[AOpen i865PEa-7ILFR motherboard: ICH5R win-98 drivers?]

Could this possibly be the only socket-775 motherboard based on ICH5R and with Win-98 drivers?

AOpen i865PEa-7ILFR

http://www4.shopping.com/xPF-AOpen-i865PEa-7ILFR

http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/motherbo.../i865PEa-7ILFR/

I can't find that motherboard on A-Open's web site, but it is mentioned here as a varient of the i865PEa-7IF:

ftp://asftp.aopen.com.tw/pub/manual/mb/i8...a7ilfr-ol-e.pdf

Are win-98 drivers for the 7.1 sound component being offered by A-Open?

i865PEa-7IF Driver Realtek Avance AC97 Audio Driver R3.66 12/21/2004

Realtek AC'97 Audio Driver.

OS Support:WinXP, Win98SE, WinME, Win2000

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Realtek Avance AC97 Audio Driver R269601USA8 8/14/2004

Realtek Avance AC97 Audio Driver Patch for windows 98se.

OS Support:Win98SE

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Intel Chipset Software Installation Driver R5.11.1002 PV 8/14/2004

Intel Chipset driver.

OS Support:WinXP, Win98SE, WinME, Win2000

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Intel Extreme Graphic Driver R13.6.1.3732 PV 8/14/2004

Intel Extreme Graphic Driver.

OS Support:WinXP, Win98SE, WinME, Win2000

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Realtek Avance AC97 Audio Driver R3.60 8/10/2004

Realtek Avance AC97 Audio Driver.

OS Support:WinXP, Win98SE, WinME, Win2000

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Intel Chipset Software Installation Driver R6.0.1.1002 PV 7/16/2004

OS Support:WinXP, Win2000

http://www.dirfile.com/aopen_i865gm_7l_int...0_1_1002_pv.htm

There is a win-98se directory in that R6 driver set, and:

Target Chipset#: Intel® E7520 & Intel® 915G/P/GV

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Intel USB 2.0 Driver R1.1.0.2 4/16/2003

OrangeWare/Intel USB 2.0 Driver for Win98SE/ME

OS Support:WinXP, Win98SE, WinME, Win2000

[Win-98: Large hard drives with small cluster size -?]

A few questions here regarding the use of large hard drives with win-98:

I used Seagate Diskwizard on a 160 gb Barracuda drive (SATA) and told it to use 4kb cluster size. Ended up with about 40m clusters (allocation units). Diskwizard went on to put the DOS system files on the drive from a win-98(se) setup floppy. The drive boots find, and chkdsk reports the full disk size. Win-98 is NOT yet installed on it.

The motherboard is Gigabyte 8KNXP (bios updated to Sept/2005 version). CPU is P-4, 3.0 Ghz, 800 mhz FSB. 512 mb system ram (2 banks of 256 mb running in "dual channel" mode).

After power-up, the first time I perform a DIR, it takes 6 minutes for it to report the free disk space.

I understand that a DIR command is computationally intensive for FAT-32 because the entire FAT must be linearly processed to compute free disk space.

After the first DIR command is performed, all other DIR commands are quick (no 6-minute delay) - why is that?

I assume that the Diskwizard software did not perform a full format (physical format?) of the drive - is that a factor with the long time to perform the first DIR command? Or will I always experience this?

Besides scandisk or defrag, is there anything else that is incompatible with having a FAT with 40m allocation units?

I know that there is a patched version of ESDI_506.PDR, but the drive is SATA, being used in SATA mode (not mapped as IDE) so I assume that win-98 (when installed) will not use ESDI_506.PDR so therefore I should be able to have use of the full drive without fear of corruption?

If so, then will Win-98 have a problem with the 4kb cluster size that I've chosen? Are there performance or compatability problems with that and the corresponding large FAT size?

Basically, my question boils down to this: Has anyone else formatted a large drive (either less than or greater than 137 gb) with a "non-standard" cluster size, and found problems with Win-98, and was it more efficient or optimal - or less?

A side question regarding SATA: I currently have 1 drive connected to 4 possible SATA controller channels. Two channels come from the on-board Intel controller, and the other two come from a Silicon Image controller. If I have a second drive connected to the same controller, then am I forced to use both as a RAID? Because if I don't want them to be used as part of a RAID, then I think that they both become mapped as IDE - am I right about that?

[137GB limit - ESDI_506.PDR and other limits]

Windows 98/SE/ME does not support SATA disk controller contained in Intel chipset (ICH5, ICH6, ICH7 southbridges) - yellow exclamation mark appears next to the IDE controller icon and maybe the ESDI_506.PDR modification could be very small?

Petr

I think there are win-98 drivers for ICH5 (but not ICH6 and higher, as you say).

I think ICH6 is where PCI-express begins... ?

I'm reading this thread because I'm currently fooling around with a 160 gb SATA drive connected to a Gigabyte 8KNXP and find that it works so far - in DOS. Will be installing 98se on it soon.

Have used Seagate DiskWizard software to create a single fat-32 partition with 4kb cluster size.

[Patching Win-98 with win-2k version of MS06-072]

Isn't that what you're looking for ?

Added newer DXTMSFT.DLL + DXTRANS.DLL 6.0.2800.1587 from Win2000 SP4 IE 6.0 SP1 Q925454 security fix:

The MS patch for Win-2K contains these files which are not mentioned in the patches being made available on this forum:

Cdfview.dll

Msrating.dll

Mstime.dll

And these files (which are mentioned in this forum) are NOT part of the Win-2K update:

SHDOCLC.DLL

URL.DLL

Can someone explain these discrepancies?

And can someone answer if a simple file substitution will work, or is regsvr32 needed to "install" the new files?

And regarding the use of regsvr32 - is it normal to get "register or unregister server entry points not found" when trying to register or unregister these files:

jsproxy.dll

shlwapi.dll

wininet.dll

[Patching Win-98 with win-2k version of MS06-072]

Regarding this bulletin and Windows 98:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/...n/MS06-072.mspx

I've downloaded the win-2K update from here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/3...000-x86-ENU.exe

And replaced my original files with the DLL files contained in the update. Those files are:

Cdfview.dll

Danim.dll

Dxtmsft.dll

Dxtrans.dll

Iepeers.dll

Inseng.dll

Jsproxy.dll

Mshtml.dll

Msrating.dll

Mstime.dll

Pngfilt.dll

Shdocvw.dll

Shlwapi.dll

Urlmon.dll

Wininet.dll

browseui.dll

I performed a simple file substitution (did not use regsvr32).

My system seems to operate fine.

I'm wondering if anyone has any comments about the use of any (or all) of the above files on a win-98 system from a compatibility or stability point of view.

PS: regarding the use of regsvr32, is it normal to get "register or unregister server entry points not found" when trying to register or unregister these files:

jsproxy.dll

shlwapi.dll

wininet.dll