hannahsdad

Hi, all- New poster here but have been lurking in these forums for awhile. Sorry, I'm late to this thread, but to add to the topic: 1) Yes, you can boot to SATA. Win98SE runs just fine on SATA (providing your BIOS allows 'compatibility' mode. Views SATA as a PATA drive). I use a third-party boot manager (BootMagic) and multiboot between Win98SE and XP Pro. 2) PCI-express does seem to be the limiting supported factor for 98 (although I understand some folks have had some success). With limited time (and brain-cells) at my disposal, I went with AGP (ATI X850 Pro, driver only installed). The ATI Catalyst software chokes on install; that's just as well- I'm removing from my main XP O/S. Too much bloatware for me. 3) Initially, I installed 98SE to the 775Dual-VSTA Asrock board and also had one "Unknown Device" error in device manager (probably video-card related- didn't install the catalyst software, remember?), but this did not hinder the card performance. As I recall, I had some audio issues (no audio support for 98/ME), but I had planned to install a separate soundcard, anyway. Ultimately, I had to RMA the board (bad memory module- 1 out of 2. Like me). Replaced it with the Asus P5PE-VM (runs with the Intel 865G chipset). My system: Asus P5PE-VM Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Corsair XMS 1GB (system.ini tweak) ATI X850 Pro (AGP) 2 HDD's (200gb SATA boot drive and 120 gb IDE for data and extra 'stuff') This board is limited to DDR memory only but runs like a screaming banshee. Period. B) The only issue is extracting the daughter from the motherboard (she helped build it so claims a part-interest). The Core 2 chip was installed for the additional cooling and the benefit of XP; Win98SE does not utilize the dual-core. Nonetheless, performance does not seem to suffer noticeably. (The SATA interface on this board, as well as the Asrock board, is limited to SATA 1 regardless). The ATI X850 Pro card delivers full native resolution on my 19" Samsung. On a side topic- one of my 'Scout parents' is a Web Designer by trade. In the process of emailing her about some Flash code, I mentioned that I was running it on Win98SE. Of course, she had to inform me (tongue-in-cheek) that 'no one runs 98 anymore- not even her mother-in-law'. Well, last month XP did a major implosion (another story!). So,while forwarding an important document to her, I noted that 'luckily, I had Rock-Solid Windows 98SE installed to shore up XP'. With the help of my workhorse (Win98SE), I was able to diagnose and forensically recover XP. This forum was a valuable and much-appreciated resource while building my system; hope this is of some benefit to others. hannahsdad