Intel’s forthcoming 915 (the Grantsdale) and 925 (the Alderwood) series of chipsets, expected to hit the market in June, will not bundle drivers for either Microsoft Windows 98 or Windows ME operating systems (OS), according to sources at Taiwanese motherboard makers. The new chipsets will only offer Microsoft support for the more up-to-date versions of the Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Intel’s 915/925 Chipsets Not to Support Windows 98 or Windows ME
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s time (has been for a while) to lay to rest the 9x series.
“It’s time (has been for a while) to lay to rest the 9x series.”
why should people upgrade if they dont want to
No. Good.
I don’t give a crap if people don’t want to upgrade – don’t want to upgrade? Fine, but you can’t use the latest and greatest hardware. 95/98/Me are absolutely terrible, unstable, insecure OSes. But they were good at the time. There’s no reason hardware manufacturers should support LEGACY software. Good riddance!
This is BIG news. The tide is turning, and it’s for the better. New PCs should run 2000, XP, or Linux (or the like – BSD, QNX, Plan 9, hobby OSes — you know what I mean).
You’re right! They don’t have to upgrade. They shouldn’t even be thinking about buying a new PC. If an old OS works for them just fine, then so should an old PC. No need to upgrade.
“why should people upgrade if they dont want to”
Exactly. But this would only matter to people who would want to upgrade so why do you care?
Win9x is a legacy operating system that is far from being modern. I hate going into PC repair jobs to fix some spyware-covered, virus-infested, insecure OS with the crappiest networking support that needs to be rebooted once every few hours.
I’m glad to see someone letting go of the 9x series. I know MS tried it only to have backlash from customers. I hope 9x is dead within a few years though. It’s time to start going to more modern, secure, what-have-you operating systems like WinNT 5(.1), Linux, or MacOS X.
As an answer to your question I’ll give you a new.
Why should the hardware developers continue to support deprecated operating systems?
If people dont want to upgrade, then they don’t have a problem. They can stick to their old and slow Pentium 233 MHz with the 64 MB of RAM and so on. But I’m pretty sure that if you upgrade to the latest hardware then you probably want to upgrade your OS as well. I sure for one wouldn’t want to go throught the hell of hunting a gazillion drivers just to get the OS running. And when you already have spend some amount of cash on brand new hardware then there must be some cash left somewhere for a new OS.
I don’t care if some people won’t upgrade their OS when they upgrade their hardware. It just seems odd to me that people will buy the latest and the greatest hardware to be able to play the most recent released games and still have their old and “trusty” Win 9x installed.
It’s about time. Win9X is no more and it should be pushed out. Only reason I have it on one machine is that it’s underpowered for Win2000. My other machines however are on XP and Win2000. I stopped supporting Win98 a long time ago. Time to move on before Longhorn really pushes win98 to the grave.
Win9x will still work without drivers just like it does on every current chipset. It can be slower and you won’t get to use all the features, but it will still run.
It IS a good thing, for more than one reasons.
Thiss is the reason why all device drivers should be opensource or the hardware maker be obliged to give technical informations to anyone who wants make a driver.
“Why should the hardware developers continue to support deprecated operating systems? ”
because its still being used by a HUGE amount of people ane MS has decided to support it till 2006.
“http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html“
23% = windows 9x
“95/98/Me are absolutely terrible, unstable, insecure OSes.”
Actually your somewhat wrong there. Windows 98 has a lot less services running than XP does and is harder to exploit remotely. XP is just chaulk full of things that people don’t need and will only lead to trouble. XP/2K can be properly locked down but you are locking down a TON of things as opposed to Windows 98 where if you just avoid IE/Outlook Express your golden.
That may sound odd but its the truth. I don’t run 98 anymore but the fact that’s its not nearly as “network aware” as XP makes it a much more secure OS in some ways. Obviously Local exploits are trival on 9x but remotely its a lot safer than XP. Strange but true.
Why should the hardware developers continue to support deprecated operating systems?
I wasn’t aware that any hardware developers supported operating systems. It is the other way around. You port your operating system to the hardware. MS would need to upgrade 9x to work with the new chip set.
