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They seem to be working correctly, but apart from a physical check by opening the case, is there another way to see if there are 2 root hubs? Let me say that I do have a usb 4 way hub external connected to the computer, would this be the extra 4 that we see on that image? In other words 4 being the external, and 4 set around the back of the case unit. If you have two USB host controllers (which it seems you do), then you must also have two root hubs. Any other hubs (eg. external) are listed as "generic". Joe.

That's quite a list of updated files in the thread you cite, perhaps they're included in? : Another possible place to start looking is : http://web.archive.org/web/20030801182223/www.walbeehm.com/win95upd.html Joe.

If the input/output range differs, and both are reported working correctly, it probably means you have two USB controllers (and two root hubs, of course) on your motherboard. Joe.

Have you tried the "USB hub trick" I mentioned earlier? Flash support is much more consistent via a compatible hub, so the same should be true for HDD support. Well, I assumed the problems I encountered when reaching 64G were due to the size of the FAT, in which case NTFS (which I didn't even realize was supported) is probably not similarly affected. While I concentrated on ASPIDISK, I definitely did try DI1000DD with the same outcome. If you didn't encounter this same limitation (using FAT32), there must be some other factor involved. Joe.

In case WMP10 is relevant, the following thread may be of interest : The reality as I explained earlier, is that if you have a newer Apple product that uses a proprietary USB interface, your little paperweight is relatively useless without an XP+ system to support it. Apple even force you to use iTunes just to initialize the device, although (on XP+) after that , you can ditch this (retaining the drivers) and use a third-party app., in lieu of iTunes and its restrictions. If you have an older Apple product that does support the "mass storage" USB interface, you should be able to use a generic driver on W98, together with a third-party app's such as SharePod. Then you have freedom from XP+ and from iTunes. Joe.

Interesting that you had success with these drivers beyond 64G. There must be some other factor that I don't know, next time I get a new HDD, I'll have to test some more. Note that most of my testing was with ASPIDISK, so I'll concentrate more on DI1000DD when I do. Also interesting that these drivers support NTFS. I wasn't aware of this. Yeah, if the little info. I could find on your MB is correct, the chipset is ICH2, which indeed is UHCI, so 20 MB/s is indeed beyond the laws of physics. My thoughts are that the files were cached in RAM beyond those 2.5s that the copy appeared to take. You rebooted some time after this, enough time for the actual transfer to your USB HDD to complete (actually, I would hope that W98 would wait for the transfer to complete before actually rebooting, although I've never pushed my luck on this). That's the only explanation I can think of. Joe.

Sorry but I only have an old version of Air installed and I also have air packages downloaded when the runtime I have was current and all fail in the way described above so they definitely are normally compatible with the version of the runtime that is installed, not a version mismatch issue unlike what the error message tends to make one believe.. OK, it's agreed. That error message is misleading, since in your case, there shouldn't be a version incompatibility issue. So, if that error message is thrown up anytime AA is unhappy, I wonder what it takes to make it happy on SE or ME? (Did I mention that sometimes, Adobe/Macromedia's products can be a "pain"?) Joe.

In case it's relevant, I recently installed VLC 1.03 under KernelEx RC5 and it all worked fine in Default and W2K compatibility modes. However, in XP compatibility mode, VLC 1.03 crashes. Joe.

As an aside, which is indirectly of interest to this thread, last night I managed for the first time ever, to use a USB Flash drive on W95B/C! I downloaded the SR2 updates 'usbsupp.zip' and 'usbupd2.zip' (because I don't recall where I've put the relevant CD-ROM) and 'USBQFE.EXE' from MDGx's site, and Nathan Lineback's driver as mentioned in the following thread : I installed the USB updates in turn, rebooting after each one. I noted the caution in the 'USBQFE.EXE' unofficial update to ensure the standard versions of the affected files were not re-installed, so when it came time to install 'w95usbflash11', I clicked on "Skip File" every time it asked for the CD-ROM. After the final reboot, I connected a Flash drive, but nothing happened. So I manually installed a Lexar model at random from Nathan's driver, but still no joy. Then I checked in Device Manager and found the USB Controller was in the "Other" category, which effectively meant it was disabled. I assume it had been all along, which would explain why nothing happened initially. Deleting this caused a flurry of "Found New Hardware" activity, and at the end of it all, the USB Flash drive was working! Amazing! Joe.

There is no relationship. But it is important to mention not to mix the different packages INCLUDING SYSTEM UPDATES with another as this may lead to system instability or BSOD. I only install my pack the WUPG98 and afterwars the KernelEx update (which is btw integrated in the WUPG98 too because it is 100% compatible, but you can only install it manually) this works superb. OK, thanks (and warning noted). So, that means they are alternative upgrade paths for W98SE, right? (In which case, it looks like this one may be more comprehensive and up-to-date, since it's larger and has been more recently updated.) Joe.

Sorry if this may be a silly question, but what is the relationship between this package and the unofficial service packs (such as SESP30B4.EXE)? Joe.

Good question. However, I can't really answer, as I don't think I've ever actually used 6.4. Joe.

Good news, the current version of Beyond Compare seems to work happily in W98SE (although I must confess I have KernelEx installed, however I suspect it would also work without it). If it's any consolation, I've never managed to get GUEST to work with USBASPI either, nor have I managed to get either ASPIUHCI or ASPIEHCI to load on relevant hardware. I'm sure USBASPI isn't worried about the size of your hard drive and doesn't care about the size of your partitions. However, both DI1000DD and ASPIDISK seem unstable for partitions of 64G or larger (from my own experimentation), so that leaves one possibility for you to try : ASPIUHCI with GUEST. If I recall, all Intel and Via EHCI host controllers also support UHCI, so apart from the performance drop, this will at least allow GUEST to be tested to see how it handles larger partitions. Joe.

