Help: I need to Get 2GB installed RAM working in Win98SE

[RetroOS]

...

In anticipation of the 2TB limit being reached, I have developed true 48 Bit versions of my Patches and a couple of workarounds to enable Windows 98 to utilize up to 52TB.

Wouldn't it be great if they were free to home users...

Afterall, Windows 9x users are a dying breed...

[rloew]

Wouldn't it be great if they were free to home users

That might have been OK if I had a lot of business customers. So far all of my customers have been home users.

Afterall, Windows 9x users are a dying breed

Maybe, but then there would be no point in developing Windows 9x Patches. I could work on the 2TB limit in Windows XP and Vista instead.

[dencorso]

Now, as I said, that's a PATA only issue. SATA, USB and FireWire (IEEE1394) use completely different access interfaces, so there is no 128 GiB limit for them.

SATA uses nearly the same commands as PATA so it is subject to the same issues as PATA. Most SATA controllers come with their own drivers so 48-Bit LBA support depeds on the driver used. Being a newer standard, it is more likely that a SATA driver would support 48-Bit LBA but there are no guarantees expecially with older drivers.

Some motherboards with SATA built into their chipsets are compatable with the ESDI_506.PDR driver. If ESDI_506.PDR is used then there will be no support for 48-Bit LBA. In addition, the MSHDC.INF file will incorrectly configure some of these SATA drivers causing problems especially when IDE and SATA drives are used together.

I stand corrected. Thanks, rloew!

What I had in mind is that, for motherboards having VIA chipsets (specificaly the 8237 southbridge or any other compatible with it), anyone using the viasraid type drivers (link) is safe because they implement 48-bit LBA correctly. As for USB and FireWire (IEEE1394), they really use completely different access interfaces.

[Multibooter]

In anticipation of the 2TB limit being reached, I have developed true 48 Bit versions of my Patches and a couple of workarounds to enable Windows 98 to utilize up to 52TB.

The real limitation on disk/partition size under Win98 is the disk checking software which works under Win98 plus the number of free drive letters.

About 2 years ago I shelved V-Com's DiskFixer v6 because when checking a 250GB HDD I got "Error occurred accessing disk" followed by a phony msg "session cancelled by user", terminating after nearly completing the File Allocation Table check.

MS ScanDisk has a 127GB limit, beyond that it refuses with the misleading err msg: Not enough memory available.

Norton Disk Doctor 2004 works Ok under Win98 with 750GB disks with partitions up to a maximum of 240GB [=258.177.794.048 bytes; 240.5GB partition size results in a blue screen when running NDD]. NDD 2005 I don't care about because it has a problem with large fonts. Any other reliable disk checking software for 1TB HDDs under Win98?

The next major hurdle to overcome for Win98 aficionados is not that much 52TB of HDDs, but rather the 4GB FAT32 file size limit. About 2 years ago I looked at WriteDVD! Pro http://www.softarch.com/us/products/wdvdpro.html but it didn't convince me. If I remember right, this software, or maybe it was another UDF/DVD-RAM software, could also format HDDs with UDF, which doesn't have the 4GB file size limit. Files >4GB are not uncommon with eMule, because of some inconsiderate uploaders. One possible solution to circumvent the 4GB file size limitation might be to set eMule's download directory to a 9.4GB DVD-RAM drive http://computers.search.ebay.com/DVD-RAM-9...ters-Networking but the heavy disk access during eMule downloads may damage the expensive DVD-RAM drive quickly. Maybe the SCSI drives don't need a special Win98 driver. Here a good link re FAT16/32, NTSF & UDF http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b.../LocFileSys.doc The ideal solution might be to format a 64GB USB stick with UDF and use it for the download directory of eMule, but this is another project ...

Edited May 23, 2008 by Multibooter

[Multibooter]

I disabled pagefile on ramdisk for stability reasons.

Sometimes I work with huge sound files in goldwave and 800MB of pagefile wasn't enough.

But I also had problems when copying a big file, say 600MB to ramdrive - in about 60% of progess

system falls to BSOD. I tied it again with different file size copied. For less about 400MB it didn't fail.

