dimension 4550 for w98

OK thanks friends.

I have installed the w98se on a separate fat32 parbreastiton. naturaly I have also separte data parbreastiopn in fat32 format to exchange data between this and xp and linux.

The need for w98 is , it is the most convenient OS when you need some real time work, you just drive it down to DOS mode, then you can any time run it up to windows again for convenient file handling, webacces etc. OK pure dos, freedos or what ever will do th ejob too, but w98 will nicely understand harddisk of more the 8GB and reads fat32 volumes, where the pure dos 6x will not.

w2k will allow hardware access ok, but will not work with any real time communication is there not possible, which I need for some communication devices an controll of real time apparatus. For w98, even real time controll driver is avaiable, for other (higher MS-OS) it is not possible unless you change the whole kernell as it was possible with NT4.

The XP preinstalled does not show the components by name in the hardware manager unfortunately, it seems the text strings were removed in the registry prior creating the recovery CD (??).

So yes, I will have to run some Baart or Hiren or what ever util to sort the hardware out.

Tried so far the w98 driver from nvidia, and the 1800 monitor driver signed for w98 from dell, but had still no luck in setting up some more reasonable resolution of the display more the the VGA standard. Simply it refuses to accept any changes for more resolution , even no way to select any other standard monitor etc.

is it in this case essential to install the intel drivers first?