TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Valantar]

ME?! NOOO! It screams for 2K!

W2k was awesome. 95% of the functionality of XP, 0% of the jank of ME and 98SE. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever actually ran XP while it was current, thanks to 2K just being that good (and not having a Fisher-Price style GUI, of course).

 

[Ruru]

For 2000 I'm going 440BX. VIA 693 seems like a more suitable platform for ME.

Fuck Me (not literally!), 98SE or no older Windows!

 

[MaxiPro800]

AWAKEN, MY MASTERS!

 

[Ruru]

AWAKEN, MY MASTERS!

Can't know them by looking, what do u have there?

 

[MaxiPro800]

Left: Epox EP-3VCM w/ P3 800EB Coppermine
Right: Epox EP-7KXA w/ AMD Athlon 750MHz Thunderbird
Middle: Palit Geforce FX5500 256MB

 

[lexluthermiester]

I greatly liked WinME better than 98. It was far more stable, allowed for more RAM usage and didn't choke when removing Internet Explorer.

 

[Athlonite]

Win2K>< windwoes ME

 

[MaxiPro800]

Gee, everyone seems to hate ME like it's some sort of devil, lol. Honestly, it's pretty stable, and I don't see why shouldn't I use it. Doesn't seem really buggy to me, and I bet half of those complaints were due to bad caps and crappy mobos (yes, I'm looking at you, PCChips.), mostly crappy hardware in general. Pair Millenium with a solid machine (a good 440BX machine will do) and it should work fine.

A few positive things and negative things would be:

+ much more refined hardware driver setup than 98SE, as well as a much more broad driver library
+ a bit more stable than 98SE - about on par with 2k, just don't pair it with crappy hardware and don't shut it down abruptly (the registry might corrupt a bit, not too much and it generally fixes it pretty fast)
+ more faster boot than 98SE - I compared a 98SE install to the current ME install that I did. 98 SE took at least a minute and a half (and mind you neither of those are old installs, both are pretty fresh installs.) while ME barely took over 40 seconds.
- no real mode DOS
- not every card gets installed out of the box - the CT5803 got recognized as a Creative/ESS card and got supported out of the box, but my other CT4810 requires me to install Creative's own drivers (CT2770 doesn't count as ISA SB16/AWE32 are basically supported since the era of dinosaurs, aka 3.1)
- maybe I've did something wrong but Catalyst Omega tends to crash when I access certain pages that are not original to the Radeon driver - I am pretty sure this is purely my own fault and not WinME screwing me up on that.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Gee, everyone seems to hate ME like it's some sort of devil, lol. Honestly, it's pretty stable, and I don't see why shouldn't I use it. Doesn't seem really buggy to me, and I bet half of those complaints were due to bad caps and crappy mobos (yes, I'm looking at you, PCChips.), mostly crappy hardware in general. Pair Millenium with a solid machine (a good 440BX machine will do) and it should work fine.

A few positive things and negative things would be:

+ much more refined hardware driver setup than 98SE, as well as a much more broad driver library
+ a bit more stable than 98SE - about on par with 2k, just don't pair it with crappy hardware and don't shut it down abruptly (the registry might corrupt a bit, not too much and it generally fixes it pretty fast)
+ more faster boot than 98SE - I compared a 98SE install to the current ME install that I did. 98 SE took at least a minute and a half (and mind you neither of those are old installs, both are pretty fresh installs.) while ME barely took over 40 seconds.
- no real mode DOS
- not every card gets installed out of the box - the CT5803 got recognized as a Creative/ESS card and got supported out of the box, but my other CT4810 requires me to install Creative's own drivers (CT2770 doesn't count as ISA SB16/AWE32 are basically supported since the era of dinosaurs, aka 3.1)
- maybe I've did something wrong but Catalyst Omega tends to crash when I access certain pages that are not original to the Radeon driver - I am pretty sure this is purely my own fault and not WinME screwing me up on that.

My experience with ME was limited, as I was primarily on Linux at that point, and didn't dive back into Windows significantly until XP. What I do remember was systems that worked fine under 98SE having no end of trouble with ME. This was commonly blamed on drivers, but whatever it was probably got sorted out over ME's lifecycle, kind of like how Vista was hot garbage until SP1, and was then more-or-less perfectly fine (IMO).

 

[MaxiPro800]

Old VxD drivers on ME's WDM structure don't play nice together.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Old VxD drivers on ME's WDM structure don't play nice together.

That depends. Properly built and tested WMD drivers played nice with VXD. The problem early on was that some hardware makers didn't do their proper testing & due diligence and thus there were some problems. XP and Vista had very similar problems with drivers early on. This was a very mild complaint with ME however as most companies who made hardware developed both VXD and WDM drivers. So if one set was having an issue, simply switching to the other almost always solved the problem. With XP & Vista, you were stuck with the problem until updated drivers where released.