“http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html“
23% = windows 9x
All the more reason to take affirmative action to stop people using it. Its dangerously insecure and shouldnt be allowed on the web…
” Its dangerously insecure and shouldnt be allowed on the web…”
XP contains far more bugs and services which are exploitable. anyway its being used and should be supported
95/98/Me are absolutely terrible, unstable, insecure OSes. But they were good at the time.
No, it wasn’t good at the time. BeOS, OS/2, AmigaOS etc. where good at the time(and still is) but Windows 9x has never been good. And WindowsME has to be the worst commersial OS ever.
MS has just started to catch up.
You say people want to update their O.S. when they
update their hardware. Well in the case of windows,
that is simply not true. I like to install win98
every 9 or 10 months, use it to play some games
without the hassle of WINE, then GLADLY delete it again.
So why should I need to shell out $100 + to Microsoft
for the privilidge to play some other companies games?
Also, if you ask me….2000 or XP don’t really
qualify as an upgrade. Kindof going from a really
bad migraine headache to perhaps merely getting your
head beat over with a baseball bat repeatedly while
standing right under a 747 engine ready for takeoff.
It’s not a big deal though the older motherboards will
only get cheaper and it won’t cost very much to
have a computer that works with win98 and can play
old games.
So why should I need to shell out $100 + to Microsoft
for the privilidge to play some other companies games?
You don’t. The smart thing to do is to get the manufacturers who make the games you want to play to release Linux versions. I know it seems fruitless, but if it’s worth it financially, they’ll eventually do it.
Old computer dies, buy new one comes pre-installed with XP
BIG FUN:
My scanner stopped working under XP (fixed with buying a new one US$ 50 – no drivers)
My video editting card stopped working (fix is buying a new driver US$ 80)
My authoring program started crashing under XP (fix buy another US$ 200)
Summing up addicional cost for me: US$ 320
Legacy hardware HAH, marketing extortion I would say
US$ 330
My video editting card stopped working
You are lucky. Matrox tried but failed to provide drivers for my RainbowRunner-card on NT. It was obviously too hard to do. (?)
My college is still using win 98se on about 300 computer, but they plan to upgrade to suse linux … Most students does not agree, but I will be happy
)
will intel ship linux drivers for their forth coming chipsets or it will be wintel as ever
Basically, it is a Good Thing for a chipmaker to have supported as much OSes as possible. Especially when they’re popular. Even more especially for compatibility reasons.
Sorry for the Tin Foil Hat, but i can only think Microsoft demanded this in their effort to push people to Windows XP. Microsoft isn’t happy with their XP sellings nor is it happy with its’ security responsibility for Windoed 9x systems. Having the biggest chip company making it unable to support older, Windows 9x systems in their new hardware is one of those ways to get more people into XP.
What does Intel get back for that?
Let’s say SUN or SGI is not supported some older hardware with Solaris 10. If they have their reasons for that, which are easy to make, it does make sense. But what kind of sense does it make for Intel? What do they gain themselves?
It makes little sense to have older OSes unsupported. Actually, i find it extremely arrogant. I’d rather use Windows 9x for certain purposes as opposed to NT-family. Yes, a single user environment isn’t a very secure mechnanism. So what. BeOS, C64 and AmigaOS had this too. I wouldn’t hang it on the Internet, especially not directly, but deciding on this logic people should not be able to even use the OS is just plain arrogant.
If 9x shouldn’t be allowed to hang on the Internet and you want it to vanish away now, then give people the option to install Windows XP for free (beer). Then again, not everyone will switch either, but some will. Especially if marketed properly. Clearly, that isn’t the main point… the point is to make people pay for Windows XP Home Edition.
PS: Some of the current popular worms don’t even work against Windows 9x.
I can’t say that I find this to be much of a problem. Even if Intel did in fact provide drivers for these aging OSs, 9x simply couldn’t take full advantage of the hardware. 9x is unstable, insecure, and severely limited. On machines with more than 512 megs of memory, they won’t even run unless you go out of your way to trick it into thinking that it’s running on a system with less RAM. Lets not even get into the fact that fat32 can’t support modern HDDs unless they’re broken up into a number of seperate partitions.
Besides, like another poster said, most new computers come with Windows XP anyway, so if you’re looking to upgrade, you may as well just buy a new computer.
