iPhone 4 and Windows 98SE

Doubtful, but there is one way to find out....

I dunno if the iPhone 4 supports Mass Storage mode. - http://www.google.com/search?q=iPhone+4+Camera+Mass+Storage

I vaguely remember the camera album showing up in My Computer when I had my iPhone 3G, but then again I also had iTunes and the drivers installed.

How many pictures do you need to save? Can you use the Dropbox App or perhaps a WiFi photo transfer App?

Sorry to bump an old thread, but i need info.

So, did you ever get this figured out? Im trying to get my windows 98 desktop to recognize my iphone 4. It asks for a driver, and i havent had much luck finding one.. Thanks!

Also, this OS is 10x faster than windows 7.. I love it

Win98 said:

Sorry to bump an old thread, but i need info.

So, did you ever get this figured out? Im trying to get my windows 98 desktop to recognize my iphone 4. It asks for a driver, and i havent had much luck finding one.. Thanks!

Also, this OS is 10x faster than windows 7.. I love it

Click to expand...

Hah, if you want fast, try Windows 95 or NT instead without the poisoned IE interface. The Win95 explorer (Microsoft's "Finder") is ten times as fast and perfectly usable on a dinosaur Intel 386 based system. Throw a 3+ Ghz Pentium 4 and the hardware is nearly too fast for Windows to deal with resulting in BSOD's etc. (other behind the scenes issues as well with hardware registers that the OS was never designed for doesn't help it much)

Back on topic, sadly, there really is no way to get Win 98 to address an iPhone as a mass storage device due to a few reasons. iOS really doesn't have a "logical" file system that a standard PC old or brand new will understand. That's where the magic of iTunes comes in to address the hardware in such a way to make music and app storage possible in the iOS environment. The only problem is the modern iTunes does not support anything below XP sp2 so you're out of luck.

Not to mention even by some act of Harry Potter wizardry that it synced with your iPhone, once you connect it to another computer, the sync from the PC will be gone.

Your best (and cheapest) route really is a USB key or a USB external hard drive to pull the data off it. I don't know if you're dealing with a laptop or just an old tower.

Other options which are a bit more expensive (it really depends on how much you value the photos and or other data) is to scrounge eBay for a USB to Compact Flash adapter which CF cards are still used in high end DSLR's due to raw speed. There are also USB to various memory card adapters all over the place (I have several but they can be "picky") I have a Sandisk CF to USB adapter that refuses to work on my MacBook Pro but another one I have that is made by Sony, works great.

The reason why I recommend the Compact Flash format is that they have been around a lot longer than SD cards and your chances are better if a plain USB thumb drive refuses to work.

If you're a bit tech savvy and really don't have any love for the old laptop, you might be able to hunt down a external enclosure for the hard drive on that computer, keep in mind if that machine was built with Windows 98 in mind, you're going to need an IDE enclosure (your best bet for a good price would be eBay or Amazon).

I doubt my hardware manufacturers made drivers for windows 95. haha.

Im not in any need of itunes, i just thought it would be cool to be able to plug in my iphone and have it charge so i would be able to have it charge at my desk.. The wall charger died. I was also just checking to see how much stuff i could get to run on 98.

Its a desktop that originally had XP on it, that i recently installed this on it because the XP hard drive started throwing sparks, and i wanted to mess with 98. It has a 2.4 P4 overclocked to 2.8 as of right now. I wanted to upgrade to a 3.0/1m/800 but my mobo wont accept anything above a /512/800..

Do you think it would be worth upgrading from a 2.4/512/533 to the 2.8/512/800? Thanks.

Well, at least i managed to get my USB flash drive working. I came across this: http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/win98se-usb-mass-storage-drivers.php I guess its a universal driver, but it worked for my 8gb sandisk cruzer.

It is a shame, but oh well... You would think that someone would have come up with a patch to make it compatible by now..

roadbloc said:

Haha. I'm sorry to say, but it is rather impossible. Just to even get the device charging under a legacy OS is impossible. Its a shame, but no biggie as my ThinkPad isn't my only computer.

Windows 98SE is still by far my favourite OS ever though.

