ragnargd

Hi, as i already told, i'm searching of a hardware-combination, that allows me to run old games (i.er. Thief 1) on W98SE, with the full glory of DX9.0c and Creative EAX 2.0. But also, while not gaming, i wanted to have a decent Windows 10 machine (Quad Core, 8GB Ram, full AHCI SATA with Trim), not for gaming, but for everything else. As this could only be made true by choosing a 45mm/333FSB Intel Core 2 Quad with an AHCI-cabable southbride (ICH 7/8/9/10 R), i bought a motherboard of each type (yes, four of them all in all), and did some research if this is possible, and if, to what extent, and what "price" to pay. I did not use RLoews SATA-patch on purpose, although financially, it is on par with my solution, and technically probably even better, because it removes the need for IDE/SATA I, and thereby requires one slot less, which increases the choice of motherboards. In a nutshell: 1. It works. Yay! 2. Being able to boot into W98SE means either buying an add-on card or RLoews patch 3. I had to switch off onboard USB, as it effectually blocked W98SE from working stable. I bought a compatible add-in card. 4. I love NVidia and Creative for their dedicated and longstanding support for their old hardware. Period. 5. In W98SE, this machine idles with 72W, a bit less (exact measures here when done) in Windows 10. 6. For you old Pros on msfn.org, nothing new here, just confirmation of what you already found out. But still... More Details: USB: On ICH7/8/9/10, THE major obstacle was USB on the intel southbridge. It is unstable with W98SE in any case, on every board i had, with or without drivers/Inf/NUSB. Only switching it off made the boards stable (being able to shut down without freezing, random hickups, you name it...). No way around it. I bought a PCI add-in card with a VIA VT6212, as it is the only chipset known to me compatible with both W98SE and WX. I decided for one with an internal port, to be able to connect the front panel ports. Maximus Decim' NUSB (a must have on W98SE for me) works on this add-on card like a charm. SATA/IDE: There are no native SATA II drivers for W98SE for onboard SATA II, neither intel, nor JMicron, nor Marvell. You CAN boot from these controllers, but you will see no other drives or ODDs. No 32bit mode as well, i guess. If you don't install drivers, they won't impact the stability of your W98SE, though, it's just a yellow exclamation mark in your device-list. There are compatible Chipsets for SATA I, like the JMicron JMB360, but they are not known to be not on boards with ICH7-10 I bought a PCI add-in card with a VIA VT6421, as it is the only chipset known to me compatible with both W98SE and WX. It has both IDE and SATA I, and booting W98SE from it was nice and easy, speed with an SSD is fine. No native Trim, though. Chipset: The (newer) slip-stream method and INF-files by LoneCrusader are superior to the (older) add-on method by xRayer... @LoneCrusader: ICH®10? prettyplease... ...as long as you switch of the onboard USB. @xRayer and LoneCrusader (and everyone else): THANK YOU!!! There seems to be one small ressource conflict, but without any observable consequence. (did i thank the right persons this time? correct me if not...) PCIe/AGP: NVidia GeForce 6 and 7 work flawlessly with 82.69 (i took a 7600 GT), thanks to (primarily) MDGx and RLoew. THANK YOU!!! Sound: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 1/2 ftw. Was able to control W98SE through the Creative IR Remote. Being able to rock hard my flat with my Fender Bullet eGuitar through the ZS Platinum Front Panel. B) Same with XP and WX. 'nuff said. Network I have an onboard Realtek 8111B GBit PCIe. If you can, have a compatible PCIe GBit NIC onboard (Marvell Yukon would work as well), many boards have this, it's pretty nice, one less add-on card needed. It's only worth it if you use SSDs, of course, as otherwise you have nothing to make use of your bandwith. RAM 8GB of Dual Channel Interleaved DDR2 800, of which W98SE sees 1GB, Ushers Method with himemX.exe. Always works, always fun. Finally, my choosen Motherboard: I finally settled with a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R, as it has enough AHCI-SATAII ports, 4 DDR2 slots (8GB Max.), 3 PCI, 3PCIe 1x, one PCIe 16x slot, and that nice compatible onboard PCIe-NIC 8111B from Realtek, which gave me ample of space for my badly-needed add-on-cards and memory. Native BIOS-support for my Core2Quad 9550S (not many boards have that) being a plus. Perhaps later on i'll ad an USB 3.0 PCIe 1x add-on card for Windows 10 (and maybe XP). The ASUS P5Q had a damaged USB-Hub, the ASRock G41C-S did not have enough PCI-slots in the end, the GA-965P-DS3 did not support my C2Q 9550S in the BIOS. All worked, though, one way ot the other. Questions? Critics? Suggestions? Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

