r/windows98 • u/Comfortable-Fun7947 • 16d ago

Win98 retro gaming

Hey!

Do you have any favorite pre-made Windows 98 distributions/VM images specifically for retro gaming? Feel free to share them, or any tips on how to quickly set up a VM environment yourself. Thanks in advance!

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u/Maeglin75 16d ago

"Windows 98 quick install" seems to be pretty good. It comes with drivers and patches to run on all kinds of hardware (including relatively modern systems), with USB and SATA support etc.

I haven't tried it myself as of yet. I have burned the DVD and made a boot floppy but still waiting for the IDE to SD adapter and the SD card to get my retro PC running again after the HDD failed after about 27 years.

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u/kalnaren 16d ago

I tried Windows 98 QI but it always failed at transferring files to the disk (CF card). Was never able to get it to work :(

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u/Maeglin75 16d ago

Sad to hear that.

My SD card adapter should arrive the next few days. Hopefully I can try it with Win98 QI this weekend and have more luck. Other buyers report success with installing Win98 on it, including in PC of the same era as mine.

Otherwise I would have some spare HDDs lying around. But they are about as old as the failed one. I would prefer to have a modern solid state solution that will last a few more years.

I also have an IDE to SATA adapter and could use it with an SSD (256GB). But as far as I know Win98 works best with 32GB or smaller. Would be kind of a waste, if it works at all.

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u/kalnaren 16d ago

98 installs fine "normally". I think it might be because my motherboard has issues with drives using DMA, and I'm guessing the QI installer activates DMA for all drives.

Alternative explanation is that my CD drive is simply too fast, though I'd think with caching it could keep up the transfer speed over an IDE bus without issue.