WIN98 Known Hardware Testing conflicts Tech Info Here
Micro
On Wed, 31 Dec 1997 03:45:07 GMT, the phantom@ (Norton) wrote:
>Hello and Happy New Year. we've been benchmarking/testing this for 2 weeks now
>and it sure seems like crap. while some things are nicer, overall i'd say all
>the new .vxd's USB'S Universal drivers etc. aren't worth a crap.The following
>is BAD for sure. Intel's Smart Video Recorder and recorder 3. yes you can use
>an earlier mmdevldr.vxd but Intel's drivers,New,old whatever hang like a
>bitch. Matrox Rainbow Runner won't initialize still screwing with that. CDROM
>chager devices from NEC & Panasonic are NOT being recognized although they
>were fine under OSR 2.1. we can only get single cdroms to work. this is
>similar to NT4 which has problems with cd changers also. Scanners seem better
>under Win98 however i beleive this is more due to win98's memory management
>being better not necessarily the O/S. there seems fewer lockups with Microtek
>&HP scanners. we have different test machines here with different
>configurtations and have verified on more than one setup. Also Video Cards. We
>use the Matrox Millenium/Millenium2 & Mystique cards and Number 9's cards.
>Win98 attempts to force an IRQ use wheter the card requires or not. you can
>disable in bios but 98 still assigns no matter what. this was not done under
>previous windows.anyway hope some of this info is helpful to you all deciding
>what O/S to use. Remember you will get LITTLE if NO support for 98. I've been
>in contact with the following vendors, Matrox,Creative Labs,Number 9, HP,
>Adaptec. ALL have NO comment on 98 and also have stated to us that they
>HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN this O/S yet. it's amazing that MickySoft would give O/S'S
>to everyone EXCEPT vendors who are gonna have to support this thing. Good
>Luck.
HP, Adaptec, Number 9, and Creative Labs all supplied MS with
the drivers used in Win98 for their respective products. Matrox also,
with the exception of the Millenium II. They were unable to supply a
properly workong driver by the cut-off date. They have promised a
working driver for it by release. Intel is working on supplying
working drivers for SVR III and also promises them in time for
release. It is (or should be) common Knowledge that MS does not write
hardware specific drivers for their OS'es. They are supplied to it by
the vendors. MS writes generic drivers. As to why they wouldn't talk
to you, maybe you didn't talk to the right people. As far as the "no
comment", that is standard policy with non-disclosure agreements.
Video card Irq usage by Win98 is generally determined by
whether or not the MB bios has this feature enabled or not. Does your
MB allow disabling Video card Irq usage ? USB driver install is also
handled in this manner. There have not been reports of problems with
the USB vxd's. Devices other than generic (2-button mice , keyboards
etc.) should in most cases be supplying there own specific drivers, if
they need other than a "generic" driver.
As far as CD changers not being recognized by Win98, there do
not appear to be any reported problems in this area. A few bugs in
playing audio disks from other than the 1st slot in some changers but
all have been recognized. Did you install Win98 "clean" and are you
using Beta3 ?
Also I am curious as to how you are benchmarking Win98 as
there are currently no fully compatible benchmarks publicly available.
The ZD-net folks are promising one "soon" though.
Just curious, Why did you post to so many groups except
alt.windows95.beta and comp.os.ms-windows.pre-release where some of
your questions (?) could be answered ? If you post specifics, there
are many there that can help. Also if you are a "tester" , the private
groups have more help. Don't forget that this is still a Beta OS and
not ready for release.
Micro