Well, I started developing my engine back in 2003 when I was still using Win98. I kept going at it when I finally moved to Win2k in 2004.

Quote Originally Posted by de_jean_7777 View Post
but it may make more sense to eventually try to add a win9x platform back into fpc 3.2
Not a chance.
Why? Because it would require making Windows unit use dynamic loading, making a lot of the functions declared there procedural variables.
The Windows unit in 2.6.4 was effectively *crippled* because of Win98 support in that compiler version. It misses a lot of really useful functions you have to add by yourself if you use 2.6.4.

I also believe a lot of string handling routines would have to be adapted to detect Win98 and hack around its limitations... which is not always possible, because how do you determine the system locale? It's not always possible. I use a dirty hack "if no Unicode support found assume Russian/cp1251", such things would not fly for the fpc rtl.

There are too few people interested in Win98.

WinXP, on the other hand... But WinXP already has all of the WinAPI functions there and working -- except maybe some exotic ones endemic to Win7/8/10. But these should be exceedingly rare.

Also, there is an abyss of time between WinXP (supported til 2014) and Win98 SE installed from an original CD of 1999 I am aiming to support.