Click to expand...

It's not the OS holding back enough current to charge your iPhone, it's the actual hardware that is the problem. Not enough power is being provided to the USB ports to charge but will have enough power for a mouse or other device with low power demands.

I've had this same issue with my PowerBook G4 which would charge my phone or my iPod. When I bought my original iPad however, the PowerBook simply didn't have enough current to charge the iPad while it was powered on. It would sync just fine, but with all legacy hardware be it an old PC or a Mac, there's always some issues you will run into down the road.

Ungibbed said:

It's not the OS holding back enough current to charge your iPhone, it's the actual hardware that is the problem. Not enough power is being provided to the USB ports to charge but will have enough power for a mouse or other device with low power demands.

I've had this same issue with my PowerBook G4 which would charge my phone or my iPod. When I bought my original iPad however, the PowerBook simply didn't have enough current to charge the iPad while it was powered on. It would sync just fine, but with all legacy hardware be it an old PC or a Mac, there's always some issues you will run into down the road.

Click to expand...

The problem is with the OS. On Windows systems, iDevices won't charge unless they been correctly identified as an iDevice and the proper drivers (iTunes or PTP) have been installed. The reason why your Powerbook couldn't charge your iPad is that the iPad requires more power then the USB standard allows. Thus, your Powerbook was too old for the iPad to charge with.

When i pluged it in, it recognized it as an iphone just fine. It then asked for a driver, which i dont have. Power isnt the issue.

I thought that it might if it had the driver...

Intell said:

The problem is with the OS. On Windows systems, iDevices won't charge unless they been correctly identified as an iDevice and the proper drivers (iTunes or PTP) have been installed. The reason why your Powerbook couldn't charge your iPad is that the iPad requires more power then the USB standard allows. Thus, your Powerbook was too old for the iPad to charge with.

Click to expand...

Drivers do not dictate power output to the USB bus on any computer nor can they increase it, a drivers basic function is to provide the necessary system hooks for proper communication. Been coding for windows systems for a number of years and the OS still has it's limits on how it can control motherboard resources, even more so on legacy systems. The user would only be notified if there was insuficent power on the USB system bus. A larger problem is with many notebook PC's is even with more USB ports, shortcuts are often made using a single controller for all four ports.

For the OP, the only option you have is to use a newer operating system or if you had an early build of Virtual PC for Windows that allows Win98 as a host and use Windows XP as a virtual machine. Earlier builds from Connectix allowed this but Microsoft now owns it and no longer supports a Win 98 host as various changes were made over the years.

Ungibbed said:

Drivers do not dictate power output to the USB bus on any computer nor can they increase it, a drivers basic function is to provide the necessary system hooks for proper communication. Been coding for windows systems for a number of years and the OS still has it's limits on how it can control motherboard resources, even more so on legacy systems. The user would only be notified if there was insuficent power on the USB system bus. A larger problem is with many notebook PC's is even with more USB ports, shortcuts are often made using a single controller for all four ports.

Click to expand...

The problem isn't with the Windows side, its with the iOS side. If iOS doesn't get a proper connection with the host computer, it won't charge. USB wall adapters allow a charge because they provide a small level of power to the data lines, allowing the iOS device to charge. Ever since the iPhone 3Gs, iDevices will not charge if giving 5 volts on just the power leads on its USB plug. On Mac and Windows with iTunes installed, iOS makes a proper connection to the desktop OS and initiates a charge.

Do this: Find a Windows computer that had iTunes installed, but has never had an iOS device plugged in. Let's pick Windows XP. You plug in your iPhone 4S, the little New Hardware balloon pops up. It says "New Device found...", (a few seconds/minuets), "Apple iPhone", at the point when it says "Apple iPhone" the iPhone starts charging. Not a second before. Why? Because iOS has yet to make a connection with the host OS.

Drivers do control the power available to a computers USB host port (programmable current limiting). Typically 100mA - 200mA available unless the slave device requests more (normally 500mA) before it trips the self resetting breaker (fuse). There are drivers that can support for much more current for supported chipsets.

