Author: Kugee
Memphis build 1619, also known as Windows 98 Beta 2.1.
I've never actually seen any other channel bar sets for other countries, perhaps those should be documented at some point?
It ended up taking about 70 minutes to complete the installation even on my 350MHz Pentium II, probably due to the real mode 16-bit SCSI driver being used or something like that.
The splash screen doesn't look too different from the final version now.
Sometimes, my capture card will end up making the windows look a little pink; this tends to vary between the video cards I use (Nvidia RIVA 128 in this case). This issue is resolved when the drivers are installed and the display is set to 16-bit color.
Now attempting to install drivers for a USB printer. Get ready... this is gonna be goooooooooood.
Infinite BSODs! Now I have no choice but to reboot.
This incident is not much different from the infamous crash presented by yours truly, as they attempted to install a driver for a USB scanner in the following clip. Clearly this was a beta build they were testing, as Gates jokes "that must be why we're not shipping Windows 98". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84
The Discover Windows 98 program. I haven't bothered to check for differences between this and the final version.
However, I do remember this portion used different voices in the final version.
I'd post a recording here but it's too quiet and drowned out by the noise of the computer, which wasn't recorded separately from the sound card's line output.
Note how this desktop still has some older icons from previous betas.
The control panel. I don't think I ever maximized any windows to see if one of those fancy sidebars on the left would show up.
At this point, Windows 98 recognizes the CPUID as a Pentium II.
ACPI development has matured enough to the point where the driver can be loaded correctly on any conventional ACPI board.
Power options. "Turn off hard disks" does not show up here because I used a SCSI hard drive. I'm not sure which SCSI controllers or disks are capable of responding to APM or ACPI commands to spin down.
The power button is most certainly recognized here, but using it to put the computer into standby locked up the system in this instance. It may have been the underdeveloped state of this build's ACPI driver, but it may have also been the SCSI controller or disk that wouldn't cooperate.
Can't go without showing this...
I've gotta find more sites to test with old versions of Windows.
(ALTEXXANET seems to be a good one, as it also provides FTP and Gopher services.)
Abrupt Explorer crash.
This changed my wallpaper to the Windows 98 HTML wallpaper, which has a different background color.
One of the theme names has not been updated. I didn't check to see if the "More Windows" wallpaper was updated.
Not sure how the video ended up garbled, probably has to do with playing it while installing things, which I'm guessing ate up a lot of the CPU's time.
Missing font!
I planned to cover Unreal gameplay right from the start, but it ran very slowly on my non-MMX 200MHz K6. Might've had to do with too much SDRAM being installed for the 430TX chipset to cache (it can only cache 64MB, but I installed 128MB).
This doesn't really have much to do with the build itself (other than the fact that it runs), but being an early 3D accelerator from 1997, the RIVA 128 doesn't appear to support certain OpenGL lighting features Unreal asks for.
This, of course, can be resolved by switching to software rendering, where you're guaranteed to see all the visual effects you're supposed to, at the cost of more CPU usage.
Outlook Express. I'm not bothering with John Smith this time.
The recording continues to Build 1650!
