All said and done. the best bet is having dual boot os. load ( instal) Win98 SE ( i believe this is the best and stable version of windows) and then install Win XP , when it asks wheather to replace the old os. click no and you have got a dual booting system capable of handelling all the ports and ios in win 98 and all the luxuries of XP. only down side is that you can use only one at a time and you have to reboot to get to the other one. i hope this helps.
vinod