Actually, the bundled AA installation process wasn't silent. The ProSafe Plus Utility installer explained that it needed AA and provided a check-box to enable/disable the bundled AA installation. The AA installation failed with a message saying it needed a newer O/S. However, the ProSafe Plus Utility itself seemed to install and presented an icon on the desktop. Finally, double-clicking the Utility's icon produced the above (perhaps misleading) AA error message, which led me on a quest for an older version of AA that might be able to install. Alas, while some earlier versions of AA don't complain about the O/S when I try to install them, I still get the above error message when I try to run the ProSafe Plus Utility. So, I can't take that error message too literally, and had thought that in fact, the earlier AA packages were silently failing to install. You've now made me think that perhaps the older AA packages might actually be installing but are not acceptable to the Utility. Next step would be to find a way to test whether older versions of AA really do install and function. BTW, you seem to indicate that you've actually installed the current version of AA on your WME system? I had to go back to some fairly old versions to find anything that didn't complain when I tried installing it. Joe.

Thanks! That sounds like just what I need! Also, an update on VLC : Indeed, version 1.03 does install and run successfully with KernelEx, using either the Default or W2000 compatibility modes (however, with XP compatibility mode, it crashes). One strange problem though, it displays colours incorrectly, red and blue seem swapped. Searching the web for this problem suggests disabling the Hardware Acceleration Overlay as a work-around, but it seems to make no difference. Still, its a big step forward to have a version 1.XX stable. Update : Versions 1.1x of VLC don't have this "swapped colour" bug, however, they do make use of P3+ instructions, so need some tricks with FineSSE to work on a P2 ... Joe.

Interesting. I'm pretty sure this was the exact same error message given by the Netgear utility after the initial failure to install the included Adobe Air package. However, if you think an earlier version of AA really does install, then the trick could be to fake its version number and fool applications such as this utility. Joe.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try this version with KernelEx. The closest one to this I'd tried earlier was 1.05, and this was even worse than 1.15 (the current version). Yeah, I thought of VLC because it supports many formats, and uses its own CODEC's (whereas WMP hasn't supported Real formats since RM sued MS over patent violations, long ago). Joe. PS. I've since relented and installed Real Player 10.5Gold, seems OK so far, although it's too much iTunes-ish for my liking (I wish I could have somehow upgraded version 6 instead).

Yeah, a quick web search revealed "MSM6800A Chipset", which means it's a Qualcomm based design (no surprise, they are fairly dominant in the 3G arena, due to their CDMA IP and associated patents). Unfortunately, I've never found any useful download at Qualcomm's web site, they tend to be very secretive and information tends to be released only by non-disclosure agreement. BTW, same applies with at least one of their competitors. So, if there is a W9X driver available for this chipset, your only hope is to find it at another OEM's (3G mobile or modem manufacturer) web site. If you do find such, it should be fairly straightforward to adapt the INF file(s) to suit your particular modem. Joe.

Thanks Den, I'll have to look into this, it looks extremely useful (especially if there's a 9X version, although KernelEx can probably assist if there isn't). Joe.

FWIW, the latest W95 compatible versions was WMP 7.0. Certainly, I'll have to try this SP on an old machine when I have the time. W95 is definitely much faster than W98 on such machines. Joe.

Yep, that's the error message I get with the ProSafe Plus Utility too. One version of the install package for Air even gave this same message! The excuse was that this was just a downloader (or was it just an update?), yet the file size said otherwise. Dumb! As for installing "without much problems", my impression is that older versions silently fail to install, whereas newer versions at least tell you they've failed. As I say, that's just the impression I get. Joe.

Unfortunately, in their latest i*** products, Apple have removed the "mass storage" USB interface, which is what allowed third-party software to manage the i*** products, and instead, use a proprietary USB interface, forcing you to use the iTunes driver (and then only with the more recent versions of iTunes). Their excuse was that if data transfer via the "mass storage" USB interface was interrupted, the i*** database could become corrupted. Apparently, Apple are incapable of writing a journaling system, except magically, if they happen to use a proprietary USB interface. Fancy that! In short, if you have an older i*** product that uses the "mass storage" interface, you have options that free you from Apple. For the later i*** products, you're trapped. You need the drivers that are part of the iTunes bloatware, and these are for XP+ only. As you will be aware, KernelEx cannot help at the driver level. Joe.

(Hmmm ... What happened to the pretty "ASCII comparison" graphic in the above quote?) Anyway, a bit OT, but possibly of general interest anyway - which utility gives this nice comparison of two (binary) files? Actually, my confusion is with the current Panasonic USBASPI.SYS driver, which is from 2008 and has a version no. 2.27, versus the modified USBASPI.EXE driver, which is from 2007, yet has a version no. 2.28 (for comparison, the only original driver I could find from 2007 had version no. 2.24). Joe.

Hmmm ... the silence is deafening. I guess that means the answer is a no. (Sorry Netgear, this means I can't run your ProSafe Plus Utility, which means I won't be buying your ProSafe Plus network switches.) Joe.

Yeah, newer versions of Real (also WM) CODEC's may give a little more compression, but at the expense of hugely more resources, and they don't degrade gracefully on older hardware! Anyway, any particular instructions for "manually adding" the Real CODEC's? Are they available per se? ... On a related matter, I wonder if it's possible to install the latest CODEC's from VLC into the last W9X compatible player (0.8.6i)? I can't get newer versions to work even with KernelEx, they seem extremely unstable. Joe.