Modern Macs & OSX versions can supply up to 1.5A for devices that request it. Point is unless your USB device specifically asks for more current in firmware it's traditionally limited to about 200mA.

Gigabyte has one, so does ASUS.
http://gigabyte.com/microsite/185/on-off-charge.htm

Intell said:

The problem isn't with the Windows side, its with the iOS side. If iOS doesn't get a proper connection with the host computer, it won't charge. USB wall adapters allow a charge because they provide a small level of power to the data lines, allowing the iOS device to charge. Ever since the iPhone 3Gs, iDevices will not charge if giving 5 volts on just the power leads on its USB plug. On Mac and Windows with iTunes installed, iOS makes a proper connection to the desktop OS and initiates a charge.

Do this: Find a Windows computer that had iTunes installed, but has never had an iOS device plugged in. Let's pick Windows XP. You plug in your iPhone 4S, the little New Hardware balloon pops up. It says "New Device found...", (a few seconds/minuets), "Apple iPhone", at the point when it says "Apple iPhone" the iPhone starts charging. Not a second before. Why? Because iOS has yet to make a connection with the host OS.

Click to expand...

The brick wall though is that the OP is using Windows 98... Legacy os which leads me to think legacy hardware which is far less flexable.

It would be a nightmare to support such an old OS as if iTunes isn't bloated enough already (I still have an early version bundled on a Mac OS 9 disc. 2.2MB...

Back to the Windows issue, I quickly combed over such smaller details about limitations of earlier USB implementation and Windows. It's rather late but there are some rather obvious replies and some conflicts...

When it comes to iOS and power requirements, there are some oddities when using AC chargers etc. I remember my third gen iPod Touch (32GB model based on 3GS iPhone hardware) and despite having my handy charger included with my iPhone 3G (green dot replacement) My iPhone would charge just fine. The iPod on the other hand struggled with the charger causing the battery icon to rapidly flicker between it's charge level and the "charging" icon.

The problem? not enough amps (but enough to trigger) charging it despite exchanges and even buying another charger from Apple. The odd part, my old PowerBook G4 never had a problem with it. Other USB oddities, an older charger that I bought for my 5th gen iPod. I also used the same charger to recharge my Xbox 360 controllers with the battery packs installed. On the other hand, it lacked the power to recharge a PS3 controller. The older SIXAXIS models nor the DS3. The Nintendo Wii does just fine though for that. ;-)

When it comes to the legacy PC and older operating systems such as Win98, hardware control was rather limited due to many different changes over the course of the life of the OS. Moving to the purposed Standard "ATX" form factor but with so many different vendors (The 440BX mainboard design was ideal but expensive so many others showed up along with AMD and the K6-2 and eventually the Athlon.

These board designs during that time were mixed, some great, some just evil... and due to the partial reliance legacy design, were far less flexable to control from the OS directly other than some high end models later on that were overclockers dream machines other hardware, such as USB 1.x had it's limitations in hardware.

Onto the scenario of installing iTunes onto a PC but yet never connecting an iOS device to it. If iTunes is already installed, the system hooks are already in place regardless if an iOS device was ever used at all.

lets complicate things a bit, say you never updated iTunes and the iPhone 5 is ready to plug in but you never updated the software, of course it's going to charge as the pins for the dock connector remain a constant. for +5 volts DC and ground if the device has changes internally for power and the newer software doesn't know how to properly address it, of course you're going to see problems as the proper system hooks are not in place...

If iTunes isn't installed at all, most likely you will have unknown hardware in your device tree and something leaching current from the system. It needs power to be recognized by the OS and the proper driver for the system to understand how to use it. In the case of Win98, typical bare bones basics are a .vxd and .dll package. since none exist, it would be seen, but not understood.

Ungibbed said:

When it comes to iOS and power requirements, there are some oddities when using AC chargers etc. I remember my third gen iPod Touch (32GB model based on 3GS iPhone hardware) and despite having my handy charger included with my iPhone 3G (green dot replacement) My iPhone would charge just fine. The iPod on the other hand struggled with the charger causing the battery icon to rapidly flicker between it's charge level and the "charging" icon.

