That's a little unfair; the 298 was designed for use with steppers, but of course that was the steppers of the day.
I salvaged a couple of steppers from a Xerox copier many years ago, and ran them from a PC using the 297/298 board from the same machine. (Point being the 298 is ok to use with a matched stepper motor from many years ago.)
Modern stepper motors do need modern driver chips.
As OP obviously figured out, the 297 is the one that talks to the processor, with the processor providing direction and pulse, and it in turn takes care of the inputs to the 298.