Virtual PC experiment
Seems there’s some problems with Orion and Windows 98SE. Honestly people should already forget those old Windows’. Those just don’t cut anymore on driver support and are very problematic for programmer, especially if you’d want to use new features of Windows XP and later. I don’t know if WDM works that well on 98SE, ie. the DirectMIDI interfaces in DirectX for better MIDI.
Officially Orion Platinum/Pro doesn’t support Windows 95/98/Me anymore, but right now the problem is probably just something small. So, I downloaded the free Microsoft Virtual PC and I’m installing now Windows 98SE into it. I didn’t remember how horrible the installation was.. having tons of problems. First it didn’t work at all with larger virtual harddisk and then it lost the installation CD-rom and couldn’t install all dlls and files, so several errors when starting up the Windows. I just hope I can solve those quickly or this experiment takes too much time 
Overall must say it’s very pervertic to see Windows 98 running in a window.
Good news is that beta team hasn’t reported any bigger problems with 7.1 beta (except for few problems which might not be put to 7.1 if I can’t get them fixed soon), so it maybe out sooner you think … !
September 23rd, 2006 at 20:24
eww! It always scares me people still use Win98, let alone try and actually use making music!!
September 23rd, 2006 at 23:32
I have just upgraded to OP 7.0 having been a Basic and Pro user for 4-5 years. For me, using Windows 98SE is a simple matter of economics. I can’t afford to buy Windows XP - Maybe I could have bought it instead of OP but not both. And I had to sell my last two hardware fx boxes on Ebay anyway!
I have been having a few problems with OP 7.0, mainly display problems, like the border of each pattern in the song playlist disappears if I resize the scale. It was OK until I tried to load one of my Pro songs, and it’s been a bit crazy since. I’m not too worried, because I have one song left to finish on the current album and I want to do it in Pro so it doesn’t sound different to the already completed songs. Next album, I will start to use OP 7.0.
Don’t blame you for not supporting Win 98 any more, no-one is, but it does you credit that you’re willing to have a quick look to help those of us stuck with it. I have always found it to be really stable providing you don’t install loads of junk and connect to the net - I can use Orion Pro for hours without crashing usually.
September 23rd, 2006 at 23:37
OP 7.1 fixes also the playlist display problems under Windows 98.
September 24th, 2006 at 19:20
Thnaks very much Mark. I waited long enough to upgrade to OP, I can wait bit longer with no probs.