the controls are so twitchy that the simulation is a failure. I had my last salaried position when the game and Win98 were new, and was putting in long hours for a very unappreciative and unrewarding employer. I missed most of the entertainments of the day. My own old PCs then were a P1/233 MMX, and a P2/400, and the original MBs from both of those failed to survive 'till now. The P2/400 was in an Intel MB, the last such I'll ever use; the P1/233 was using some now unknown brand, "VIP", for its mainboard. But not too long after I had set those two aside, I had exposure to my first ALi Aladdin board, a Biostar M5ALA. I never got either the network nor the USB ports to work on either of two M5ALAs, and had trouble with using my older nVIDIA video cards / drivers as well. Nevertheless, that P5A received nothing but the most glowing reviews back in its time frame. Now that I have time for games, and a sizable collection of outdated PC components in my shop, I've obtained copies of some interesting-sounding oldies from that "too-busy" part of my life. Freespace and Arcanum are the first two I'm going to try. But neither of two P5As is very good at keeping track of its NICs, not in Win98 especially, but will also lose track when running Win2K. I blame the chipset. I really didn't want to actually have to spend money on anything but my old games, either. Nevertheless, for $4-$6 each, plus $2.50 - $3.50 shipping, I bought three sound cards, and finally got a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz to work. Wrapping up a long & rambling story, instead of the P5A, a Soyo SY5-EMA+ (Via MVP3 chipset) seems a much more likely platform now. Thanks for the reply. . Kiwi ** On Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:11 pm, C K wrote: >What game are you trying to run? NT4 isn't plug and play for hardware as is W2K. > I had to configure the hardware in NT. Try working with NT and you will be glad >for W2K, which had the installing and hardware configuration routines that Win 9X >did. > >I still have a P5A that runs Win 9X and W2K without a hiccup (512 meg of RAM). Finally >going to give it away. But it was a great little machine and always stable even >if it was a little slow. If you are having issues with your installs on it, you >well may have a board that is going bad, or a piece of hardware that is causing issues. > I have mine overclocked from 500 to 550 on the processor and not a problem with >BSODs or corruption. I did however find that UDMA wouldn't function right in Win >98 or Win NT, but would function correctly with W2K on the ACPI HAL. It was to slow >for XP and the Standard PC HAL had to be used as the ACPI HAL wouldn't work. SO >the P5A is best suited for Win 9X or W2K, but not NT or XP IME.. > >You might get lucky to find help with NT4 here, but don't count on it. It was a >bear to work with and I for one couldn't wait to see it go. It will NOT be game >friendly in my experience. W2K was better, but not as good as Win 98 SE on a good >stable hardware platform. IME > >Games got the proper support in Win XP Home finally. But you needed more hardware >horsepower as compared to Win 98. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 2:57 pm Posted by DEX (11846 messages posted) Dealing with Unwanted Spyware and Parasites Click Here hi Kiwi The WOW command is made to do that job.. See the HELP in win2k about it and how to run the command.. in short it loads up the win.ini and the system.ini to load the drivers and commands to run the old game..or software.. ============= Are you a wood worker ?,if so Click Here On Monday, May 25, 2009 at 9:24 am, Kiwi wrote: >I skipped from Win98 to Win2000 at about the time WinXP was released, having tested >WinME and found it problematic. I never tested any NT version before W2K, nor have >I done so since. > >However, I want to try something with an old software application (old game, actually). > The developer claimed it would run in NT4, W98, or W95. The particular PC I had >the game installed on was specifically assembled for old games, with an Asus P5A, >but the OS has been flaky ever since I installed, reinstalled, wiped clean & again >reinstalled, on that machine. > >I never had such a volume of problems back during '98 to '02, while using that OS >daily. I may test with WinNT 4.0 work station to see if things improve. Would the >Win2000 forum here at Annoyances be where to ask NT4 stuff? > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 5:11 am Posted by Kiwi (2207 messages posted) Good to hear from you, Dex! As I told CK, I'd forgotten the technological levels of the various Windows, else I'd never have come up with the NT4 idea. But on this MB, even the Win2000 setup has dropped USB when I added my second USB appliance ("slim" keyboard by Irock that makes needed space for the trackball on a too-narrow keyboard tray). It is possible that the (not revealed in any review of the board) incompatibilities between the chipset and the nVIDIA video cards could be an influence. I already removed a TNT2 card earlier, but just replaced it with a GF2 GTS. I have some kind of