AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-01, 14:56:
I guess I had it in my mind that a dual-boot Win98/XP might be set up with an ISA audio card for Win98 gaming, and PCI audio for XP-- but now I realize OP hasn't detailed what motherboard and cards he's working with.
I can add some context.
I'm currently working on a multi-OS build (DOS/Win95/Win98/WinXP) with an Asus PBS533-E motherboard / Pentium 4 build. It will have three sound cards including an ESS Solo-1, Diamond Monster Sound MX300 and Audigy 2 ZS.
For Win95, I want to have the ESS Solo-1 and MX300 installed and active. Audigy 2 ZS will be disabled.
For WinXP, I want to have the Audigy 2 ZS enabled, but ESS Solo-1 and MX300 disabled. In performing the Windows XP install, it automatically installed the wrong ESS drivers, since there are no drivers for the Solo-1 (ES1938S) that I'm aware of.
For Windows 98, I'm testing a scenario using two Win98 installs: one for the ESS Solo-1 and MX300 and the other for the ESS Solo-1 and Audigy 2 ZS.
I was thinking about just doing different hardware profiles, but since I want to use different games with A3D versus EAX, I figured having two independent Win 98 setups might be cleaner overall.
For the cards I'm not using in each respective install, I'm curious if there are any downsides to just not installing drivers and disabling the detected hardware in the Device Manager. Or might there be a reason to install the drivers first, then disable the hardware.
The other hardware I'm looking at not installing are LAN drivers. I originally tested a Win98 install with the LAN drivers, but it resulted in significant increase in boot times. I'm thinking of just leaving those uninstalled and the LAN device disabled to keep things running faster.