rec.autos.simulators

   Is WIN 98 ready for prime time?  Or should I stick with WIN 95?  

                                                             Larry

Games that do seem to work ok with Win98 that I own and have tested are as
follows:  LB Gold,  FA18 Korea, Jedi Knight,  FS98, MOTS, AWIII, Janes FA,
Moto Racer, Red Alert & add on's, Quake 2, MTM2, F15, Descent II, Outlaws,
Unreal and a few more.

The default drivers that Win98 installed for my Monster3D and Viper 330 seem
to work ok but AW3 doesn't want to display map text with the Riva drivers.
My 3Dfx has no problem with that.  Things just keep getting more and more
complicated.  Oh well,  maybe if I get a new USB Joystick, my LB2/Hat Switch
problem will disappear.  Who knows.

Haha, that depends on who you ask :-)  If you do decide to go to Win98...
format that drive and install it fresh and clean. Upgrading to Win98
leaves a lot of garbage*** around. I've not had any problems with
it, even on NROS, so I'd say go for it. Just do a backup hehe.

bill

Well, I had some real problems when I tried installing it over Win95,
but after doing a clean install, everything seems peachy.  It runs
thing fairly well, as long as you dump the active stuff.  However, if
your 95 is running well, you might just want to stay put.

Zero
--------------------------------------------------
http://home.earthlink.net/~zeropoint/
Flight links, The Apollo Program, Saitek Files,
and more!  Just humor me.

Rule #2 - It will always be there when you do need it.

Joe

On Wed, 08 Jul 1998 18:29:55 -0700, Laurence Lindstrom

If you are not running the OSR2 version of Win '95, then you might want to
consider taking your chances as the FAT32 feature will help you free up alot of
disk-space.  Otherwise, I would probably say to sit tight and wait for that 1st
Service Pack to come out before messing with your operating system.

However if you just want to throw caution to the wind.  Make sure that
motherboard manufacturer says that everything is Win'98 friendly (otherwise you
will have to do a BIOS update if available) and that all your drivers are
kosher as well :-)

F1Filter

I did a clean install of Win98, and it took me a weekend to get
everything sorted out.  I couldn't get my Zoom 56kflex internal modem
to work (I solved this by shuffling Com ports between the modem and my
mouse).  Direct3D games kept crashing on my Righteous3D (I solved this
by using Orchid's drivers, not the Win98 drivers).  And of course I
had to reinstall most of my software.

Now everything works, including my Saitek X36/PC-Dash controllers.
F-15, Longbow 2, iF-16, M1TP2, SM's Gettysburg, CivII, Battlezone,
Descent Freespace, and Links98 are the games I've played (or at least
tested since re-installing), and they all run fine, as do all of my
productivity applications.

Win98 is performing much better than my old Win95 installation did.
Converting to Fat32 increased my available disk space by about 25%.
The OS starts up and shuts down considerably faster.  There are a few
minor features that are handy, and one major one -- multiple monitor
support -- that I wish I could use (but my system has no more IRQ's to
devote to another video card).

The improvements are generally minor, though, and the performance
benefits are as compared to an old Win95 installation on a jalopy of a
P200MMX.  My family's system -- also a P200MMX, but in a much newer
chassis and with Win95 OSR2 installed -- performs just as well (or
better), and has most of the same functionality.  I will definitely
*not* do a Win98 update on that system unless something forces me to.

Win98 is not a major upgrade.  If you have Win95 OSR1, though, I think
it's worthwhile.  If you have OSR2, then probably not.  

I'd recommend a clean install.  And plan to spend some time on it.

RichC
Remove SPAMTRAP from return address when replying.

   I know you're coming from RAS, in the flight sim group,
we KNOW how to start a REAL fight.  

                                                    Larry

   WIN 95 was broken when it hit the CD.  I guess the
question is, how broken is WIN 98?  

   My programs are running in about 20 Solaris and
SCO boxes around the world, I've heard of one or
two crashes in four years.  And these are critical
tasks, I would have heard.  

   How many times has your WIN 95 crashed this week?  
I've lost count.  I have OSR2, the new USB version.  

   This isn't THAT big a deal, it's not like I'm
betting my business on WIN95. After a fresh recovery
from tape, I can run for a day, then one crash, might
be F1RS blue screen, or Netscape freeze, and a hard
reboot with Scandisk, then it starts to get more
frequent.  Each crash/hard reboot/Scandisk seems to
weaken the flimsy foundation until I can't get through
a race or a flight.  Then it's time for a recovery
from tape.  

                                                Larry

   Maybe you can save me from re-building WIN 95 from scratch.  
This should go to one of the WIN 95 newsgroups, but we're
friends here, so I'll run it by you first.  

   My problem is that I have two SCSI drives as C: and D:.  My
CD is E:.  The WIN 95 partitions for these drives, which are
shared with Solaris, are 1 and 2 GIG.  C: is my "System" drive,
and D: is my "Sim" drive.  As you know, 2 GIGs ain't what it
used to be, and I'm already removing this sim to add that sim.  

   Solaris likes to have multiple drives working at the same
time, so I added a third drive.  This is one of those 9 GIG
monsters, so I have some spare room for sims.  When I try to
use this, I thought my CD would be bumped to F:, and my new
drive would assume the name E:.  No such luck.  It just
doesn't seem to work.  

   So I'm planning to rebuild WIN 95, from scratch, with the
new drive all set up.  I wouldn't need to do this if I could
re-name my CD "F:".  

   Does anybody know how to do this?  

                                                      Thanks
                                                      Larry