Hi! Matt,

In a message to All you wrote:

 MM> HAs anyone tried keeping a windows 98 box up without the security
 MM> patches, or is that sound like a pointless idea?

This copy of Win98SE has been running almost continuously since May 2004. 
It started life on various 486s & Pentiums, the last of which was a P90
with 64Mb of RAM.  It currently runs in a VirtualBox VM, and has been
running so since Februrary 2012.  It's never seen any 'patch'.

Mind you, were you after something of a typical 'user' environment?  Oops,
this installation has only been used for running Fidonet applications &
servers.  Although... at one time it was also running a firewall doover
with inherent POP3, SMTP, SOCKS servers, together with HTTP, FTP proxies
and FTP & Telnet servers, and, a HTTP server.  I eventually had to
strip that out to a separate Win98SE VirtualBox when I added a JamNNTPd
server.  I figured that the Fido POTS/binkD/RAW/Telnet & NNTP server
functions was enough of a load for a 128Mb VM, and it was time to split-off
that functionality.

Too much information?  Oops.  Sorry.  8-)

Cheers,
Paul.

... It must have been good; can't remember anything & my ears are ringing!
--- Paul's Win98SE VirtualBox