I didn't figure out the source of unstability so I disabled ramdisk and put page file back to HDD.

As I have quite fast SATA drive it's not problem.

I have shelved xmsdsk, at least for the moment. It looks like HimemX, 2GB of memory, Win98 & xmsdsk don't get along well together.

After I ran a modded standalone version of the 250MB game PokemonPlayIt!2 (2001) on the xmsdsk RAM-disk, the Nvidia Display selection had disappeared from the menu of the Nvidia system tray icon. After checking with Norton Disk Doctor, it indicated an error in the Extended partition table. After verifying with Partition Table Doctor, I decided to wipe the 750GB disk and restored a backup. I never had an Extended partition table error before, I was just afraid that the logical NTSF partitions in the Extended partition might also have been affected.

Edited May 15, 2008 by Multibooter

[Cyberguy]

I'm not sure if this is still relevant in this topic but I run Win98 on a PC with 1.5gb of ram & 256mb video card without problems.

To do this do the following.

Basically, with 1 Gb or less of RAM in the PC go to Msconfig and in the advanced tab choose the option that lets you limit the amount of RAM Win98 will use.

Check the box and type 999 in the number box.

Then apply and close.

Reboot the machine. If all is okay then shutdown the machine, add your extra RAM and reboot.

Your PC should work fine from here on, no need for RAM disks etc. Changing Vcache is about the only thing I also did,

I set Vcache value to MaxFileCache=128000.

Of course the extra RAM is there for when I run XP etc. Win98 doesn't use it.

Edited May 19, 2008 by Cyberguy

[RetroOS]

I'm not sure if this is still relevant in this topic but I run Win98 on a PC with 1.5gb of ram & 256mb video card without problems.

...

Welcome to MSFN Cyberguy! - One of the few remaining Windows 9x outposts!

And, welcome to the over 1GB of RAM with Windows 98 world!

I dual boot with 98SE and XP.

See below for information I posted on how I got 1.5GB of RAM working and also got 1.125GB usable in Windows 98SE:

http://www.msfn.org/board/VCACHE-fix-attem...288#entry732288

[Multibooter]

Did anybody find 2GB-memory-bugs in other Win98 software? It might be useful to set up a list of software running bug-free, and software which is buggy/unreliable with 2GB.

The Advanced Troubleshooting Settings page of the MS System Configuration Utility msconfig.exe is problematic with 2GB of RAM:

If you make ANY changes on this page [e.g. about ScanDisk] & then click Apply - Ok:

If the entry "Limiting memory to (max.possible:) 999MB" was selected: this will cause a change in System.ini

- the previous entry for MaxPhysPage will be remmed out: ;Rem TShoot MaxPhysPage=48000

- a new entry will be put into System.ini, e.g. MaxPhysPage=3E6FF

- there is NO notification by the system about the change in available memory, RAM will be reduced to 999MB

and a week later you may ask yourself: "Why did the additional 250MB of RAM disappear?"

If the entry "Limiting memory to (max.possible:) 999MB" was NOT selected

- in System.ini the previous entry for MaxPhysPage=48000 will be deleted by the system

- you will not be able to boot into Win98 anymore [until you re-enter under DOS the value of MaxPhysPage in System.ini]

LIST OF SOFTWARE WITH ISSUES WHEN 2GB OF MEMORY ARE INSTALLED:

Fast Defrag v2.30 [by AMS] cannot use automatic memory cleanup because of 2 err msgs after each cleanup

msconfig.exe changes in Advanced Troubleshooting Settings either delete MaxPhysPage entry or replaces it with 999MB, without notification

xmsdsk [RAMdisk software] when using the RAMdisk for the swapfile; when running programs from RAMdisk (e.g. games)

Edited May 23, 2008 by Multibooter

[rloew]

LIST OF SOFTWARE WITH ISSUES WHEN 2GB OF MEMORY ARE INSTALLED:

Fast Defrag v2.30 [by AMS] cannot use automatic memory cleanup because of 2 err msgs after each cleanup

msconfig.exe changes in Advanced Troubleshooting Settings either delete MaxPhysPage entry or replaces it with 999MB, without notification

xmsdsk [RAMdisk software] when using the RAMdisk for the swapfile; when running programs from RAMdisk (e.g. games)

I tested Fast Defrag 2.3.1 (reports 2.3) with my Patch to see if the problem was memory or the MaxPhysPage workaround.

