rec.autos.simulators

Well, last night I had a hard drive burn up on me, and unfortunately it was
my c: drive.  So I am in the process of obtaining a replacement to install
tonight.  Since I have to do a clean install of my OS, I am seriously
considering upgrading (it would be an upgrade, right?) to WIN2K.  If I don't
upgrade, I will be using WIN98 (non-SE).  I'm about 98% certain that all
software that I have and use will continue to operate without a problem.  My
main concern right now is hardware compatability, especially my Voodoo3 2000
video card and my Act Labs RS wheel and shifter (connected via USB).  If it
helps, the rest of the system is a PIII-450 on an ABIT Bsomething-6 mobo,
3COM network card, old Soundblaster sound card (16 PnP).  I'll be tracking
down web-sites and updated drivers today, but I wanted to go ahead and post
this to see if anyone has any warnings, advice, etc., that may help me out.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Jeff Causey
FrogDog Racing
Owner - FrogDog Racing Server, http://www.racesimcentral.net/
JCausey_FD, Bellstar Racing Series, Outlaw Division,
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
JCausey_FD, Assistant Director - Flashpoint Racing Series, On-line Division,
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
JCausey_FD, SNARL Truck Series,
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

<snip>

I don't know a great deal about this, but I get the impression that
Win2K, being the sequel to NT4, is not the way to go for ***. I
doubt its DirectX support is quite as bad as NT4, but I also doubt it's
anywhere near as good as Win98. Maybe some hardware guru is around...

--
David. (GPLRank handicap: +19.68)
"After all, a mere thousand yards - such a harmless little knoll,
really."
(Raymond Mays on Shelsley Walsh)

I'm not expert here... but i beleive GPL and Win2K is a 'no-no'.

Ed_

If you use your PC primarily for entertainment, ***, web etc then I do
not recommend upgrading to Win2000.
Win2000 is not an upgrade for Win98, it is a replacement.  Win2000 is WinNT
5.0.  You'd be surprised how many drivers, programs etc do not work with
Win2000 (my $$##!! DSL drivers for one)  Wait for Microsoft to release
Windows ME (Millenium Edition)  This OS is optimized for *** and
multimedia.

I have Win98 SE, Linux, WinNT 4.0 and Win2000 on my machine at home and
there is not one single game that runs better under Win2000.  Win2000 should
be your choice if you use your machine for business or to host a web site.
Otherwise, you're better off with Win98 SE for now.

Cheers,
...Colin

Everyone is going to have their own opinion on this, here's mine...

MS has comitted to keeping W2K current with DirectX.  W2K and the Win9x line
will, until the death of Win9x, be equivalent in this respect.

W2K is a fully 32-bit true multitasking OS.  In short, it's powerful.
*Every* multimedia app and game *I* have runs faster and smoother in W2K.
There are two common reasons why people experience the opposite:

1) W2K needs RAM, 128 MB is the absolute minimum for good performance
2) Some manufacturers (especially video card) are slow in getting good
drivers released.  My ATi Rage Fury has awesome W2K drivers.  They're beta
and they perform better than the mature Win98 drivers.

Yes, W2K is not a "***" OS but as an overall "power user" OS it's great.

FYI, I run the following games in W2K:

GPL (D3D patch - works much better than in W98)
Sports Car GT
F1 2000
Half-Life
Alpha Centauri
Homeworld
NFS: Porsche Unlimited

The bad news is many older games won't work.  If they expect to address the
sound card directly or use non-standard components you may be in for
trouble.  I have a chess game that won't run simply because it tries to use
a older/customized version of comctl32.dll.

There are beta drivers for Win2000 for the Force RS and they use only your
USB port. That being said, if things were running okay in Win98, I'd stick
to it. You will, without a doubt, run into some program you use that won't
work with Win2000. Also, don't worry about SE. I have the upgrade and full
versions. I had it installed for a short time and pulled it off. Many
computers won't even shut down properly with SE. I guess the MS programmers
never turn their machines off. (Yes I know, there is a patch or hack that
can force SE to shut down.)  From what I heard, some of the MS guys were
calling SE, Sucker Edition. I was putting it on the computers I build for
others for a while, but I don't even do that anymore.

(all you guys with SE that are happy with it, I'm glad for you, but please
don't tell me about it)

--
Slot

www.slottweak.com
Tweaks & Reviews

Try the generic wheel driver that's built in (or maybe you have).  You can
also do "design" a custom wheel.

No drivers for my wheel either but the default works fine except for a few
buttons that don't work.  No biggie, I just asssigned functions to other
(working) buttons on the wheel.

--

Maybe the best way to go here is to use a dual boot with W98 and W2K,
and try both for a while.  I devoted 1.5 g to a W2K partition, and I
found that some things run better, very few worse, and quite a few
don't run at all.  First Person Shooters do run better, IMHO, but I
can't vouch for race sims since my wheel has no W2K drivers.