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Re: Win98 support 256 MB AGP cards?

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98 Guy

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Sep 23, 2011, 9:29:06 AM9/23/11
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Orson Cart wrote:

> I read somewhere that AGP cards with 256 MB or more would cause
> havoc with Win98.

That is not correct. Win-98 can function just fine with VGA cards with
that much ram.

You *might* have to keep the Video Aperture size in the bios to
something like 128 mb if you have 512 mb (or less) of system ram.

> I imagine that these cards would be the last of the AGP breed
> before switching production to PCI express,

There are some VGA cards with 512 mb of ram, and Win-98 does indeed have
a problem with video cards with 512 mb (or more) of ram.

Some people have gotten PCIe video cards to run under win-98, and again
those must be 256 mb or less.

> and that drivers were not tested or even made for Win9x.

It takes some fiddling with INF files to get PCIe video cards to work
under win-98, and only some specific chipsets (I'm only familiar with
NVidia).

> But is there some innate limitation in how much graphic card
> memory that Windows 98 can handle?

To answer one more time, win-98 can handle AGP cards with 256 mb of ram.

Ammammata

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Sep 23, 2011, 12:39:35 PM9/23/11
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Il giorno Fri 23 Sep 2011 03:29:06p, *98 Guy* inviava su alt.windows98 il
messaggio news:4E7C89A2...@Guy.com. Vediamo cosa scrisse:

> You *might* have to keep the Video Aperture size in the bios to
> something like 128 mb if you have 512 mb (or less) of system ram.

> ----------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I read somewhere on the web that w98 doesn't recognize more than 256mb RAM,
so having 512 or more is useless

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Buffalo

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Sep 23, 2011, 12:34:58 PM9/23/11
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Ammammata wrote:
> Il giorno Fri 23 Sep 2011 03:29:06p, *98 Guy* inviava su
> alt.windows98 il messaggio news:4E7C89A2...@Guy.com. Vediamo
> cosa scrisse:
>
>> You *might* have to keep the Video Aperture size in the bios to
>> something like 128 mb if you have 512 mb (or less) of system ram.
>> ----------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I read somewhere on the web that w98 doesn't recognize more than
> 256mb RAM, so having 512 or more is useless
>

Win98 will usually run just fine with up to 1GB of ram.
You should put in a mod in your system.in file under [vcache]. Add this
line: maxfilecache=51200
Buffalo


Buffalo

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Sep 23, 2011, 4:14:08 PM9/23/11
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Whoops, should have read 512000 and not 51200.
Buffalo


98 Guy

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Sep 23, 2011, 7:17:43 PM9/23/11
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Buffalo wrote:

> > I read somewhere on the web that w98 doesn't recognize more than
> > 256mb RAM, so having 512 or more is useless
>
> Win98 will usually run just fine with up to 1GB of ram.

I think we're talking about two different things here.

The amount of system ram, and the amount of ram on the video card.

98 Guy

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Sep 23, 2011, 7:47:14 PM9/23/11
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Ammammata wrote:

> > You *might* have to keep the Video Aperture size in the bios to
> > something like 128 mb if you have 512 mb (or less) of system ram.
> > ----------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I read somewhere on the web that w98 doesn't recognize more than
> 256mb RAM, so having 512 or more is useless

You're quite wrong about that, but many people have misconceptions about
what is and is not possible regarding Windows 98.

The upper limit for system ram for Windows 98 is something like 1.2 gb
(giga-bytes). It's a strange number - not exactly an even power of 2
(like, say, 512, 1024, 2048, etc).

I personally have installed 1.5 gb of ram into a system running win-98
and with the following settings in the system.ini file have had Windows
system information say that it has 1,213,202,432 bytes or 1157 mb of
system memory.

System.ini
[386Enh]
MaxPhysPage=48800

[vcache]
MinFileCache=2048
MaxFileCache=65536

Windows ME has a hard-limit of about 1.995 gb of system ram.

MotoFox

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Sep 24, 2011, 10:19:46 PM9/24/11
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"I think we're talking about two different things here: the amount of
system RAM, and the amount of RAM on the video card."

Probably. I have 768MB of (system) RAM and a newer 512MB ATI Radeon AGP
board (1280MB, grand total) in my Pentium-IV 98FE/2KS4 machine, and
haven't had a single problem with it. Not even in DOS!

--
MotoFox
Originator of the word "enubulous"

I just tell everybody to run Linux, myself.

The "users are idiots and are confused by functionality" approach of
Apple is a disease. If you design your OS for idiots, only idiots will
use it. I don't use a Macintosh, because in striving to be so simple,
they simply can't do what I need them to do.

Please, just tell everybody to go to Linux.

Buffalo

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Sep 23, 2011, 11:17:31 PM9/23/11
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MaxFileCache=65536 is a low number. But if it worked for you, that is what
counts.
Buffalo
PS: Do you know why the MaxFileCache entry was useful?


Ammammata

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Sep 27, 2011, 6:07:30 AM9/27/11
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Il giorno Fri 23 Sep 2011 06:39:35p, *Ammammata* inviava su
alt.windows98 il messaggio
news:Xns9F69B3A1A56E6am...@194.177.97.96. Vediamo cosa
scrisse:

> I read somewhere on the web that w98 doesn't recognize more than 256mb
> RAM, so having 512 or more is useless
>
>

thank you to all for the answers :)
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