I did not get error messages but the Cleaning Command would not display it's wait message and would never complete when there was too much memory.

Between 1280MB and 1664MB it would work once. With 1664MB or more RAM, it would never work.

This indicates that Fast Defrag has a problem handling large amounts of RAM.

The other two Programs have problems when used as a workaround. These problems do not exist when using my Patch instead of a workaround.

The problems are not related to the amount of memory.

My Patch enables all RAM to be used so MaxPhysPage is not needed. This eliminates the issue with MSCONFIG.EXE

Since the Patch enables all RAM to be used, there is no reason to use XMSDSK for Swap since better performance would be obtained by disabling Swap entirely.

[Mijzelf]

I have developed true 48 Bit versions of my Patches and a couple of workarounds to enable Windows 98 to utilize up to 52TB.

Doesn't W9x use a 32 bit sectoraddress internally?

[rloew]

Doesn't W9x use a 32 bit sectoraddress internally?

Device Drivers such as IOS.VXD and ESDI_506.PDR use 64-Bit Sector Arguments. The Interrupt 13 Extensions (DOS) also use 64-Bit Sector Numbers.

The existing ESDI_506.PDR files, including LLXX's version and my High Capacity Disk Patch, ignore the upper 32 Bits.

I created versions of my High Capacity Disk Patch and BOOTMAN Overlay to use the additional 16 Bits supported by the 48-Bit LBA Protocol.

The IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD Filesystem Drivers use 32 Bits. I altered the way Logical Sector Numbers are mapped to Physical Sector Numbers. This allowed me to create Partitions of up to 2TB starting above the 2TB limit. 24 Partitions can be defined to provide a total space of 48TB.

It may be possible to redo Cluster mapping. If so, the size of a single Partition could be increased to at least 32TB using 256 Sectors per Cluster.

I have already developed Patches for IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD that support 256 Sectors per Cluster.

Edited May 28, 2008 by rloew

[vick1111]

Rloew Memory patch

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I have tried the memory patch of Rloew without success.

I have a windows98SE italian version.

It works only on english version?

CORRECTION

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Ok after reading the post (following this one) of rloew I tried the demo patch again in the new version and it allowed me to see 2Gb of RAM on win98se. I started some programs in the 10 minutes and everythings seemed to work fine.

I am not buyng now this patch cause 1 GB of Ram is enough to cover all my memory needs for now in win98.

I encourage rloew to write some documentation about how he solved the problem. This documentation could be more valuable than the code in itself.

(Anyway I guess there can be a way of making monney out of it for him if he decide to give out code as open source. Any suggestion or comment? )

Edited May 29, 2008 by vick1111

[rloew]

Rloew Memory patch

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I have tried the memory patch of Rloew without success.

I have a windows98SE italian version.

It works only on english version?

Try the latest version 5.0. The older versions only supported English versions of Windows.

I assume you got an error trying to install it. If the error occurred during use, please PM me.

[RetroOS]

...

Device Drivers such as IOS.VXD and ESDI_506.PDR use 64-Bit Sector Arguments. The Interrupt 13 Extensions (DOS) also use 64-Bit Sector Numbers.

...

The IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD Filesystem Drivers use 32 Bits...

Thanks for the info. Very interesting!

Obviously someone at Microsoft had a little forward thinking! (except for IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD...)

[Multibooter]

Rloew Memory patch: ... I have a windows98SE italian version.... everythings seemed to work fine.

First of all, congratulations to rloew that the patch has become more generic. The real test that it works with international versions of Windows 98 would be if it also works with Arabic Win98.

I am not buyng now this patch cause 1 GB of Ram is enough to cover all my memory needs for now in win98.

Here a question to rloew: Which Win98 applications or combinations of applications benefit particularly by having 2GB rather than 1GB of RAM? What's the benefit of having 2GB of RAM available? How about some benchmarks? How does eMule on Win98 run under heavy load with 2GB vs 1GB?