The problem? not enough amps (but enough to trigger) charging it despite exchanges and even buying another charger from Apple. The odd part, my old PowerBook G4 never had a problem with it. Other USB oddities, an older charger that I bought for my 5th gen iPod. I also used the same charger to recharge my Xbox 360 controllers with the battery packs installed. On the other hand, it lacked the power to recharge a PS3 controller. The older SIXAXIS models nor the DS3. The Nintendo Wii does just fine though for that.

Onto the scenario of installing iTunes onto a PC but yet never connecting an iOS device to it. If iTunes is already installed, the system hooks are already in place regardless if an iOS device was ever used at all.

lets complicate things a bit, say you never updated iTunes and the iPhone 5 is ready to plug in but you never updated the software, of course it's going to charge as the pins for the dock connector remain a constant. for +5 volts DC and ground if the device has changes internally for power and the newer software doesn't know how to properly address it, of course you're going to see problems as the proper system hooks are not in place...

If iTunes isn't installed at all, most likely you will have unknown hardware in your device tree and something leaching current from the system. It needs power to be recognized by the OS and the proper driver for the system to understand how to use it. In the case of Win98, typical bare bones basics are a .vxd and .dll package. since none exist, it would be seen, but not understood.

Click to expand...

Your argument about the iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch 3G logically points to a hardware error. The iPT 3G and iPhone 3G need the same amount of power to charge. Not a bit more for either device. Only the iPad requires more power.

The scenario with an outdated version of iTunes doesn't hold true on Windows 2000 and newer computers. The iPhone would get detected as a camera manufactured by Apple with the model iPhone via its PTP interface and it would start to charge. That's why it still charges with an outdated version of iTunes or no iTunes at all. Also, iOS devices starting with the iPhone 3Gs won't charge if giving 5 volts on their charging pins. They'll say "Charging with this accessory is not supported". They require a small bit of power of their data bus.

Windows 98's problem, barring no iTunes, is that it doesn't have support for USB PTP. That's why it doesn't show up correctly or charge.

Intell said:

Your argument about the iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch 3G logically points to a hardware error. The iPT 3G and iPhone 3G need the same amount of power to charge. Not a bit more for either device. Only the iPad requires more power.

The scenario with an outdated version of iTunes doesn't hold true on Windows 2000 and newer computers. The iPhone would get detected as a camera manufactured by Apple with the model iPhone via its PTP interface and it would start to charge. That's why it still charges with an outdated version of iTunes or no iTunes at all. Also, iOS devices starting with the iPhone 3Gs won't charge if giving 5 volts on their charging pins. They'll say "Charging with this accessory is not supported". They require a small bit of power of their data bus.

Windows 98's problem, barring no iTunes, is that it doesn't have support for USB PTP. That's why it doesn't show up correctly or charge.

Click to expand...

Essentially, all you did was agree with me.

My "argument" with my iPhone 3G and my newer third generation iPod is a personal experience which was some odd fault of both between the power supply and the iPod as both were replaced and the same problems continued on with the small USB "block" charger.

After buying my iPad, I just used that charger for all my idevices from then on without a problem.

My last post didn't concern the iPad nor Windows 2000 (interesting way to change gears, but I didn't mention either product). Simply focusing on the thread of a complex puzzle with a newer iPhone with a much older and obsolete OS...

I tossed out all my older PC's when the last e-waste pickup was scheduled before moving as I moved on completely to the Mac for my computing needs and occasional game or two on Steam or even firing up a good Mac game once in a while to enjoy what I have now (Bioshock looks amazing on the 27" ACD along with COD4).

I retired from working on windows builds long ago. Just got bored with it and tired of people bringing their virus laden machines thinking that I can bring it all back with a few mouse clicks and they never bring beer to bide my time.

I just tell them that they're better off surfing recklessly with an iPad and back up their crap!

Finally, take care of your choice of words as you just seemed to fly right past the point and quickly spout off what you didn't fully read. Anyway, I'm done with this "discussion" as it really isn't helping the OP an any way, shape, or form. Call it an "argument" if you will, but that's rather foolish and counter productive...