Win 98SE games on a windows xp hardware

[KentaZX]

I have my old MDG prebuilt computer that used windows XP before, but I figured I could get windows 98 to work in that system, one reason is so I could connect my Gameshark for the N64 through the printer port. (Windows xp hates using the printer cable and that gameshark program apparently).

So I got Win 98 SE to install, and that gameshark thing working, so now I was trying to play old games on there, like Leisure Suit Larry 7. So the next thing to do was finding drivers for my computer....which is the problem.

I tried to find all drivers for my computer which is:
Processor: intel pentium(r)4 2.66GHZ
chipset: genuine x86 family 15 model 4 stepping 7
Motherboard: D101GGC
Graphics: X550 Hypermemory 512M (ATi)

I tried to find all the drivers needed with no luck on the processor, motherboard and chipset, and when I tried to install leisure suit larry 7, the program always brings up no sound devices message, and then i'll say "error occurred, abort or ignore?" and I would press ignore 3 times and then it gave me the "illegal operation" error and just exits out. Is there any way to get games working on this machine with windows 98 SE?

 

[Grobe]

Well - finding propriate drivers for obsolete OS'es will become just more hopeless as time pass by.

Have you considering using a virtual machine?

Virtualbox is one software that can do this. The advantage is that a virtual computer emulates hardware that is already supported natively by the OS - also those old ones such as W98. The only drivers you need to install is those that makes better integration to the virtual machine (display drivers and drivers that makes it easy to transfer files back and forth between actually computer and virtual machine).

 

[KentaZX]

Well - finding propriate drivers for obsolete OS'es will become just more hopeless as time pass by.

Have you considering using a virtual machine?

Virtualbox is one software that can do this. The advantage is that a virtual computer emulates hardware that is already supported natively by the OS - also those old ones such as W98. The only drivers you need to install is those that makes better integration to the virtual machine (display drivers and drivers that makes it easy to transfer files back and forth between actually computer and virtual machine).

Now are you suggesting Virtual box on my old XP computer? Would I be able to with the hardware above??

I need the actual windows 98 OS for the gameshark program, its the only way to connect my N64 gameshark to that printer port.

however, I plan to have two HDDs in the XP computer, one for Win 98 and Win XP itself and do dual booting there. if I cant get gaming to work on 98, then I would try on an XP OS on the second HDD to get the games to work.

if THAT doesn't work and IF i can do VM with the XP hardware, then that will be my last resort.

 

[Grobe]

Yes - it is kind of a last resort thing.

Well, there is another way - install a lightweight Linux distro and use Wine to run the games. It may work well or not.
For that hardware, the Peppermint, LXLE or Bodhi distro should be good candidates.

 

[TerryLaze]

Larry 7 is a dos game and will run perfectly well inside dosbox even on windows 10,you can still get larry on steam also.
So even if you find windows98 drivers for your card it still won't work, it would need dos drivers.

VMs are not so great for old OSs because they also emulate newer hardware,or just give access to your normal hardware, so you will still have to do a lot of tinkering to find ways to make it work.