3 ms·
Windows 9x existed at a very different time. PCI wasn't a given. Plug and play wasn't a given. You couldn't even reliably enumerate all hardware on a system.
by haileys 2y ago
Windows 9x existed at a very different time.
PCI wasn't a given. Plug and play wasn't a given. You couldn't even reliably enumerate all hardware on a system.
Hardware detection back then involved a lot of poking at random IO ports and seeing what happens, using heuristics to select an appropriate driver. This is as dodgy as it sounds and would crash or hang your system if you weren't lucky.
- jandrese 2y agoOne thing that helps this is that most of that really buggy hardware has fallen into the wastebin of history and everything attached to a "modern" W98 machine should be plug and play compatible. PCI solved most of these issues. ISA cards gave Windows 98 and especially 95 a bad rap. Well, that and early USB controllers and devices. There was a whole lot of brand new driver code being tested in production back then.