End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me

July 11, 2006 will bring a close to Extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft will retire public and technical support, including security updates, by this date.

Existing support documents and content, however, will continue to be available through the Microsoft Support Product Solution Center Web site. This Web site will continue to host a wealth of previous How-to, Troubleshooting, and Configuration content for anyone who may need self-service.

Microsoft is retiring support for these products because they are outdated and can expose customers to security risks. We recommend that customers who are still running Windows 98 or Windows Me upgrade to a newer, more secure Microsoft operating system, such as Windows XP, as soon as possible.

Customers who upgrade to Windows XP report improved security, richer functionality, and increased productivity.

This announcement was found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/

From Aaron Giles’ Home Page on Monday, May 22nd, 2006


"What you may have deduced from the whatsnew in MAME 0.106u1 (assuming you read it) is that some work on the video system was under way. I’ve been claiming “video system rewrite!� for so long that I can barely remember when I first started discussing it. It was at least a year ago, if not longer.

Ever since I first mentioned it, it has been a monkey on my back — a giant “everything’s gonna break� rewrite that I’ve been both itching to do and dreading at the same time. It’s been clear for years that MAME has needed far more fleixibility in handling things like multiple screens. It’s also been clear that my original attempt at a system to incorporate artwork was only partly successful. And there has been way too much interference with game-drawn graphics by external entities like the user interface, which has created a lot of grossness about the way video is handled.

All this was to be fixed with the video rewrite. And if you know me, you know that fixing all those problems is something that I really, really wanted to do. But at the same time, I was dreading it. Why? Well, the biggest reason is probably the fact that it would mean delving back into DirectX programming once again, which is always fraught with pain. Ever since the original port to Windows a number of years back, I haven’t had to deal with the DirectX side of things much.

Well, this past weekend, I’m happy to say, it finally happened. Bye bye, monkey.

The practical upshot of this is that the core work for the new video system is now written."

Click Below To Read More!

Found in Frank Palazzolo's Blog, dated January 10, 2006:

"For those who haven't heard, the speech chip used in Berzerk has been reverse-engineered by "Lord Nightmare"! This is something I've been waiting for for about 7-8 years! I'm sure that the emulation will end up in MAME and PinMAME sooner or later."

You can read the full blog at the link below:
Frank Palazzolo WIP: Actual MAME-related work! http://avoidspikes.blogspot.com/

Written by MAME Developer R. Belmont:

"Year in review"

"Haze has to even ask if 2005 was a great year for MAME and MAMEdev? To quote a certain puppet movie, the only answer possible is F*CK YEAH!.

Here’s an extremely partial list based on a combination of my memories and a MAWS search for new and changed games from 0.90 to the present.

* the System 32 part of the Sega rewrite
* Seibu SPI and the i386/486/Pentium core
* 3D Konami games including playable Gradius IV
* massive ST-V improvements in both speed and quality
* Subtle but important PSX hardware improvements
* futher improvements to Hyperstone-based games
* complete YMF271 (OPX) emulation
* Brian Troha’s crusade to emulate every minor bugfix revision of every Incredible Technologies game
* major Sega Model 3 improvements
* Area 51: Type 4 support
* fixes for many long-standing Vegas bugs like the Carnevil crash

Found on Haze’s Mame WIP December 27th, 2005
http://haze.mameworld.info/

Written by MAME Developer Haze:
"2005 - A Great Year for MAME?

0.90 was Released on the 4th Jan 2005
0.103 will almost certainly be released within the next week or two.

13 full MAME releases, and countless ‘u’ updates mark a very productive year in terms of MAME development.

The highlights of the year for me were without doubt the emulation of the games using the Data East encrypted CPUS ‘102′ and ‘156′ and the Seibu SPI graphic decryption+emulation; all of which the original creator of MAME, Nicola Salmoria, played a big role in making a reality.

Exactly what 2006 has in store nobody quite knows.