xrayer

At http://windows98.ic.cz (file intelinf.zip) I just uploaded my update of intel INF files that supports intel G41 and partial P/G/Q/43/45 + ICH10. If someone wants to test it and improve it please share your result.

There was one Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller + primary channel dual FIFO, secondary channel dual FIFO, but also some primary and secondary channel single FIFO and 2-3 SATA entries which was detected OK. Unfoirtunatelly I didn't captured a screenshot and I have no longer this MB for further test. So to sum up, new MCH is not problem - new ICH may be problem but can be replaced by external PCI IDE/SATA controller as paoloapaolo tried. And remains USB 2.0 root hub... Yesterday I made working my Win98se on G41+ICH7, it only needs to add new MCH and PCIE bridge to inf. It works fine.

OK, but I had set IDE legacy mode in setup (drives was on port 170/1F0, IRQ14/15) that you cannot recognize it is not normal IDE. I didn't need native SATA support. There was dual PCI standard controller in device manager but not working. Maybe it was collision of native SATA. I tried to disable it in device manager but didn't helped. When I tried to remove this dual PCI controller it freezed. And the Jmicron - it needs only inf file not any sys driver? There was JMicron 368. I wondered it was not detected as unknown device.

I tried to patch INF files. I filled PCI dev IDs according to latest INF files from intel's winxp/vista package. It also detected native SATA controller correctly but ! mark was around standard dual fifo ide. Anyway I have no longer this board available so cannot perform further tetst. But if someone dosn't want a headache I recommend to buy ICH7 equipped mobo.

Hi,I would like to share with you my short experience with this mobo: Gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G WinNT4 boots with latest UNIATA 0.39j2 that supports new ICH8-10 released by BW, thanks to him. My further testing was aimed to DOS and Win98. DOS is OK, it sees SATA drives as standard IDE on legacy ports/IRQ. Except the PATA controller Jmicron - I had to use special driver gcdrom.sys to be able to use PATA CD/DVD drivers. I tested that ICH10 IDE was much slower than ICH7 (15MB/s vs 35MB/s). For Win98 I did some INF file modding (I will upload it for other testers soon) and it booted and detected most of HW resources but there are 3 problems: 1) USB2.0 doesn't work (I got 1.1 slow speed) because of problem on USB 2.0 root hub in device manager (I use NUSB 3.3 cz) 2) HDD works in some compatability extreme slow mode and I cannot see drives in device manager. There are SATA controller and standard dualport PCI dual fifo controller marked /!\. I messed aroud with it but I couldn't fix it. 3) Jmicron controller is totally missing, PATA optical drives are inacessible. Before I can do more testing the mobo has died (fall into endless restarting loop, clear cmos didn't helped, replacing cpu/ram, nothing..) and I RMA it and changed it by another mobo with P41+ICH7 for better compatability. Did anybody else succeed with ICH8/9/10?

Hi, currently I'm running Asus 7900GT but I found that videomemory is failing. I'm got some artifact even in text mode! Underclocking to lowest GPU/RAM frequency didn't help. So I will need to buy some replacement. But 7900/7950 is too old - they disappeared from shops here. If I will have a luck I could buy it from other user otherwise I will need to buy something newer. From previous experiences and reading around here maybe 8600GT would work if equipped with 256MB. 8800 would be better but I saw only with 384MB or more. I belive that VRAM size is important. Please can somebody test the 256MB version of 8xxx/9xxx chip under win98?

Huh, I wonder how big registers you have guys. Mine are: USER.DAT 1765408 25.02.09 23.10 read-only hidden SYSTEM.DAT 5644320 25.02.09 23.10 read-only hidden and I have installed hundreds of programs but not the latest MS Office (keeping office 97 + open office)

Hi, I had the same problem with onboard RTL8111A gbit ethernet. I was trying it wit R.L.'s patch 4.0 but it caused BSOD. I revealed that when I disable eth. in control panel and reenable it after boot I can use 2GB RAM with the patch. Now with new version it works fine with network enabled. But currently I use win98 only sometimes and all memory consuming jobs like photo editing I do under XP and 1,1GB is enough for my w98 setup so I will not go to pay for the patch...

Did someone tried to install win98 on moder intel P45 (P48)/ICH10 mobo? They claimed this boards doesn't support w98 but we know that sometimes it works iven if it officially shouldn't... I don't have access to such new HW but if someone else could and have time to try it would helpfull. Currently there are still available mobos with intel P31 (i'm not sue about P35) which can run w98.

>NOPE ! It's a hoax! Maybe it works for AGP cards but I have never seen working PCI-E VGA with >256M. E.g. similar version of 2 VGAs, same chip, same manufacrurer, 256M worked but 512M not. >At last I made it!!! >If you remember in my previous post I had problems with an AGP 6800GS 512MB card under W98 with some MoBo. Casually (tampering with >Bios) I solved: >Spread Spectrum: DISABLED Spread Spectrum option has absolutelly nothing to do with memory mapping or so. This is option for clock generator. Spread spectrum means that PLL clock chip will produce clock signals with smoother edges to minimize EMI radiation from mainboard but it can affect system stability esp. on overclocked systems. So I always disable it. It was just coincidence that it made your vga working.

Yes The only option for not-working new VGAs is VBEMP from Bearwindows but it's unaccelerated, as a last chance but useless for gaming. But I'm not sure if it will work for VGAs with large FB which must cause conflict with other memory mapped devices...

This is a bad new. Are there 8800GT with 256M? I saw min 320MB if I remember. Maybe 8600 would have 256M but it's much more poor chip than 8800.

I don't think this card is power sucker. Maybe your old PSU has some problem/bad design. I used it with Fortron 350W PSU without any problem. As I saw in some comparison chart this card takes only ~20W idle, 48W peak. It can work with passive heatsink. Now I have 7900GT with ~80W peak power and it also work with same 350W PSU. I measured 140W real RMS power consumption of my PC in 100% CPU load and without GFX load so there's still some reserved PSU power for GPU and other components.

Sure, but I just give a warning to prevent the disapointment.

Only adding the PCI DID, VID to INF file will 99% not help. 9xxx cards are based on newer GPU core. It's the same case when I was trying to run 7300GT with latest official drivers 81.?? with added INF entry. Drivers was installed OK then but buuted to VGA screen. I had to wait for unofficial 82.69. Nobody still proved if they work on 8xxx so I doubt it will work on 9xxx. As a last resort try universal VBEMP drivers by Bear Windows. It works fine if VESA BIOS is not crippled but it hasnt any kind of 2D/3D acceleration.

What you mean by "full support"? PCI-E devices are controlled the same way as normal PCI devices, you just have more virtual PCI busses resources.

I just got Asus EN7900GT/2DHT/256MB DDR3 PCI-Express in my hands and I can confirm that it works with 82.69 drivers well. I tried few games I usually try - GLQuake, QuakeII and Unreal tournament - any problem observed. Compared to 7600GS it gives much more power (better fillrate) to this older games, eg. Quake II gained ~800 FPS from ~200 FPS Of course in Crysis it is not so much but still well significant. BTW it would be good idea to sum all tested graphics cards in 1st post or some place together.

As I suggested you may try to reflash BIOS from similar 256MB 8800 model. It should be always possible to flash it back with another PCI card inserted in PC. But rather ask guys here, they should know if this approach will work. BTW I'll get some cheap 7900GS 256M passive so I will report how it will work, hope it will

AGP aperture size just says how many system RAM can be additionaly used for VGA so if you disable it you could get same rasult as with PCI-E which doesn't use system RAM. BUT there's still entire VRAM mapped to Win98 kernel space and it seems that 512MB is too much. Look in your device manager/PC/memory resources how the top gigabyte (C0000000-FFFFFFFF) is occupied by various other devices... Here are available two 256Meg 8800GT from Asus (EN8800GT/HTDP/256M, PCI-E) and Gigabyte which cost about 3000 CZK while 512Meg is for ~ 4000 CZK so it's not problem. I would buy it if it will work in 98se but nobody from friends have this 256M.

Yes... BTW you don't need to boot XP, for automatic shutdown you can boot to W98 DOS mode and there are utilities like FDAPM which can shutdown ATX supply. I also wrote small program that can shoot off ATX supply directly from windows but it have one issue, that even if I use sync tool to write disk buffers then because of win98 are not correctly shutted down then scandisk will appear on nex boot. Also some changes from registers maybe forgotten because system saves them at normal exit which didn't happen.

>glocK_94 I think VRAM size is important because of Win98 maps all memory-mapped devices (including VGA framebuffer) to the top 1GB of address space which is also used for kernel, drivers and shared buffer. In my case the 256MB framebuffer is mapper in range E0000000-EFFFFFFF. If you have 512MB VGA it will eat one half of kernel space and other things then may not fit. It doesn't matter if AGP or PCI-E. In XP the kernel space is normally top 2GB so it's larger... Maybe RLoew would say more accurate info to this. BTW thx for link to bench. That Asus 7600GS silent is same as mine. Nice to see 7800 is also made as silent. As I can see performance gain is really big so I will upgrade then, probably to some 7900GT 256M because 7800 makes much heat (110 vs 90nm) and 7950GT-256MB is hard to buy here... Currently I can play Crysis in 800x600, most settings high except object details which is locked to low, shadows detail=low and shading=medium - this options have the most impact to graphics perf. With this setting I can play in acceptable FPS not going under 20. >StarRiver Thank you for confirming that 7950GT works. As I said VRAM size DOES matter I'm not sure how to limit VRAM size by software but I guess if you flash VGA BIOS from 256< version on 512M version, which use same VRAM speed and timings it would work. But if BIOS autodetects VRAM size it will not work, I don't know...

To memory problems I suggest to look at http://www.msfn.org/board/Help-I-need-to-G...0&start=120 thread and try himemx.exe replacement. >glocK_94 What 8xxx do you plan? And what VRAM size? It maybe important for Win9x. There are choices of 256, 384, 512 and 768 MB I saw... I thinkg such big VRAM is not so important I would rather take smaller amount of faster VRAM. BTW what performance gain I should expect when replacing 7600GS by best model of 7800? Esp. in new games like Crysis. I don't know if this help because of 8xxx/9xxx line brings new features that are missing on 7xxx and this may cause big performance diff.

Nobody tried 82.69 drivers with 8xxx card yet? I googled a lot but no results.

Thanks. I didn't know about this feature. But 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.

Thanks dude. I can confirm that this works also on XP SP3 CZ final.