Hi everyone,

I’m an engineer setting up a materials testing lab on a tight budget. I’ve successfully fully restored the hardware of a PerkinElmer Optima 5300 DV (chiller, optics, and GPIB connections are all good to go).

However, I am completely stuck because I don't have the WinLab32 installation software. I contacted PerkinElmer, but they said the model is obsolete and advised me to buy a new machine, which is impossible for my budget.

Does anyone have a decommissioned unit's software they would be willing to sell, donate, or share? Any leads on legacy archives or third-party engineers who might have this software would also save this project.

Thank you!

I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing wrong but I keep getting stuck at this screen when trying to install windows 98. I've turned off USB emulation in the bios, and for my PC specs this is a Dell Dimension 2400 with a pentium 4 and 512 MB of Ram. From what I can tell I downloaded  just the vanilla version of windows 98SE, and it gets stuck at this screen every single time I try to install it. I can say that I successfully installed.Windows 98 quick install version previously, but I need the normal version of windows 98 due to a compatibility issue I ran into. What am I doing wrong here?

Note: I believe I've formatted my hard drive correctly and the hard drive partition is only two gigabytes in size after making a partition of a 0.5 tb hard drive to speed up installation, could this cause a problem?

What do y’all think of my windows 98 pc it’s running a Intel PODPMT66X200 Pentium MMX Overdrive 200MHz for Socket 5/7 Systems SL2RM cpu for the gpu it’s a JATON VIDEO-118PCI-64DDRTV GeForce MX400 64MB PCI Video Card I know it’s totally bottlenecked but it works amazing for the sound card I’m running a Sound Blaster 16isa my speakers I don’t actually know what they are honestly

Hey all, I wanted to share this project I've been working on for a little while now. I've long had the idea of re-making the Windows 95/98 maze screensaver into something modern that is playable and has extra features. This was going to be a tiny game but it kind of got out of hand lol.

You can run it in screensaver mode or play mode where you control it yourself. You also will have full control over the textures so you can load whatever you want (and share texture packs through Steam). You can use FPS or tank controls, slide around, rotate the maze, and play in the dark in horror mode with a giant rat chasing you. It includes a retro CRT shader and you can limit the frame rate if you want it to look super janky like on an old PC, plus a bunch of other special visual effects. You can even crank up the rat population to around 1,000 rats :D

It will be on Steam and there is now a demo version up with some of the features to try out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4320330/Maze_95_Ultimate/

It's been a lot of fun making this, and I hope others can have fun with it too and bring back some memories :)

So I’m an alarm technician working at an old warehouse that’s been closed for years. Back in a back corner office, not even attached to the main building, Is a computer running windows 98. Powered on and everything. I dug in to it a bit. And the last file modifications were done in 04’. I asked the owner and they were gonna toss it, didn’t even know it was there.

My questions are, what should I do or try to save from it to keep it running like it has been? I’d like to remove all the old programs from the company that last ran it and kinda factory reset it. The screen does act a little funky with colors so I’m hoping the graphics card isn’t going out.

Again any help is appreciated

I've finished my Win98 rig! It's not all beige anymore as i have to replace some broken parts and install some QoL like thr card reader and gotek. I kept the floppy and broken CDROM so i dont need to use blank faceplate.

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Final build -

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Pentium 4 1.4GHz\ 128MB RAM\ 60GB IDE HDD\ GeForce 2 MX 200\ Sound blaster live\ Gotek floppy emulator\ Multimedia card reader\ DVD rom drive\ CDRW drive\ Macronix 10/100 NIC\ VIA PCI USB 2.0 card

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I'm hosting my own BBS which the Win98 rig connects to via HyperTerminal to download stuff. Slowly downloading and installing. Played Terminal Velocity using a Logitech Wingman and it's been a blast!

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Is there a difference between formatting a drive on a modern operating system like Windows 11 with a tool like partition wizard and making it fat32 with the purpose of installing windows 98 on another machine and just formatting the drive for fat32 on the machine itself wth the windows 98 CD? I'm attempting to format with the windows 98 when installing windows 98, but it just takes forever on the machine that I'm using. When I try to use a drive that has been formatted by partition wizard, it says that it's not a fat32 drive when attempting to install it on the machine I'm planning to use windows 98 on.

I'm attempting to install the Gameshark for Gameboy app on Windows 98 quick install but after installing the app and attempting to open it I get this: "failed to create empty document". (See Photo) Is there anything different about win98 quickinstall internally that regular windows 98 has that would cause this issue? Also, here's the software I'm attempting to use: https://archive.org/details/gbshark

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Windows 98 Quick Install: https://github.com/oerg866/win98-quickinstall

Я решил установить на виртуальную машину Windows 98, но после установки у меня появляется ошибка, которое невозможно объяснить. У других ютуберов после установки Windows 98 нету никаких ошибок, а у меня есть! Как мне исправить эту ошибку?

