Windows 98, MMX and driver problems ... ahh, the good old days!

I recently dug out an old Dell laptop, namely because Windows XP 'compatibiltiy mode' doesn't work with quite a number of my really old games, Like Destruction Derby 2 ( 1996 ). The problem is rarely graphics: quite a number of games will run, but with no sound. Things have moved on a bit from 'MIDI' 'WAV' and 'AWE32' ... not to mention 'Roland'! In other words, I stretched 'backward compatibility' to breaking point.

The old Dell in question is a 1997 Latitude XPi CD ... that's right, it has a CD-ROM drive, maw! It also has something I really like ... a floppy drive! Out came the 2 gb. drive and in went my 100 gb. Fine but runs a bit hot. Specs otherwise are: 64 mb. RAM ( + 16 onboard ) Pentium 166 MMX processor, Neomagic graphics ... and ESS sound.

The sound is proving to be a bit of a problem though. The Dell website, surprisingly, has nearly every driver still on it for this machine ... except the correct sound driver. I set up the machine with Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 Professional on a dual - boot system. No sound in either case. It turns out that the driver on both disks is slightly different from the Dell driver, and dell no longer have the file available ... ESS1887 to be precise.

I have to say I'm impressed with the catalogue of files available via the Dell support website though. I was less impressed with Microsoft. I try to like Microsoft. I watch videos of Microsoft's history on Youtube and get a warm feeling all over. Then something happens and I just go back to hating them! This was to be one such time.

True to form, Windows 98SE wouldn't shut down. Then I remembered the 'shutdown assistant', a little patch for this pretty major flaw which was issued by Microsoft. Did I find it on Microsoft's website? - no way! Now that REALLY annoys me. To put it simply, Dell don't have a driver I want. No problem, that's tough ( but as already mentioned they still have a lot of files - 12 years on ).

In the case of Microsoft, here they made a complete balls of something. That's different. If they make a balls of something, the patch ( shutdown ) should be available for as long as it's likely that someone will need it. If they don't want to provide it, they should quit stopping others from providing it. Microsoft are incredibly protectionist. Even the old Windows 3.11 disks are not legally available for download. It's stupid. Who is going to make a fortune from Windows 3.11? Might it usurp Windows 7?

I eventually got the download so that I could shut down Windows 98SE from a person who, presumably, was 'illegally' hosting it. My God, how I really do hate Microsoft! Whatever about Windows 3.11, which is of course their property, not making a fix available for something bought is purely contemptible. I must get my linux user manual out again ... and get to like it.

All in all, I'm enjoying my little step back in time. Like many who get misty - eyed about computing of long ago however, I had forgotten how frustrating searching for drivers can be ... and making floppy disk bootdisks!