What do you need him to tell you that is not already available here? [...] Perhaps the motherboard and GPU names? So i could see if i can buy them on ebay to experiment on it? None the less, he already answered: It took five months for him (he is still a bit upset :-), driver and GPU was given to him by NVidia directly. No data available anymore, as was to be expected, its a long time ago. Ok, i can see my open chassis from here, let's just do it...

For modded inf: FAIL on my side. Unless anyone has some bright idea, this JMicron 363 controller (with unpatched drivers) remains XP and up only. (rloew is another case... ;-)

Thread zombie resurrection... B) I got a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R, P35, ICH9R. It has an RTL811B onboard, so one less add-on card I'll try the inf files on that one during installation, and report. I'll also try the JMicron 360 0.92 driver on the IDE-part of the JMicron 363 (euphemistically named "Gigabyte SATA2 controller"... ) Didn't work... I'll be using my new 7600GT PCIe 256MB on this... but that will most probably work with the 82.69... I still had the installation from the P45/ICH10R board, and that one came up quite well. NUSB36 is working MOSTLY, i can work with USB3.0 sticks, just the eject-symbol in the taskbar does not come up. I'll still kill that installation, and start from scratch, to test the inf files, and all that. That's it for tonight, see ya... Because of that, research on GeForce 630a with Athlon II X4 has to wait a little bit more...

On Toms Hardware in the german forums, in a thread from 2009, FormatC claims he has produced working INFs for P35/ICH9 by instructions on msfn.org. He also claims he got a GeForce6800GT PCIe with 512MB running like a charm on that board. http://www.tomshardware.de/foren/240926-26-suche-windows-treiber-chipsatz I will contact him, although i doubt he can still remember what he did, and how, back in 2009... you never know, though, he is some competent technician...

I'm using an IDE SSD on the IDE port. Does your patch handle that?

Hi, many core 2 duo boards (like ICH7-10 chipset) have an additional controller onboard for IDE and additional sata support, as intel did not deliver IDE any more. One popular example is the JMicron 363. I did not find a driver for W98SE, which makes use of those boards rather hard (you need an add-on IDE-PCI(e)-controller with w98SE support). But, funny enough, there is a w98SE-driver (version 0.92) for the smallest variant, the JMicron 360, which only has one sata 1.5 port besides the IDE port. It is pin-compatible with the JMicron 362 controller. It has been used at least on some AM2-boards. Has anyone experience with that controller resp. driver? With modding it, so perhaps the 363 might try to use the driver of the 360? Any ideas or advice? Otherwise, i'd start some research on modding the driver, and see, what comes up as a result... ************************************************** Result: By assigning the driver to the 363 via inf, the driver is assigned, but: It doesn't work like that. I tested all three configurations (IDE/IDE, IDE/AHCI, IDE/RAID), but the dreaded yellow exclamation mark remained. If you don't have any further useful ideas, i'd say: FAIL (as the 360 supports only one channel of SATA1, while the 363 supports 2 channels of SATA2, i had no hope regarding the SATA part in the first place. ...i just hoped at least the IDE-channels would show up. But it wasn't meant to be...) *************************************************** Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

I have several installations running with "incompatible" SATA controllers (ICH7-10 come to mind, but there are many more). Usually i install W98, including the more or less working drivers for the not-to-be-used controllers, then i disable the associated ports in device manager (you know, like the "single channel fifo-stuff), and only THEN i connect the sata drives for further installation of other OSes. If the controllers don't get a driver as they are "unknown devices" (show up in "yellow question mark area"), you're good to go as well. To be sure, you can deactivate those devices there as well (an overlooked fact), just in case an undesired driver gets into the system later on. Unlikely, maybe, but why take chances? This way the sata drives stay invisible to the system, and the systems does not lock up.

