Win98 with Athlon XP?

[b2bomber81]

Hey guys - at the store I work at, we've got a kiosk that just lost it's mobo. One of the capacitors on it blew and spewed acid all over it. Not a pretty sight. The system is running Win 98 on I think an 800mhz processor - but only 128MB of RAM. I'm gonna replace the mobo with a Socket A mobo and an Athlon XP 2200 processor. BUT, the software that runs on the kiosk is not made for XP. So I have to stick with Win98.

Since the board is made for XP, am I going to have any problems running 98 on there? Or is this baby gonna fly just as fast as if I had XP on it?

Thanks guys!

 

[StormBringer]

no, you won't have any problems, The board isn't "made for XP" That just means that it has met the requirements to be on the list of XP supported hardware.

BTW, that wasn't acid, its an electrolytic paste(similar to what is in an alkaline battery)

 

[Rick]

Well, older Windows favors older hardware, but you won't have any problems installing Win98.

XP would be delightful to have on the system, but I see you can't do that.

It's a kiosk too, so the interface doesn't have to look like a Fischer Price toy. (XP)

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Originally posted by b2bomber81
is this baby gonna fly just as fast as if I had XP on it?

No, faster.

 

[b2bomber81]

Thanks for the info guys. I thought it would probably go faster with Win 98 too, but I remember reading somewhere that in order to get "the full potential" out of an XP board, you have to run XP. Maybe it was a Microsoft Sales rep

Found a real nice package on Tigerdirect.com.

Thanks guys!

 

[Rick]

No, I think the difference is real.

Windows 98 runs very badly on some newer boards I have tried. This may be because of a software bug or something along those lines, but this problem exists. XP also runs better on some older hardware then others... Just depends.

You also have to consider that drivers and software are no longer optimized for 98, so this also hurts performance. And lest us not forget about the terrible legacy of poor memory management that Windows 98 has left us with.

But all in all, they should perform about the same to my eyes and yours. Providing you have plenty of memory of course.

 

[b2bomber81]

Win 98 has a lot less memory problems than ME. I've got a machine that ME was loaded on that just pisses me off all the time.

I bought an AMD 2200 XP processor, a Socket A Mobo and 256 megs of DDR. That should be good to start. The machine started out with 128 megs, and it did okay. Since DDR runs twice as fast as SDRAM, 256 of DDR should be excellent.

The kiosk is connected to a photo processor at a photo lab, and is for printing digital photos. So it handles a lot of graphics. It's got a fast AGP ATI vid card in it. So I'm hoping it will run real nice. I'll post my results once I get the board in the mail.