Rage 128, with either 8 MBs or maybe 16 MBs, of RAM, that I can try. . Kiwi ** On Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 2:57 pm, DEX wrote: > > > >hi Kiwi > >The WOW command is made to do that job.. > >See the HELP in win2k about it and how to run the command.. > >in short it loads up the win.ini and the system.ini to load the drivers and commands >to run the old game..or software.. > > >============= > > > Are you a wood worker ?,if so Click Here > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:08 pm Posted by C K (6525 messages posted) Hmmm.. My old P5A runs some of those old DOS games under Win 98SE pretty well to just fine or I boot to DOS with some added software for memory handling. Never had an issue with losing access to any hardware while running, and the USB ports worked fine under W2K. The P5A has a 3DFX VOODOO 3-3000 video card with a set of tweaked drivers after support was dropped, a Netgear 10/100 NIC and I had an SB PCI128 and more recently an SB 64 Gold audio card(s) that I had laying around. Installed the last BETA BIOS.. All have worked without a hitch, both under Win 9X and W2K. In my opinion and observation back then, I thought the Soyo boards were more stable and less buggy, at least the ones I built in comparing Asus and Soyo, and the Soyo's seemed to be a little faster. Now the P5A just sits in a nice little Enermax tooless case, in a box on the shelf as I had tweaked out one of my Asus P2B-DS 1 gig P3's to run Win 95 thru ME by swapping HDD trays. The older games for the most part run pretty well, when I do have time to sit and play. I would give the P5A away if someone wanted it! It does email and surfing just fine and although it is a little slow under W2K, it never crashed unless I had a buggy program. LOL [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Friday, May 29, 2009 at 3:19 pm Posted by Curt R (1 messages posted) Your mistake is trying to run any games on either NT 4.0 (or earlier) or Windows 2000. Neither in my experience is any good for gaming. I cut my computing teeth in industry on NT 4.0 and ran 2000 for quite some time at home and found that neither was worth bothering with from a gaming standpoint. I dual booted fairly quickly with 2000 and 98 and used 98 exclusively for gaming. If you really want to run an older game on an older PC, install 98 and forget about NT, 2000 and ME. On Monday, May 25, 2009 at 9:24 am, Kiwi wrote: >I skipped from Win98 to Win2000 at about the time WinXP was released, having tested >WinME and found it problematic. I never tested any NT version before W2K, nor have >I done so since. > >However, I want to try something with an old software application (old game, actually). > The developer claimed it would run in NT4, W98, or W95. The particular PC I had >the game installed on was specifically assembled for old games, with an Asus P5A, >but the OS has been flaky ever since I installed, reinstalled, wiped clean & again >reinstalled, on that machine. > >I never had such a volume of problems back during '98 to '02, while using that OS >daily. I may test with WinNT 4.0 work station to see if things improve. Would the >Win2000 forum here at Annoyances be where to ask NT4 stuff? > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 9:12 am Posted by Kiwi (2207 messages posted) The Biostar MB, M5ALA, with the same chipset, was also problematic while running Geforce video cards, and with Creative's drivers. I never did get any NIC working on that one in Win98se. But it's not the DOS prompt in W9X that I want to use (for that, when I am nostalgic enough for "sprite-based" graphics, I think I will try DOSbox). I never had a separate 3D accellerator like a VooDoo, just the usual ATI / S3 / etc before the Rivas came along and turned the 2D vs 3D apple cart on its head. I had Soyo boards in the 386 / 486 time frame, and had good service from them. The one I have now doesn't know what a "fast boot" is, however, compared to the Asus P5A's quickness getting the POST over with, and an OS loaded (I'm arguing with an odd keyboard here while writing this. It's an Ideazon Merc "stealth", and the key pad is a silly jumble -- explaining the sig now being below the quote!). I think that I've mentioned that my first Pentium PC used the Via VP or MVP chipset (I don't recall it being so slow to POST); I have hopes it will be as good this time as that one was back then, but I am going to try running the P5A with an ATI "SDR" card as its last chance before I break that one back down into components! May 28, 2009 at 10:08 pm, C K wrote: >Hmmm.. My old P5A runs some of those old DOS games under Win 98SE pretty well to >just fine or I boot to DOS with some added software for memory handling. Never had >an issue with losing access to any hardware while running, and the USB ports worked >fine under W2K. The P5A has a 3DFX VOODOO 3-3000 video card with a set of tweaked >drivers after support was dropped, a Netgear 10/100 NIC and I had an SB PCI128 and >more recently an SB 64 Gold audio card(s) that I had laying around. Installed the >last BETA BIOS.. All have worked without a hitch, both under Win 9X and W2K. In >my opinion and observation back then, I thought the Soyo boards were more stable >and less buggy, at least the ones I built in comparing Asus and Soyo, and the Soyo's >seemed to be a little faster. > >Now the P5A just sits in a nice little Enermax tooless case, in a box on the shelf >as I had tweaked out one of my Asus P2B-DS 1 gig P3's to run Win 95 thru ME by swapping >HDD trays. The older games for the most part run pretty well, when I do have time >to sit and play. I would give the P5A away if someone wanted it! It does email >and surfing just fine and although it is a little slow under W2K, it never crashed >unless I had a buggy program. LOL . Kiwi ** [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 9:32 am Posted by Kiwi (2207 messages posted) I had very good teeth when I started in computing, with Big Iron hardware (very early IBM 360), and rather poor dentures when I tested the Betas for XP and wasn't well impressed, with either one (false teeth or WindowsXP). Before VGA and Super VGA, DOS PCs had terrible game graphics, and everyone who gamed very much with any desktop PC platform, had either an Atari 800 or a C64 from Commodore. It was very late in DOS' heyday when EGA was supplanted by VGA. Windows 3.0 got going just about the same time. It took the 486s and VGA to make x86 computers game platforms that were worthy of the name, but we really had little fun setting up various menus for loading multiple sets of Autoexec / Config files to suit the games of the period. However, it's the W9X games I am now reprising, and it was Win98 I was complaining about. I had long since had my rounds with OSR2 (W95's final version) not enabling USB, nor working properly with a LAN, and gave up on that, but I'd somehow managed to forget (blame it on age) that WinNT was more primitive than Windows95 had been! . Kiwi ** On Friday, May 29, 2009 at 3:19 pm, Curt R wrote: > Your mistake is trying to run any games on either NT 4.0 (or earlier) or Windows >2000. Neither in my experience is any good for gaming. I cut my computing >teeth in industry on NT 4.0 and ran 2000 for quite some time at home and found that >neither was worth bothering with from a gaming standpoint. I dual booted fairly >quickly with 2000 and 98 and used 98 exclusively for gaming. If you really want >to run an older game on an older PC, install 98 and forget about NT, 2000 and ME. > > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Would NT4 questions, if any, be on-topic in this forum? Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 8:21 am Posted by Steve (21645 messages posted) You probably never used XP on a decent Computer. Like around 2 GHz, and 512megs minimum Ram. I now find these laying around for free. Just put out the word to some friends, and you might find someone willing to get rid of one because they have bought a Newer model. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Why did I ask an NT4 question, and what is my hardware situation? Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 9:19 am Posted by Kiwi (2207 messages posted) I generally avoid creating sigs with the kind of e-Penis Bragadocio evidenced by many younger 'net messagers, with all of the components of their best PC shown, unless it is more or less required by the site's rules. My best hardware is running an overclocked AMD X2 6000 on a 790 chipset MB, with a Sapphire HD 3870 video card, 2 GBs of high speed Crucial Ballistix DDR2 RAM, all of that sort of stuff, etc and so forth. And I prefer W2K when any choice is available, but presently have a dedicated Hdd in that PC, with the W7 RC installed. My second and third-best are also AMD processor equipped; one has a single core A64 4000, s939 interface, with a Radeon X1950 Pro Video card. The other has an X2 4800 with an X1900 XT Video card. Both have the same 2 GBs of the older DDR(1) RAM that matched with the s939 hardware. It's only at the third rank level that I've ended up with any Intel processor gear. You wrote: >You probably never used XP on a decent Computer. Ha! FUNNY BOY! . Kiwi ** [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Why did I ask an NT4 question, and what is my hardware situation? Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 10:27 am Posted by Steve (21645 messages posted) You need something in between the ASUS P5A, and what you got now. Then you would have a PC that could run either XP or 98 well for a good old gaming PC. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Why did I ask an NT4 question, and what is my hardware situation? Monday, June 1, 2009 at 9:11 am Posted by Kiwi (2207 messages posted) Rather than proceed in the generally non-OS related, non- Windows related, direction that I'd allowed the thread to go into, there's been an answer to this, but it was sent to Steve back- channel, instead. Thanks, everyone! . Kiwi ** On Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 10:27 am, Steve wrote: >You need something in between the ASUS P5A, and what you got now. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows 2000 Discussion Forum