javispedro

Just tried it, no luck. AFAIK no changes from SP4.

Did you know you can use NT 4's ATAPI.SYS (NT's standard IDE driver) in 9x? According to some random source on the Internet (the DDK ), you can just copy ATAPI.SYS to Windows\System\Iosubsys\Atapi.mpd [sic] and then replace the registry references to esdi_506.pdr with "atapi.mpd". It should "just work". It does. However, when I tried with the SATA port I have my HDDs on, all my expectations were destroyed. It fails at exactly the same point. Two different codebases and they both hang. It works fine for PATA and my SATA CD drive though, which is not a surprise (ESDI_506 does that too, although only If I disable the APIC). Atapi.mpd also brings in some "nice" new bugs, like being limited to 8GB HDDs (until NT4 SP4 I believe), not supporting DMA at all (until NT4 SP2), not supporting LBA48, detecting every "missing"/"empty" port as being always my primary IDE port (so I have four drive letters for the SAME CD unit), etc. At least, the full source code for some years old version of it is available on the NT4 DDK. It may be an easier project than porting the whole of UniATA (which has orders of magnitude more code and uses a completely different layout that, while cleaner, is not "the MS way" and as such may not be as portable). Do not ever try Win2k's ATAPI.sys; it does not even link with scsiport.

I didn't create a new INF, my Windows knowledge is still very limited. You'll need to install them "by hand"... Download the nForce3 drivers from nVidia, then unpack them (but do not install them). Download the newer drivers from http://gigapeta.com/dl/58274a502e32 (I found those in a russian board; I assume whoever uploaded them got them from some unarchived nvidia release). Go to Device Manager, then update driver for "unknown device" "PCI Bridge"; select driver from list, select "have disk", point the "have disk" dialog to the "ethernet" folder in the unpacked nForce3 drivers. After rebooting, the device will have the yellow warning sign on device manager (not the right driver for it). Now go to Windows\System and replace nvenet.sys with the one available in the newer driver. Go to the registry editor, key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\ And search for the "subfolder" whose DriverDesc is "NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller". You'll need to update the following keys: AdapterCFID DeviceCaps Ndi\DeviceID (it MIGHT work without updating them all, but never tried ) You can get correct values for your nForce version by looking at nvenet9x.inf in the newer drivers. For example, A8N-E is nForce 4 AMD (a.k.a. ck804, nvenet9, pci device id 0057), and the values are "AdapterCFID"="005710DE" "DeviceCaps"="005710DE00000002000000000001000200001F1F00FC00070024000100000000" Ndi\"DeviceID"="PCI\\VEN_10DE&DEV_0057" It should look like this: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0002] "DriverDesc"="NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller" "DevLoader"="*ndis,*ntkern,*ndis" "DeviceVxDs"="nvenet.sys" "EnumPropPages"="netdi.dll,EnumPropPages" "AdapterCFID"="005710DE" "AdapterType"="5" "BusType"="5" "DeviceCaps"="005710DE00000002000000000001000200001F1F00FC00070024000100000000" "InfSection"="NVENET.NDI" "NTMPDriver"="nvenet.sys" "InfPath"="NVIDIA~2.INF" "ProviderName"="Nvidia" "DriverDate"=" 3-16-2004" "OemSetting1"="1" "ForceSpeedDpx"="0" "PollIntervalInus"="425" "MatchingDeviceId"="PCI\\VEN_10DE&DEV_01C3" "ASFEventBitmask"="0" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0002\Ndi] "DeviceID"="PCI\\VEN_10DE&DEV_0057" "InstallInf"="" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0002\Ndi\Interfaces] "Lower"="ethernet" "LowerRange"="ethernet" "Upper"="ndis3" "UpperRange"="ndis3" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0002\Ndi\Install] "ndis3"="NVENET9x.INSTALL" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0002\Ndi\params] By installing only the newer drivers, vital entries (AFAIK) like DeviceVxDs or DevLoader would not appear at all.

Well, just trying As a sidenote, I got the builtin network card finally working -- it seems the driver I used does not install fully by itself, and I had to "help it" force-installing the older, nForce3 (and nForce4 incompatible) driver, then replacing the nvenet.sys file with the newer build one (afaik, nvidia made a few more nvenet.sys builds -- since discontiniung nForce9xME drivers -- that were compatible with 9x. they're not avalaible in the archive though). I'm still using real mode disk access, but hey, at least, networking, sound and video work. I think that makes Win98 fully usable on this motherboard (A8N-E), and I'm indeed posting from W98 right now (and I seriously miss my spell checking plugin ). Thanks a lot!

I agree with that -- I hate it. Well, as I said, I did virtually nothing, and I am running at 1280x1024 with full acceleration. I've never installed any "chipset"/"pci bus" driver on XP either. Thanks for all the suggestions. However, I'm installing 98SE mainly for learning (I wanted a GUI that wouldn't get in my way while "playing" with the hardware) and as such I'm not going to spend more money on this.

NTFS-3G is a user-mode application, not a kernel driver. FUSE for Windows, now that would be an interesting project. BTW, journaling alone is enough for me to say that NTFS is a much better filesystem. (However, journaling is not that great on flash filesystems, which proves that there is no real "better" filesystem).

I did not install a single third-party driver before installing the PCIe card one. I don't know what a "chipset driver" would be for either...

Unfortunately I don't think there are drivers for nForce4's softraid. Using the tweaked nvidia driver you can find on this forum. The setup program does not work for me, but you can extract the whole package (as explained on the README) and then just point the hardware wizard driver search to that folder. (BTW, I corrected my original post: my card is a GeForce 6600, not a 6600GT). I only found drivers for the builtin network card (standard CK804, handled on Linux by forcedeth). Here: http://gigapeta.com/dl/58274a502e32 I assume that the nForce 3 driver binary for w9x was already capable of handling the nForce 4 (nvenet8) network card, so the russian guy who created this driver just modified the INF file to add the pci ids and "features" of the card. I'm not sure thought, take care. And, as I said, using these drivers my card is recognized and even negotiates a 100 Mbps link, but I can't install MS-TCP/IP -- the network control panel applet just "forgets" whatever protocol I installed when I click OK, then prompts me to uselessly reboot. I believe this is a 98SE bug that appears only if using the real mode disk drivers. Testing some weird ESDI_506 combinations I was able to get both a PATA CD-ROM and a SATA CD-ROM detected and running, but both were EVEN MORE slower than using the real mode oakcdrom/mscdex, so I went back to the real mode drivers. No luck so far with the HDDs. (just remembered the password for my older account).