People complaining that hardware being introduced today dosen’t support an OS that is what ? 6 years old now ?
ROTFL!
I guess I should be pissed off that Intel isn’t shipping OS/2 drivers too eh ?
”
I guess I should be pissed off that Intel isn’t shipping OS/2 drivers too eh ?”
stop being silly
windows 9x is more that 20% os/2 is none
That statement is, at best, ridiculous. Yes, Windows 9X is more than 20%… So what? How many people are upgrading their hardware and keeping 98/Me? Get real. I estimate that only about 5% in that 20% that would keep it. That’s about 1%. I think it’s safe to assume that people in that 1% are computer literate and that they have built their own computers… and are using AMD products, anyway.
Windows 9X should never had existed. Let it rest in peace.
I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I like to keep a Win98 partition around in case I need to run some legacy apps…. specifically games. Trying to get some older games working on XP can sometimes be a real chore. The DOS emulators I’ve seen are real resource hogs, and are incomplete…. and trying to configure Wine for games…. eww. I’d hate to have to keep a second “legacy” machine for my older games.
Hopefully, lack of drivers would only mean that the OS won’t be able to use the motherboard’s “advanced” features. If it at least boots and my sound card works, I’ll be a happy camper.
Sometime in the not so distant future . . .
“New Intel chipset no longer supports LINUX’
Get Microsoft Virtual PC and setup a Win98 VM partition.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4A15008C-3…
Change your hardware as often as you like and keep the same old OS. Full networking support. Run games. Surf porn. Whatever.
“”Why should the hardware developers continue to support deprecated operating systems? ”
because its still being used by a HUGE amount of people ane MS has decided to support it till 2006.
“http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html“
23% = windows 9x”
You are using a flawed logic. that 23% install is on old hardware. The reason it’s so big is people haven’t replaced their computers. Most people buy their computers pre-made from someplace like Dell with the OS allready on it. Soon as they decided to upgrade their hardware they buy a new computer, and then they have WinXP on it. The number of people who would be building their own computer, using a board with these chipsets, and wanting to use win98 on it is so very small it doesn’t matter.
There is still such a big install base of 9x out there because a win98 box on a 500 PIII works just fine for so many. Until it decides to break it’s not going anywheres. Sure it’s crap,but as long as they can get on the internet people tend to be happy.
People need to stop complaining if MS isn’t bending over backwards to keep them running win 9x. Move on people.
many 3.world countries use w95…
why?
I think it is high time that Micro$oft, and the companies that have also licensed “legacy software” for inclusion in win 9x
and OS/2 face a little choice being that they seem to be at the forced upgrade game again, (this time through these new chipsets). Here is the choice that I propose.
1. Open source win 9x, OS/2 and all associated software under an LGPL type license that protects the code from proprietary theft but still allows the development of proprietary apps under those systems if developers wish to do so.(One has to remember Microsoft, Adobe and others own some of the legacy software in both of these systems. I think IBM with its new pro FOSS attitude would have released OS/2 long ago if it wasn’t for this to get rid of a lot of the headaches associated with continuing to support its community.)
2. We will actively support a law regulating Microsoft and all the companies that license their software for inclusion in Micro$oft OSs as a “natural monopoly” PUBLIC UTILITY like telephone, electric and water companies are.
I’m usually very conservative and capitalist in my politics but i’m really beginning to believe that this monopoly Microsoft is building up is becomming as big a danger to our individual freedoms as any government could ever be because of the dependence of our ECONOMY on computers these days.
It should be regualted as a public utility so that it is answerable to SOMEONE or it should give up on the “legacy software” ALTOGETHER by open sourcing it and allowing others to update it for the new chipsets if they so wish.
I agree that Microsoft should definately dump the 9x family, but I feel it shouldn’t leave the many people unable to afford moder hardware without a more robust OS. Why not develop an NT based solution for owners too poor to afford new hardware? It could offer similar functionality to 98, but be more user friendly, have a more modern interface, and above all be more secure and have better networking.
To prevent the new product eating into Microsoft’s XP sales, it could be designed to run on machines no more modern than 1.5Ghz.
