Research on ICH7/8/9/10 for Dual boot W98SE/WX

[ragnargd]

Hi,

 

as i already told, i'm searching of a hardware-combination, that allows me to run old games (i.er. Thief 1) on W98SE, with the full glory of DX9.0c and Creative EAX 2.0.

But also, while not gaming, i wanted to have a decent Windows 10 machine (Quad Core, 8GB Ram, full AHCI SATA with Trim), not for gaming, but for everything else.

 

As this could only be made true by choosing a 45mm/333FSB Intel Core 2 Quad with an AHCI-cabable southbride (ICH 7/8/9/10 R), i bought a motherboard of each type (yes, four of them all in all), and did some research if this is possible, and if, to what extent, and what "price" to pay.

 

I did not use RLoews SATA-patch on purpose, although financially, it is on par with my solution, and technically probably even better, because it removes the need for IDE/SATA I, and thereby requires one slot less, which increases the choice of motherboards.

 

In a nutshell:

 

1. It works. Yay!

2. Being able to boot into W98SE means either buying an add-on card or RLoews patch

3. I had to switch off onboard USB, as it effectually blocked W98SE from working stable. I bought a compatible add-in card.

4. I love NVidia and Creative for their dedicated and longstanding support for their old hardware. Period.

5. In W98SE, this machine idles with 72W, a bit less (exact measures here when done) in Windows 10.

6. For you old Pros on msfn.org, nothing new here, just confirmation of what you already found out. But still...

 

More Details:

 

USB:

 

On ICH7/8/9/10, THE major obstacle was USB on the intel southbridge.

It is unstable with W98SE in any case, on every board i had, with or without drivers/Inf/NUSB.

Only switching it off made the boards stable (being able to shut down without freezing, random hickups, you name it...).

No way around it.

I bought a PCI add-in card with a VIA VT6212, as it is the only chipset known to me compatible with both W98SE and WX.

I decided for one with an internal port, to be able to connect the front panel ports.

Maximus Decim' NUSB (a must have on W98SE for me) works on this add-on card like a charm.

 

SATA/IDE:

 

There are no native SATA II drivers for W98SE for onboard SATA II, neither intel, nor JMicron, nor Marvell.

You CAN boot from these controllers, but you will see no other drives or ODDs. No 32bit mode as well, i guess.

If you don't install drivers, they won't impact the stability of your W98SE, though, it's just a yellow exclamation mark in your device-list.

There are compatible Chipsets for SATA I, like the JMicron JMB360, but they are not known to be not on boards with ICH7-10

I bought a PCI add-in card with a VIA VT6421, as it is the only chipset known to me compatible with both W98SE and WX.

It has both IDE and SATA I, and booting W98SE from it was nice and easy, speed with an SSD is fine. No native Trim, though.

 

Chipset:

 

The (newer) slip-stream method and INF-files by LoneCrusader are superior to the (older) add-on method by xRayer...

@LoneCrusader: ICH®10? prettyplease...

...as long as you switch of the onboard USB.

@xRayer and LoneCrusader (and everyone else): THANK YOU!!!

There seems to be one small ressource conflict, but without any observable consequence.

(did i thank the right persons this time? correct me if not...)

 

PCIe/AGP:

 

NVidia GeForce 6 and 7 work flawlessly with 82.69 (i took a 7600 GT), thanks to (primarily) MDGx and RLoew. THANK YOU!!!

 

Sound:

 

Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 1/2 ftw.

Was able to control W98SE through the Creative IR Remote.

Being able to rock hard my flat with my Fender Bullet eGuitar through the ZS Platinum Front Panel. B)

Same with XP and WX. 'nuff said.

 

Network

 

I have an onboard Realtek 8111B GBit PCIe. If you can, have a compatible PCIe GBit NIC onboard (Marvell Yukon would work as well), many boards have this, it's pretty nice, one less add-on card needed. It's only worth it if you use SSDs, of course, as otherwise you have nothing to make use of your bandwith.

 

RAM

 

8GB of Dual Channel Interleaved DDR2 800, of which W98SE sees 1GB, Ushers Method with himemX.exe. Always works, always fun.

 

Finally, my choosen Motherboard:

 

I finally settled with a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R, as it has enough AHCI-SATAII ports, 4 DDR2 slots (8GB Max.), 3 PCI, 3PCIe 1x, one PCIe 16x slot, and that nice compatible onboard PCIe-NIC 8111B from Realtek, which gave me ample of space for my badly-needed add-on-cards and memory. Native BIOS-support for my Core2Quad 9550S (not many boards have that) being a plus. Perhaps later on i'll ad an USB 3.0 PCIe 1x add-on card for Windows 10 (and maybe XP).

The ASUS P5Q had a damaged USB-Hub, the ASRock G41C-S did not have enough PCI-slots in the end, the GA-965P-DS3 did not support my C2Q 9550S in the BIOS. All worked, though, one way ot the other.