 

[MaxiPro800]

At least my machine seems to work absolutely well regardless of the OS. ME runs at least twice as good as 98SE would do (I have a 440BX/98SE machine based on the Soyo 6BA+IV mobo), 2000 and XP run as blazingly fast as ME does, with the small exception that ACPI support on those two is basically NONEXISTENT on my mobo (a recently restored Jetway J-7BXAN as the original Acorp 6VIA81P died with strange POST/BIOS issues - my other choice besides the Jetway was the EpoX EP-7KXA pictured above, but which seems to be incompatible with the 133FSB setting - not sure if it's my T-Bird Athlon that is the issue or the board just flat out rejects FSB133.) while all other boards I've encountered would have correct ACPI functionality.

 

[framebuffer]

2VOODOO2

 

[lexluthermiester]

2VOODOO2
View attachment 200954

Beautiful! Mind If I make a wallpaper out of it?

EDIT; Given that you've been cool with it in the past I figured you wouldn't mind. If you do, I'll take it down. You have a habit of taking wonderful photo's! 2160P for everyone's enjoyment!

 

[framebuffer]

Beautiful! Mind If I make a wallpaper out of it?

Thanks
Sure, no problem, I'll attach a 4K version for convenience

 

[lexluthermiester]

Thanks
Sure, no problem, I'll attach a 4K version for convenience

That is soo pretty! Very cool!

 

[Hemmingstamp]

I'm going to pull out that ZX Spectrum and see if the old dog still works.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

ME runs at least twice as good as 98SE

OTOH, Windows 2000 (the first version to be based on NT5) boots slowly in my book.

Windows ME also RTM'ed after Windows 2000. (Windows 2000 first RTM'ed in December, 1999, from what I can gather)

ME was an interesting one, it literally has the equivalent error messages with modified statements. Strangely, the BSODs had the word "exception" removed, just like "illegal operation" in ME's app crash message box. I can understand the second one more. 98 SE was the last to show "illegal operation" for an app crash.

 

[Mr.Scott]

my other choice besides the Jetway was the EpoX EP-7KXA pictured above, but which seems to be incompatible with the 133FSB setting - not sure if it's my T-Bird Athlon that is the issue or the board just flat out rejects FSB133.) while all other boards I've encountered would have correct ACPI functionality.

It is the board. More specifically the PLL used. Even though the chipset is KX133, which would support 133 FSB normally, the PLL used on the board was limited to 115 max and only in specific increments.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

ME was an interesting one, it literally has the equivalent error messages with modified statements. Strangely, the BSODs had the word "exception" removed, just like "illegal operation" in ME's app crash message box. I can understand the second one more. 98 SE was the last to show "illegal operation" for an app crash.

With ME, it was like Microsoft got worried about the people new to computers being scared when an app crash notification came up.

At least, it wasn't dumbed down like post-Windows 7 Windows versions, where some apps, (most likely UWP) display "something happened" and literally nothing else other than a close button or whatever!
Now I'm old enough that if there was a message like that, I normally would think a computer virus!

 

[MaxiPro800]

It is the board. More specifically the PLL used. Even though the chipset is KX133, which would support 133 FSB normally, the PLL used on the board was limited to 115 max and only in specific increments.

So the 100/133 jumper is practically useless? lol

 

[r.h.p]

Gee, everyone seems to hate ME like it's some sort of devil, lol. Honestly, it's pretty stable, and I don't see why shouldn't I use it. Doesn't seem really buggy to me, and I bet half of those complaints were due to bad caps and crappy mobos (yes, I'm looking at you, PCChips.), mostly crappy hardware in general. Pair Millenium with a solid machine (a good 440BX machine will do) and it should work fine.

A few positive things and negative things would be:

+ much more refined hardware driver setup than 98SE, as well as a much more broad driver library
+ a bit more stable than 98SE - about on par with 2k, just don't pair it with crappy hardware and don't shut it down abruptly (the registry might corrupt a bit, not too much and it generally fixes it pretty fast)
+ more faster boot than 98SE - I compared a 98SE install to the current ME install that I did. 98 SE took at least a minute and a half (and mind you neither of those are old installs, both are pretty fresh installs.) while ME barely took over 40 seconds.
- no real mode DOS
- not every card gets installed out of the box - the CT5803 got recognized as a Creative/ESS card and got supported out of the box, but my other CT4810 requires me to install Creative's own drivers (CT2770 doesn't count as ISA SB16/AWE32 are basically supported since the era of dinosaurs, aka 3.1)
- maybe I've did something wrong but Catalyst Omega tends to crash when I access certain pages that are not original to the Radeon driver - I am pretty sure this is purely my own fault and not WinME screwing me up on that.

back in the day it was the same everyone hated ME except ME hehe , no real reasons though always when asked just 98 is more stable or some crap

 

[MaxiPro800]

About three relatives I've asked so far have said WinME was rock stable and 98 was utter crash-fest. I'm not the slightest kidding. WinME and 2000 is what they loved to run the most on their computers.

 

[r.h.p]

About three relatives I've asked so far have said WinME was rock stable and 98 was utter crash-fest. I'm not the slightest kidding. WinME and 2000 is what they loved to run the most on their computers.

 

[basco]

found it after a long search:

and i think i want to pair it with this: