petekeller

@JayPea Look at this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/N...=item4157ceb77a

JayPea wrote: And while the Asrock boards are out of production, they can still be had on e-bay There are more listings for refurbished MBs than used. Even in the online stores they are refurbs. The two listings that were 'retail packaging/new" hadd no I/O shields though the refurbs have them. I'm convinced, these look like great boards. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been looking at these boards too and their AMD cousin; AM2NF3-VSTA. I'm leaning toward the AMD. The question is how anxious are you (or I) to get one of these going? I recommend patience even though I'm not patient. I'm typing this message on a an IBM Model M keyboard made in 1995 and out of production for over ten years before I bought it. However, I bought it new. New old stock that had been sitting on a shelf for years. Works perfectly. The computer I'm typing on is based on a ASUS P4S800D-X that was out of production for 3-4 years before 10 new ones came up for sale on Ebay. Two months later, another ten came up for sale. I've got two. I'm very suspicious of refurbs. I think I'd rather buy used. If you have an account on Ebay you can have an email sent to you whenever the product comes up for sale. I haven't done this. I do go there a few days a week.

wsxedcrfv wrote: I haven't spend much time trying to install a sound card on my Asrock 4coredual VSTA yet. I have an Audigy2, SoundBlaster Live!, SoundBlaster PCI 128, and a Diamond Multimedia board that has "1998" stamped on it. I just have to locate my original CD's. I have some early impression that success might depend on installing these cards in a particular PCI slot (that is, not all PCI slots are equal or equally functional under win-98). Other than that, the Asrock board is completely functional. Perhaps I will try the PCIe slot one of these days, but the AGP slot works fine - and it seems they can both be used under XP (not that it's my intention to run XP any time soon). ------------------------------------------------ I finally got to test CMI 8768 in Win98 on a 4Core Dual SATA2 board. When I looked for an installation disk, I found I no longer had it. I'm not sure what happened to it. After a lot of searching online, I found the driver I needed on the Syba website. The description only indicated Win2K or better, but I decided to give it try anyway. I first tried it on my current machine, just to make sure it worked in win9X. It did. I still had the files I downloaded from the Via site in 2007. The only one I installed was the Via Rhine Lan, so I could update Win98. I updated everything but WMP9. After disabling HD audio in the BIOS, I installed the 8768 driver. Unsurprisingly(now) it worked perfectly. I have no idea what I did wrong back in 2007. Thanks RLoew. Good luck wsxedcrfv.

@ RLoew Sorry about the confusion. At first I thought you were refering to the 4Core Dual SATA2, then I thought you couldn't have meant that. Here's the situation. I bought the ASRock 4Core Dual SATA2 in December of 2007, encouraged by posts on this board that Win98 could run on it. And it did, except for sound. I posted on this board and others the problem I was having, hoping someone could steer me in the right direction for a solution. No luck. Shortly after my sisters motherboard died on a XP machine I had built for her. So I gave her the board, processor and memory I had bought. I still have access to the machine and a few weeks ago I bought the USB sound card and installed Win98 and tested it. These boards are still available online and I was thinking of buying another. However they're not really a good upgrade path for a future non-98 computer. Here's a link to a post from Oct. 2008 if you're interested.: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=97588&view=findpost&p=806271 The Ethernet controller was Via based 10/100. No problems with drivers. I'll be testing my C-media card this weekend and then think about which direction to go.

rloew said <The Headset was just a cheap USB Headset. i am not a gamer, I just needed Audio. Oh. <I just installed a CMI8738 4 Channel Sound Card and had no problems.> Great news. I'm currently using a CMI8738 based card. And they're easy to come by. <Even unmodded Drivers can run a few PCI-E Video cards, only the INF file needs to be changed. Unfortunately Shutdown or stability problems occur with the ones I tested.> O.K. "Anyway...I've just about given up on the 4Core Dual SATA2 board. I am very intrigued by your Gigabyte boards." <Which one?> Which one of the Gigabyte boards? Anyone that works well. Any special reason you choose these models? Why micro ATX instead of ATX? What does your Device Manager look like? Obviously there are no Wn98 drivers for the chipsets. What does Windows default to when there are no specific drivers to use? Doesn't all this cause some serious stability problems? Is your video card interface PCI? <Check the Ethernet Controller. It is one device where support varies from Motherboard to Motherboard.> Not sure what you mean by this. Thanks again.

rloew said <I am using the built-in USB with Altec Lansing and other Headsets.> I suppose those are gaming headsets. I'm not a gamer and the sound from these USB cards with a basic C-Media chip is fine for my purposes. The problem is they lack stereo mix and line-in. I think I found one on E-bay today that has these features. < Any Windows 9X Compatable PCI should work.> You would think so! Windows accepted the drivers on two different cards but refused to load them on the reboot. I never heard of the Automatic Skip Driver until then! I've never found anyone who actually succeeded installing a PCI sound card without HD audio on a motherboard with HD Audio. < I don't think there are any Windows 9x Drivers for PCI-E Audio card> I know. Some claim to have modded drivers for PCI-e 16x video cards. I was hoping there was some such thing for PCI-e sound card. Anyway...I've just about given up on the 4Core Dual SATA2 board. I am very intrigued by your Gigabyte boards. Thanks for the response.

Did you try a PCI or PCI-e card? What brand(s) of USB did you use?

I have a couple Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum (SB0240P) that I'll use for high-quality audio purposes (connected to my Denon amp, Paradigm speakers in my den). I have a bunch of Sound Blaster "Live / Value" cards that I'll use for other systems. A couple of years ago I tried to install win98se on this board. Everything worked fine except the sound card. I tried a Trident 4-D Wave and a Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI: model CT4740. Both tripped the Automatic Skip Driver when I rebooted and windows refused to load the drivers. I was hoping you found a card that worked or a way around this. Though I no longer own this board, I still have access to it. Three weeks ago I bought a Sabrent USB audio card($10) and tried it out. I removed the hard drive in this computer, installed another, loaded Windows 98se, and downloaded all the upgrades. These USB cards are 'driver less' in the sense that no driver is needed to produce sound. On Windows 98SE drivers are needed for a 'USB Composite Audio Device'. Windows recognized the device immediately and installed the drivers from the mini CD provided. I tested system sounds, an audio file, a couple of mp3s, flash video on the internet, an avi file, and a DVD. They all sounded fine and played without any 'latency'. I didn't try any games and I doubt any DOS games would work with USB sound. R. Loew might know a lot more about this. I see(in this thread) even he had to resort to USB on his latest Computer.

Until a few months ago, I had my file managing exactly the way I wanted it. For some reason it got messed up and I was too busy or lazy to try and fix it. I couldn't remember what I had done to get it right, but I knew it was from a tip on some Windows forum. Today I decided to nail it down. After googling the matter, I wound up here. Of course, holding the Ctrl key down is how to get Windows to register the view you want. But that's not the end of it. What if you want the folder view to be one way and the file view another? After all folders are bulky objects that contain other objects; like files. The large icon view is good for folders or drives. List,details or small icons may be more suitable for files, depending on their content. I may be missing something, but I don't think Windows Explorer is capable of this. However My Computer and any shortcuts created from My Computer is certainly capable. This may be how my folder view got messed up. I added a Windows Explorer icon to my Desktop, whereas previously I had stopped using it completely. On the occasions when I used Windows Explorer it would cause the shortcuts from My Computer to revert to the view they were when the Windows Explorer window was closed. Windows Explorer has its strengths but there are better alternatives, like Free Commander. Also. It's not necessary to delete folder.htt to get rid of the annoying Warning and additional click to view files. A simple edit of folder.htt will do. Just add the line 'ShowFiles()' (without the quotes) just under the last line in the 'function Init() {' section. Save and exit. You may have to change read-only first. You'll still see the warning in 'View As Web Page' but the files will be visible without another click in any view.This can be done in \Windows\System as well.

I have installed Windows 98SE on a freshly formatted drive and inadvertently typed in the key for FE. It was accepted. If I were you I'd use partition saving(free) to image the drive and then format and give it a go. This assumes you have a way to archive the image. If it doesn't work just restore the image. http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/en/index_frame.html

>So, I guess no one had success with sound after putting in external PCI sound card on modern >motherboards right??? I'm also assuming that HD cannot be fully switched off from BIOS? Is USB >sound card the answer to these type of problem(s)? >Once again, I continue to wait for a positive confirmed feedback... I stopped waiting for a "positive confirmed feedback". My guess is that the South Bridge chip's built in HD sound is detected by Wndows 98 and since windows 98 has no built in support for HD, the ASD is triggered, and no drivers will ever be loaded. It may be that someone could alter the support files for the HD or sound drivers so that one could get around that obstacle. Know anyone who is capable of such things? I did find one USB sound card that claimed to work in Win98 without drivers installed. Since I had already been misled into believing an internal card would work, I was too skeptical to buy it. If you succeed, please post. I may give it another try.

>What hard drive did you have connected to that board? Was it SATA, or IDE? IDE. >Did you try an SB live or maybe Audigy sound board? Trident 4-D Wave and Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI: model CT4740. >I think it's kinda extreme to have given that board away without trying some other sound card. Expenses were piling up. Gave it to my sister when her board died. Works perfectly on XP. >When I get the time to build my Asrock win-98 machine, I intend to install an Audigy 2 >(SB0240) sound card. What's taking you so long? >I'll be really p***ed if it doesn't work... I think it's a conflict between sound card driver and chipset driver for HD. Good luck!

I had Win98 running on Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0 last December. Everything worked fine except for sound. Since I wanted a fully functioning system, I gave the board away. Here's what I posted on microsft.public.win98.gen_discussion: 'Has anyone been able to get a sound card working on a 4CORE DUAL VSTA motherboard (in win98se)? The cards I have available are a Trident 4DWave and a SoundBlaster PCI. Both worked fine on four other boards. The SB PCI works fine in Windows 2000. On the 4CORE DUAL VSTA, both cards trigger the win98 Automatic Skip Driver. ASD gives the following reference for SB PCI not working: 'PCI\VEN_1274&DEV_5880&SUBSYS_80011274&REV_04\209900' Not sure what this means. ASD suggests that I update the drivers or change the resources that the device is using. I don't think this is the solution. Since both of my sound cards are oldish (pre-98 really), I was hoping something a little more recent might work. I'm about to pick a lemon from the lemon tree, go back to my P4 socket 478 and hope it all works out.' Got no response, Googled till I was blue in the face and gave up.