@ farfigs11: You, Sir are a scholar (and gentlemen). Doing the non-pnp-device search suddenly produced a "standard IDE and EDSI controller" of some kind, after which the ODD was working finde. THANK YOU! @jumper: You, Sir are a gentlemen, trying to save valuable time for me. THANK YOU! I downloaded the driver, the device was recognized, but... no cookie, yellow exclamation mark. So I searched for another driver. Fortunately, although Toshiba only delivered driver for XP, the sound-driver on their page was ALSO for W98SE. I took that one, and: SOUND! Of course, i could have done that right from the beginning, but, alas, ... don't say anything, please... So, thanks to all of You, this laptop is now considered fit for gaming. Quest finished.

I have a NVidia GeForce 630a/7025 lying around somewhere. It's included in the NVidia Legacy Driver for W7-10, so I wonder if that can be made to work somehow with W98SE... There you go, next weekend... :-)

Any GeForce card, PCIe or AGP, from 6xxx or 7xxx Series, with 256MB. I recommend 6600 and up. If you intend to dual-boot with WIndows 7 and up, these are the only cards still supported with the GeForce Legacy Driver 309.08. Otherwise, 5xxx isn't worth the trouble, ATI 9700 Pro or ATI 9800 Pro with 256MB can be used if laying around, but GeForce 6600' beat them hands down. Don't use the setup.exe, just use the "have disk" method directly on the device.

Maybe it's really time to remove the 8xxx from the driver, and re-release it. Too many people ran into that trap... perhaps even spent money on that...

Wow, that is some advanced js-foo. Hiding the entry-point, i guess, but without the rest of the code i can't be sure. Still, 'nbny243()' ought to be some function, to deliver feed for 'this' object, but is most probably not defined. So i guess it's simply a bug. But then again, i did not see this 'this[]-syntax ever before. Did you try that one out in a sandbox with a script-enabled browser? Perhaps only the first part as a snippet, to avoid some undesired payload?

@halohalo: Wierd solution, but cool. >> Jaclaz: DOS and Windows 9x/Me need to be on the First Active Primary partition of First Disk (that will be assigned drive letter C: at boot time automatically, the difference is subtle but important). I could't put it better. Thanks, Jaclaz. I found a solution for the PCIe-Problem on W10, so i can now use any GF6/7, PCIe or AGP, on the 4CoreDual-SAT2 R2.0 now, as long as it has 256MB VidRam. I decided for a 6800GT AGP 256MB, equipped with an Accelero S1 Cooler, as it fits best into the cramped space in that particular PC. CHeers, Ragnar G.D.

IE6 is vulnerable, it may just be that the script itself is by pure luck not compatible with the scripting host used on W9x. W9x is still vulnerable to many new developments, it just depends. I'd not bet on it "being too old to be vulerable", for i know it is not. Besides that, many pros using W9x use the latest supported Opera, which is actually quite fast and works good on many contemporal pages, but unfortunately is HIGHLY vulnerable. Using a browser or eMail for the internet on W9x is dangerous, it always has been, it always will be. That's the main reason i use Dual-Boot on my old PCs with some serious modern OS (like W10 or Kali Linux), with a hardened browser, as they at least offer some resistance. Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

