Win98SE

[Bucket]

I'm revisiting my DOS gaming laptop and I need a good source port that will run on 98. The laptop is a Thinkpad with a 400MHz P2 and 256MB of RAM. If anyone knows offhand the latest versions of Odamex/ZDoom/etc. that support DOSWIN, I'd appreciate it.

[Maes]

Last time I tinkered with a Windows 98 system (in 2009), I recall that the then-current ZDoom and prBoom(+?) would run on it.

[Bucket]

I could always find a legacy version from 1998 but I prefer to use the latest software that's compatible.

[VGA]

It would be interesting if you could test the current versions of the popular ports. Most will not even run because they are compiled with a modern version of MS Visual C++ compiler, so it's going to be a quick test session :-D

Odamex is supposedly win98 compatible:
http://odamex.net/wiki/FAQ#Intel_x86

[chungy]

Chocolate Doom 2.2.1 might still run, it's built with SDL 1.2 and Mingw32. I'm not really aware of anyone actually testing its use on Windows 9x though :P

This is guaranteed to change at least with version 3.0 -- SDL 2.x lacks support for Windows 9x entirely, even if the older toolchain was used.

[Coraline]

I want to request running 3DGE on the system - both 1.36f and 2.0.2. Nothing has changed that would affect it but apparently one user ran into issues. At this point the port can only move forward but I'm just curious if it still can.

[Blzut3]

Latest versions of ZDoom should still work with Windows 98 (and NT4). If they don't, let us know since it's probably something trivial.

Last I tested it, ZDoom worked perfectly. The startup console has some trouble rendering with the default KernelEx settings, but if you change the compatibility settings (I forget just what I needed to change, but I think it was the reported Windows version) it will render perfectly. (IIRC I discovered this was a KernelEx problem since it ran perfectly on a stock 98SE system.) In any case though the game itself ran without issues.

[Maes]

As long as an app (and all of its libraries) stick to the subset of library functions defined in the original Win32 specs, there should be no problems, and esp. apps that have been around for very long or only do specific tasks, have little serious reason to suddenly cease working (and if they do, it can often be fixed easily if one knows where to look and accepts using a less convenient substitute for a function, or doing things "the old way" for compatibility's sake).

However, since my job involved maintaining a large x-platform app which still relies on VS2005, I can appreciate how apparently innocuous moves such as "upgrading to the latest compiler" or using a more convenient library function for a task, may ruin backwards compatibility in unexpected ways. It may be trivial to keep it afloat, but development usually has other priorities, so it really boils down to a lone developer's good will to perform and verify such changes, outside of the team's mainstream development goals.

In the best case, the code will become a mess of #ifdefs, specially-developed branches etc.

BTW, the above doesn't cover the case of using 3D libraries such as OpenGL and DirectX, and using specific GPU features/Shaders. Those are in a league of their own. I was referring to "clean" apps.

[Graf Zahl]

And even then one has to ask the question when sticking to an old compiler and an outdated language standard becomes too much of a burden.

This 'we want to be as backwards compatible as possible' syndrome effectively keeps most Doom engines from transitioning to a modern C or C++ standard.

I'd rather see them embrace C++11, even if it means ditching pre XP Windows versions.

[Avoozl]

Ah Win98SE my first Windows OS on my first PC, it's such a shame that I dumped that PC before moving out last year but I destroyed its power supply only months before that.

I've been thinking of getting a gaming laptop with Win98SE on it if any exist so I can play Doom the old way and other games such as Blood.

[Maes]

Well, if all you want to do is verify functionality on Win98SE (and not necessarily getting playable speeds and responses) you can install Win98SE in a VM and give it a go. That will be enough to verify merely that a port does indeed start and run, but don't expect any kind of real-time performance.

[fraggle]

In all honesty you're probably best off using Boom/MBF or really old versions of ZDoom. I wouldn't waste time trying to run modern source ports.

Chocolate Doom is known to "nominally" run on Win9x, but I've had bug reports from people who have tried it, saying that they experienced crashes, for reasons I've never been able to figure out. It really underscores the fact that neither modern source ports nor the libraries they depend on are tested on these old systems, and trying to use them is really a futile effort.

[Quasar]

fraggle said:

In all honesty you're probably best off using Boom/MBF or really old versions of ZDoom. I wouldn't waste time trying to run modern source ports.

Chocolate Doom is known to "nominally" run on Win9x, but I've had bug reports from people who have tried it, saying that they experienced crashes, for reasons I've never been able to figure out. It really underscores the fact that neither modern source ports nor the libraries they depend on are tested on these old systems, and trying to use them is really a futile effort.

Similar reports against EE were always backtraced to SDL.

[VGA]

Developers of these hobby projects should care about 99%+ of the users, not the 0.5%

And since 99%+ of windows users use XP and newer OSes ...

[Graf Zahl]

VGA said:

Developers of these hobby projects should care about 99%+ of the users, not the 0.5%

And since 99%+ of windows users use XP and newer OSes ...

Not only hobby programmers.
Professionals tend to care even less, because the added work needed to support these 0.5% tends to far outweigh the benefits of having this support.

Windows users can consider themselves lucky that a 14 year old OS still gets common support. On all other platforms it's far worse.

But the line has to be drawn somewhere. On my job with Windows it's:

- for internal tools, Vista and up (but only because '7 and up' does not exist as a target.)
- for released products, it's normally XP and up, unless it depends on some newer API.

But 98? Our toolchain doesn't even support that fossil anymore.

[CODOR]

Are DOS ports okay? Apparently someone recently updated MBF...

[Maes]

What about ME, NT4 and 2000? ;)

[ReFracture]

+1 on running Boom 2.02. Classic source port, that.

I believe I ran ZDoom 2.0.63a on Windows 98 for quite some time. It's one of the earliest versions with an uncapped framerate if that matters to you.

[Nuxius]

I have one with similar (possibly the same) specs (400MHz PII, 256MB RAM, 2.5MB NeoMagic MagicMedia 256av Graphics, 1024x768 res, 14.1GB Hard Drive, Windows 98). I keep it around to run older programs.

Last source port I ever tried on it was ZDoom 2.1.7. Ran it with no problems.

I might try some newer ones later on, solely out of curiosities sake.