This would benefit many consumers without the funds to buy XP compatible hardware, it would also benefit Microsoft which would gain sales, and would certainly benefit anyone wanting to network with these older 9x machines.
I liked win98 on older systems…
Install it, install the unofficial win98 service pack.
Strip win98 with 98lite (remove all IE, etc.), and do some further manual stripping down the os. Then install Aston/Litestep/… shell. This system only needs a small partition (100mb or less for win98 files, +room for temporary files, +K-meleon/opera browser , foxmail mailclient, …)
This will run fast… don’t mess with the system and leave it stable (don’t install any unnecesary programs, no testing of software , etc). It’s quite crippled but can do a job to surf the net, check mails , write documents,…).
This runs quite stable, but there is no way to make win98 100% stable.
So I ran this on a p1 166mhz, 64mb ram. It ran fast. I removed win98 and tested slack 9.1 with xfce4 on it… It has same speed and is absolutely stable, running an up to date OS. I believe that there is really no point in keeping win98 on old systems with linux as an alternative. The only reason could be gaming, playing those old games warcraft and the like. But there’s no point in gaming, lbreakout2 (linux) can be fun tho
It’s really no big deal that new hardware isn’t supported in win98, win98 has never been made to run on fast systems like this and contains bugs for running good on such fast system. Keep in mind that Win98 was made when the pentium 2 was fastest cpu.
Win2000 is best MS os (for my needs) for 128 ram or more and 500mhz+ pc’s…
And an up to date Linux is better on all kind of systems….
my opinion
WHY exactly are people trying to save win98 here? intel’s brand new top of the line chipsets set to not work under 98. right. so you’re stying that’s a drag for the millions of hme users running 98 who go out & buy replacement motherboards yet don’t know 98 is ass?
or make some kind of simple nt-based os? ever heard of “xp home”?
play games under virtualpc? ever tried anything more complex than solitaire?
most people keep the same os for the working life of their system. if anything gets upgraded, it’s the os – nobody is going to upgrade the hardware but keep a six year old os on there that hasn’t had any new drivers released for years & will not run a lot of new software
Why not develop an NT based solution for owners too poor to afford new hardware? It could offer similar functionality to 98, but be more user friendly, have a more modern interface, and above all be more secure and have better networking.
Please, oh please, tell me you’re joking… it’s called Windows XP Home Edition
many poeple cannot and will not go out and get a $500-1500 computer
many only use it for email and surfing the web
and when their computer breaks, they go out and replace
it with a working 95/98 computer for $50-100 look in the
ads in any major city paper look on ebay old computers are
everywere in my area people who build and maintain old 98 computers make a living doing it the problem with sites
like this one we concern oursevles with the latest win
98/95 will live because poor folks and those who dont care
want them and buy them cheap
Consumers should be given the choice to choose whatever OS they wish to use.
There are various reasons why people want to use an old OS; the main reason being that you used it for so many years that you know everything about it. You know that it WILL work with legacy hardware and software.
Upgrade zealots should note the other advantages 98 has over XP:
– Win 98 is faster and more efficient because it uses less resources.
– The dumbed down user interface in XP makes configuring your OS an exercise in pain.
– Windows Activation. Everytime you upgrade a major component like the motherboard you have to purchase a new Win XP. Bloody rip off. With 98, no such hassles.
– In some cases, Win 98 is safer. The Blaster Worm didn’t affect my old Win 98 machines.
Times have changed. The upgrade treadmill has slowed down. People are now asking: “What advantages will this upgrade give me?” The answer? Not much these days.
* Win 98 is faster and more efficient because it uses less resources
No, Windows XP is faster and more efficient because it used available resources more efficiently.
* The dumbed down user interface in XP makes configuring your OS an exercise in pain
In some cases, where they dropped the ball during HIG development. In other cases (IMO that far outnumber the ball droppings) configuration is either identical or more streamlined.
*Windows Activation. Everytime you upgrade a major component like the motherboard you have to purchase a new Win XP
Now that’s just bullshit. I don’t like the WA scheme myself, but I’ve upgraded quite a few things on this box and I’ve not yet had to reactivate because of it, and I’ve certainly not had to buy a new XP license you ignorant, lying troll.