Uncreative Labs

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

I guess the powers that be are finally driving the last nails in the coffin of Windows 9x. The last 2 years have been somewhat irritating due to choice of mozilla either locking or crashing or IE dumping out of the webpage to a not found page after fully loading all content..

The last few months I have had this happen almost constantly as compared to every 20th page or so before.

I started logging all the traffic into and out of my PC and it appears the banner sites and google advertisement crap literally causes hundreds of requests. No wonder a slow connection on an old browser locks for a while or crashes outright.

Thank God I found OffbyOne sitting on my HD, even though it doesn't work with all my favorite webforums, it works with enough of them (in text mode) that I can at last read and write to them without the hassel of banners and googleadsense crap trying to explode my system.

It runs faster because none of the images load (but not by much) but because of the inability to load the ads I can at least surf in peace.

Maybe I will have to mess around with some sourceforge crap and get a new version of Mozilla up and running under Windows 98se. (I like the really old beta version because it is incompatible with a lot of advertising crap and ad bots, sadly I think this is what is preventing me from surfing now)

Ah well they can pry windows 9x out of my cold daad fingers, even though I have XP, 2k and basically every other version of windows, 98 is so easy to break and fix & all my software works under it vintage too without a lot of work that I insist on keeping it 15 years later Smile

Any recommendations on web browsers that can read and post to most web forums? I really could care less if the page is displayed correctly, just so I can read it.

Also I have been thinking of setting up a low end windows 7 box, but I would only do so if I can emulate my windows 98 installation I have on my current main PC. I did something with this on a free XP box I got but XPs compatiblity with much of my software left a lot to be desired, lots more virus attacks than I ever got with 9x as well.

Ideally it would have
1. Tower
2. dual monitors / dual head video
3. Name brand with disks and license
4. A properly setup sandbox and browser
5. Dialup and ethernet, heck wifi too
6. A means of emulating my windows 98 hard drive so all the antique proprietary business software I have would work correctly.
7. Be really cheap, I haven't spent over $100 on a PC in nearly 7 years, I prefer to keep it that way, windows 7 is now getting obsolete so you would hope I could grab an old 2gb/500gb unit for little of nothing, sadly it appears after vista home computers became rather rare, none for sale around here is any type of usable condition (or they cost too much).

Thanx
Ryan

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 10:20 am

Have you tried using software to filter out the excess requests? I used Proxomitron on Windows 9x vintage machines to eliminate a good bit of the advertising annoyance. I'm using Adblock Plus on SeaMonkey to cut the annoyance down.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Also, older versions of Opera (that work with Win9x) have a "one-button" off switch for images. Think the last version that worked was 10.x (but don't quote me on that)

UPDATE:

http://www.oldapps.com/opera.php?system=Windows_98

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

MORE PROGRESS. AFTYER the original hard drive failed last week, i re-insalltd win 98se with the original s3 video card and linksys nic.
grudgingl;y as i mentioned, i kept pluggiubng in cards ubtil a matroiox video and a 3 com nic were recognized. i found thgat surfing the net caued all fatakl erriors.
for upgrades larger than a fdloppy, i found the other usb floppy allowed me to access the c drive and the 4g sdcard.reader.
but no wy to insert those drivers in w98,
i diverted and used thge system as a testyer for nt sinns pc66/100/133

dimm_id.exe worked tho this mb wiouykd obly see 384m0 three 1`28 pc100 sinns.it would let dimmid see up to 256 and 512.
whgebn I completed this task I searched with my newer systemn for a ultil that would enable to usb ports. I found one!
removed all other drivers as best I could
when I rebooted, it asked for a mass storage driver ( after I had run the floppy based driver.exe.
this one I will save. keep safe alsop the url.
sdo now the usb works.
I did a quick test to see if the dead flkakey hd will work.
it seems to.
I will now GHOST iut to anmother drice aND SEE IF THE NEW DRIVCE WILL WORK WITH THE ORIGIUNBALK S3 VIDEO AND LINKSYS NIC.
END GAME? JUST HJOBBY REL;ATED STUFF.
the swyustem has max ram and likely will be set aside to test more stuff later. not for any practical use.