 

Questions? Critics? Suggestions?

 

Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

Edited February 17, 2016 by ragnargd

[LoneCrusader]

I did not use RLoews SATA-patch on purpose, although financially, it is on par with my solution, and technically probably even better, because it removes the need for IDE/SATA I, and thereby requires one slot less, which increases the choice of motherboards.

Doesn't make much sense NOT to buy and use Rloew's patch for a setup such as this. What's $10 dollars for working SATA compared to the cost of the rest of the system? Same could be said for the RAM patch, but to each his own I guess.

 

USB:

On ICH7/8/9/10, THE major obstacle was USB on the intel southbridge.

It is unstable with W98SE in any case, on every board i had, with or without drivers/Inf/NUSB.

Only switching it off made the boards stable (being able to shut down without freezing, random hickups, you name it...).

No way around it.

I bought a PCI add-in card with a VIA VT6212, as it is the only chipset known to me compatible with both W98SE and WX.

I decided for one with an internal port, to be able to connect the front panel ports.

Maximus Decim' NUSB (a must have on W98SE for me) works on this add-on card like a charm.

This is board specific. I have two ICH8 boards where USB2 works fine under 98SE. The only issue I have seen with it was on an Intel DP43TF ICH10 board.

 

Chipset:

The (newer) slip-stream method and INF-files by LoneCrusader are superior to the (older) add-on method by MDGx...

@LoneCrusader: ICH®10? prettyplease...

...as long as you switch of the onboard USB.

@MDGx and LoneCrusader (and everyone else): THANK YOU!!!

There seems to be one small ressource conflict, but without any observable consequence.

I think xRayer is the one who provided the other INF method.. unless MDGx had one as well?

I have a more complete set of INFs that does support ICH10, but it requires slightly different handling than the set I released before.

You may remember I had to trim out some irrelevant stuff from the final version that supported ICH7/8/9 because the INF was too large and caused errors during SETUP. ICH10 and later Intel systems increased the already large INF size exponentially, so I had to split the data into more INFs. MACHINE.INF and MACHINE2.INF can be directly replaced as with the previous set, and 98SE will automatically use these, but the MACHINE3.INF, MACHINE4.INF, and MACHINE5.INF required for all of the data may have to be copied manually or you may have to edit another SETUP INF file in order to have them copied automatically. I haven't tested them with "vanilla" 98SE, but I have used them successfully in my "full slipstream" build.

 

the GA-965P-DS3 did not support my C2Q 9550S in the BIOS.

Did you make certain that you had the latest BIOS version on your system?

I had to update to the very latest BIOS to have support for the Q9550 on my Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6.

[jaclaz]

But also, while not gaming, i wanted to have a decent Windows 10 machine (Quad Core, 8GB Ram, full AHCI SATA with Trim), not for gaming, but for everything else.

 

Questions? Critics? Suggestions?

Maybe you were meaning "a decent machine for running Windows 10"?

 

jaclaz

[ragnargd]

>>Doesn't make much sense NOT to buy and use Rloew's patch for a setup such as this.

>>What's $10 dollars for working SATA compared to the cost of the rest of the system?

>>Same could be said for the RAM patch, but to each his own I guess.

 

Long story short: You are right. On the other hand, we now know TWO ways to do it. Which doesn't hurt.
 

>>This is board specific. I have two ICH8 boards where USB2 works fine under 98SE.

>>The only issue I have seen with it was on an Intel DP43TF ICH10 board.

 

That is good to know. Still, i think many have had this problem (by what people reported here on msfn.org).

What bugs me: I cannot see a pattern, which this works sometimes, and sometimes not.

 

>>I think xRayer is the one who provided the other INF method.. unless MDGx had one as well?

 

My error. Corrected.

 

>>I have a more complete set of INFs that does support ICH10, but it requires slightly different handling than the set I released before. [...]

 

I wish there was a way to script that... yeah, there is no easy way. No less, quite good what you did there.
 

the GA-965P-DS3 did not support my C2Q 9550S in the BIOS.

>>Did you make certain that you had the latest BIOS version on your system?
>>I had to update to the very latest BIOS to have support for the Q9550 on my Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6.

 

C2Q 9550 is supported, but 9550S is not. The 9550S (much like the mostly unknown 9505S) were the last additions to this CPU family, and many boards didn't incorporate them. Mainly, this is not a big deal, as they basically work, but with cache and energy-handling, they are not used to their full potential. Not a big deal, but perfection is perfection no less...

 

Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

Edited September 13, 2015 by ragnargd

[ragnargd]

 

But also, while not gaming, i wanted to have a decent Windows 10 machine (Quad Core, 8GB Ram, full AHCI SATA with Trim), not for gaming, but for everything else.

 

Questions? Critics? Suggestions?

Maybe you were meaning "a decent machine for running Windows 10"?

 

jaclaz

 

 

I see what you did there...

 

 

[Nomen]

This thread should have been added to the sticky "motherboards for win-98" thread.