My AGP Bliss 7800GS+ 512MB worked on one Motherboard only (don't remember which, unfortunately, after the MB died, i just threw the MB away. Stupid me.). I don't remember the Aperture setting. Thereafter, i never managed to get the Bliss, or any other GPU, working on W98SE, unless it had exactly 256MB of Video-RAM. My advice: Get a card with exactly 256MB Video-RAM, and sell the other, unless you have time and money to spare (i.e. on RLoew... ;-) for experimenting. When choosing a card for the purpose of playing old games, make sure it has a VGA-port next to the DVI-D (so: NOT Dual-DVI-D), as there are some games, Thief 1 among them, that crash when playing via DVI-D on some cards. The fastest PASSIVELY cooled GPUs fit for old games with official drivers are of the GF 6600 GT version. Safe bet are cards from the GeForce 6 Series, 256MB, AGP version, as they work with the latest stable driver, 77.72. If you use the tweaked inofficial 82.69, you can use PCIe-cards as well, and also choose from the GeForce-7 Series. Fair warning: The driver supposedly supports cards from the GeForce 8-Series, but that is an error! No GF-8xxx has ever been seen working on W98SE in the wild. Fails have been reported on msfn.org numerously. Don't bother. For old games, cards with VGA-port are maximum of the 7800GS or 7600GT type with the inofficial driver. 7300 is possible, but doesn't make sense, as the older GF 6600 GT is faster, with less hassle. There seems to be no passively cooled and reasonably fast GF 7xxx with a VGA-port. If old games are not that important, the fastest card known to me to work is a GeForce 7950GT PCIe 256MB (i own one, from MSI, passively cooled even. It rocks, but You'll need the tweaked 82.69 driver, though, as mentioned above) I haven' seen reviews on a GeForce 7950GX2, though, but XP only. They have at least 1GB Ram, so this is for W9x-Pros only. Cheers, Ragnar G.D. If you are RLoew, or are assisted by him (for a price), advice may not apply. If used via a driver for W9x, he may even revert gravity. May be expensive, though...

Hi, i checked the old Laptop of my wife, a Toshiba Tecra S2, normally "Designed for Windows XP", and thought: Well, have a try: Intel 915 M/ICH6: Check Geforce 6600 Go (PCIe, 64MB): Check NIC: Onboard Yukon Chipset PCIe Gigabit NIC: Perhaps Sound Onboard: No Clue, maybe, although no sound: No fun. WLAN: 2200BG: Well, they pulled back the driver even on the Lenovo T40, so probably better not anyway. USB 2.0: Let's see... What could possibly go wrong? Well... Chipset installed like a charm. ODD controller installed as non-pnp-device (thanks to farfigs 11) but: The controller reports "Ressources conflict (Code 15)", and the drives (HDD as DVD) did not show up GPU: Works fine (82.69 with shutdown fix, thanks to MDGx and RLoew) NIC: Works fine, latest W98SE driver (Marvell/Yukon) fits 100% WLAN: As expected, no luck. As the old batteries only allow stationary work anyway, and LAN works, this is ok. Sound: AC97, chip by realtek, special version for toshiba, works No fun yet, still looking for a driver. Will probably have to install XP in dual-boot to identify the device. USB 2.0: NUSB v. 36ad of Maximus Decim works perfectly. Many unknown devices, most propbably thingies like Modem, some PCMCIA stuff, but: No harm done, can be ignored. The RTClock has some Ressources-Conflict with the motherboard, but that seems to have no consequence, so i'll ignore that for a while too. Not having access to the internal IDE-DVD is what i need help for: Disabling the Second IDE-Channel (on which the IDE-DVD hangs) removes the problem/yellow icon on the ATA Controller, you can then see the HDD. So it's the IDE-DVD itself, a MATs***A (<-- ) UJDA750 ("Support" by Sony), that blocks the driver (aka the Real Mode). Does anybody have an idea how to fix that? (ATM, i can use an USB-DVD only, which rather spoils the fun) Gaming time! Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

I have the impression i'm on something here... perhaps a false trail, but nonetheless interesting: I Installed the 98SE SP 3.0 RC1, and then... i thought... why the hell does the USB-Stuff freeze the PC only on the third USB-Hub ?!? The driver is from w2K, so it SHOULD work. So instead of going according to instructions of the NUSB36AD, i 1. did NOT remove any stuff, but DEACTIVATED everything, and rebooted. 2. activated only ONE device, and installed NUSB36AD, and rebooted 3. Now it correctly installed without freezing the PC. 4. and then activated, one reboot at a time, one device after the other, so only one device got a new driver, and not all at once (which i correctly supposed freezed the PC) I found out this way, that probably my board has one damaged USB-Hub (Port 7 and 8), but five intact ones (1-6, 8-12. ICH10 has 12 ports on six hubs, connected to two 2.0 Hubs in a dynamic manner) Going step by step, avoids any crashes and freezes. At the moment four ports / two hubs show up as USB 2.0 Hubs, although i cannot read from any USB-Stick (no letter is assigned). But that may be a matter of what to activate first, as the Southbridge of the ICH10 is a complicated thing, with only two USB 2.0-Hubs (with 4 ports), which then are directed to any device asking for it (i read the intel-specs). That means, the fifth 2.0 device will get only USB 1.1. (Clever, most will never notice, that saved intel some money...) I will experiment a bit longer with the installation order (therefore install w98se again for the umphteenth time), and maybe try to get another (hopefully intact) board. Ah, that will be some long nights...