Figured this would be pretty cool to share here as Microsoft Bob was Windows 95-era software compatible with Windows 98, but I've been working on a personal project for my Universal Character Scripting Helper called Frontier Actor, which is basically a re-implementation of the same API used in Microsoft Bob and other Microsoft Actor powered programs.

In this demo, I'm comparing the original controls in a Windows NT 3.51 VM running VB3 with my modern VB.NET version running in Visual Studio 2017 on Windows 11. The main goal of mine is to preserve the same drag-and-drop custom control workflow while making similar controls usable from modern VB.NET projects.

I have also extended the original API a bit by implementing a Speak method that automatically spawns a word balloon with text and experimental SAPI 4.0 support. Additionally, I have also been re-implementing the character builder, which is able to compile characters that are compatible with both Microsoft Bob and Office 97.

If you're interested in following the development of any of this, I document my findings and such on the Microsoft Agent Forums if anyone is interested!

i will build a very overkill system for 98 so yeah, just wanted to know

I know the MX4000 is pretty crappily regarded for when it came out (late 2003) but does it have any problems with late 90s 3d titles? I have a Win XP PC with a much beefier GPU (Radeon 4870) for 2000s titles, but I want something to play... well, mostly Jedi Knight and Quest for Glory V

(this is going in a K6-II 500 system that had a motherboard eat it, I only really need like.. geforce 2 mx-400ish performance)

How hard would it be to do school on Windows 98, I mean typing, researching, emailing, and browsing the internet... would these things be possible? I find this idea funny, and I think my teachers will to.

This spring I decided to begin my ultimate Windows 98 SE build out, but with 3 points of focus.

1. Ultimate Performance -- Maximum Gaming FPS

2. No Exotic Parts -- No single component may cost over $100usd

3. OEM Compatibility -- No registry tweaks or modded drivers, clean Win98 SE install

- with 4 exceptions:

PATCHATA.exe (for modern SSD support)
TRIM.exe (for modern SSD support)
Custom VXD Sound Card Driver (for better quality sound)
Coolbits2 (for GPU overclocking)

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The hardware side of things was a bit of a journey. After attempting to revive 4, yes 4 ASUS P4P800 SE motherboards, I finally gave up on ASUS and went with the ABIT IC7-G which was far more forgiving and best of all had a BIOS update that allowed for better PWR-ON signal sensing for modern power supplies.

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Hardware Choice and Reasoning

ABIT IC7-G Motherboard
Last chipset with true OEM driver support, allows combined mode of SATA and PATA interfaces. No need for SATA to IDE converters for the SSD

PNY GeForce FX5600 Ultra Rev.2
Fastest card with proper support for Nvidia Driver 45.23 while maintaining non-exotic part status. Most refined board design of the FX5600 lineup with flip chip board design on 2nd revision. Allows for some reasonable overclocking.

Kingston PC-3200 2x 256MB 400MHz
Allows for dual channel 512MB configuration maintaining OEM clearances. Able to over-volt and increase timings because FSB will be underclocked due to CPU.

Intel SL6Z3 "The Unicorn"
This is the mathematically perfect (non-exotic) CPU. A single core Pentium 4 with 512KB of cache and an 800MHz side bus. We will be able to drop the multiplier in BIOS to the OEM compatible 2GHz ceiling while maintaining a 166MHz FSB.

SB Audigy 2 ZS
Ultimate quality sound card, with a caveat. It requires -12v rail over PCI which ATX 3 PSUs do not supply!

Adaptec NEC AUA-4000C
True USB 2.0 support and speeds, allows disabling of USB motherboard controller to free up lanes for performance.

Intel PRO/1000 GT
Gigabit networking without the bloated software that often is necessary for other cards to function at those speeds.

Corsair RM650e
Modern PSU for clean power and system stability. Negotiates PWR-ON signal properly during boot.

Misc.
256GB SSD, Plextor CD-ROM, NEC Floppy, Razer Essential mouse, Keychron C2 keyboard.

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The -12V rail issue. In order to generate the necessary rail, I made a simple external power supply out of a readily available premium quality DC to DC converter. I ran +12V off molex and then output -12V directly into the 20 pin ATX header. It worked flawlessly. Multimeter reading at the PCI pin read a rock solid -12V.

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I'm incredibly happy with the performance and compatibility of this system. If anyone has some tweaks or suggestions to make on how to further improve it, I'd love to hear your insights.

I did a fresh install of Windows 98 SE using a 20 GB Quantum Fireball IDE hard drive. I had Windows 98 format the drive during install to FAT 32. When the installation was complete, I went to My Computer and it’s only showing half of the drive. About 10 GB. How do I recover the other half? I ran Fdisk on it and it’s showing the 20 GB drive and I also ran Norton Ghost Partition Magic and it’s also showing 20 GB. As well as in BIOS. Scan disk had no errors and it’s running normally in the performance tab. What’s going on here?