Well, bad news: There are no native w98SE Drivers for JMB 38x. Some (dubious) websites claimed they had this, but this was quickly discovered as a scam. But much worse, the OEM-producer of an Add-In card claimed it had such a driver, and even added a pdf with an installation instruction claiming this. Getting the driver from their homepage proofs: No such thing, false label. Most probably they didn't even test this... I'm still fighting with P45/ICH10R - Now with an ASUS P5Q Turbo - Q9550s - 8GB Ram (only 1GB visible to W98SE via XRayers method) - Sound (Add In) Audigy 2 Platinum ZS - NIC (Add In) RTE 8111 GBit PCI-E - IDE Controller (Add in) Via VT6421A - SSD Transcend 330 IDE 120GB (only 58GB usable atm) - GeForce 6600 PCI-E Disabled onboard JMB36x/Sound/GB PCI-E/Serial port Made invisible to W98SE: ICH10R (can still be used with XP and WX) So far, it looks good. Unfortunately, any install of an USB 2.0 driver, be it NUSB or XRayer's tweaked INF, no matter in what order, crashes the system in an endless loop... i'm still on it... :-(

Hi, i was searching for the Maximus Decim Native USB drivers GERMAN Edition. I found it (NUSB36AD.EXE) here: ftp://cyberia.dnsalias.com/pub/filebase/windows/apps/system/FILES.HTM Creotards page for the GERMAN SP 2.1d, 2.1e and 3.0 beta is up and updated: http://www.nandlstadt.com/projekte/windows-98-se-service-pack.htm Btw.: Is there a "native" source for these, like a homepage of Maximus Decim? (and: Is he around here?) Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

This board is too cramped for my taste anyway, so i think it will go away, and i'll replace it with an ASUS P5K SE or an ASUS P5KC. P5Q Turbo The JMB PATA on the ASUS P5Q Turbo does *NOT* have an W98SE Driver (if my download claims are true see below) - unfortunately it's hard to get a second board for this (which i always like to keep, as over time boards fail). Do you (or does anyone) know if the Marvell PATA on many ASUS boards have any Driver for W98SE? (Google didn't answer).

This cost me dear, in terms of time and money... i guess i'm the poor IT-aequivalent of rich men laying under old expensive cars in their spare time...

Thanks for the warning.

We'll see. I've already updated five "normal" PCs from W7 to WX, and except for a hiccup caused by a rescue-Windows, all went fine until now (had to install some WX-Drivers later on for better experience, but that was no show-stopper). Today I'll go for my first multi-boot system. I'll report. @jaclaz: YES!

Hi, >> does anybody have experience with Windows 10, W98SE (and maybe XP) multiboot? I have now. I guess i'm the first... ? First: Easy BCD 2.2 does it as was predicted. While experimenting, WX seems to be able to boot all OSes now by itself out of the box, even when coming from hibernation. I did not try further, though. I started with the 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0, C2Q6600 @2.4GHz 95W, 4GB Ram (aka 3.3GB), Audigy Player, Intel MT PCI GBit, and one SSD per OS, as usual. OS was W7 Home Premium 64bit. Legacy Driver 309.08 was already installed. WX-Update complained about my MSI GeForce 7950 GT 256MB PCIe, but that was to be expected. I then used the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation Tool to upgrade, and it went like a charm. Only, the Driver did not show up. Started manually, it did not recognize ANY GPU. Long story short: The Microsoft Driver for the PCIe-Bridge did not recognize the PCIe-Slot (yellow exclamation mark in System). Maybe a bug, whatever. I installed my trusty GeForce 6800 GT 256MB AGP, and presto: We have 1900*1200 32bit colour. Fun Fact: DXDiag still looks the same. Job done. Cheers, Ragnar G.D.