Dr.Atom

It still works like a charm. I have to correct myself, though. The new install I did was with the Patchmem CAB files. But what changed the whole thing, was that the SSD and the secondary HDD were both plugged into the SATA ports set to "compatible" in the BIOS. I had never done this before, they were always on "enhanced" when installing. This is the only change I can think of compared to before. Something that also mattered probably, is that I did not have to reformat the C: drive. I simply booted into WinXP, deleted the Windows folder on the Win98 partition, then booted back into Win98 which threw errors and put me on DOS prompt but I could simply start the setup as I had copied the CD files onto C: before. That way I avoided having to use the SATA-as-IDE port which I had to use on the previous installs for Win98 to even find the SSD. So, I did not have to install Patchmem as it was already included and Win98 boots fine with my 8GB of RAM installed. All SATA and IDE drives working + no need for the SATA-as-IDE port. The only next step still missing is installing the ICH8 SATA drivers. So far it's just the plain vanilla Microsoft ones doing the job. I'm not sure if I should considering everything is working fine. But then, I'd still have the backup. I will add screenshots soon. Consequently, this means that my quad boot PC is now fully functional! Win98SE with an S3 Virge/3dfx Voodoo2 combo on PCI, WinXP with a GeForce 8600 GTS on PCIe, Win10 (with the same 8600 or even a GeForce RTX 1030) and Debian all available through one Grub boot menu :-) Is there like a dedicated subforum to post the success story and the way I got there? I'd like to share.

Well, I don't believe it!! I told myself, I'd only install 98 one more time. After that I'd get a dedicated machine if the era. This time plain vanilla. Only 512MB RAM, no patches. ... And it just works! ... I have all IDE and SATA functionality, no more compatibility mode which makes it even faster than before. I installed all drivers and I still have my drives. Now, I will use Linux on another partition to create a backup image of the 98 partition. After that I will also install the ICH8 SATA controller drivers (the only ones from the retrofitted ICH8 drivers I haven't applied so far), and also R. Loew's Patchmem. This way I can always revert. Until now I only ever installed 98 with the patched CAB file version of Patchmem. Maybe the patch applied in retrospect will be different than the CAB version. I'll let you know. I'm very happy. So close to giving up!

What I've done now: I disabled SATA ports 1+2, disabled the IDE controller (the Marvell chip), leaving me only SATA ports 3+4. I attached the SSD to one of the ports and booted into Win98. Still yellow exclamation marks! The only controller left was a "2-port SATA storage controller" confirming my assumption from before that the "Standard Dual PCI SATA controller" was indeed the IDE drives' controller. I then went into safe mode and replaced the "2-port SATA storage controller" with R. Loew's SATA driver. This worked as the entry in the device manager is now also called "Standard Dual PCI SATA controller", but the yellow exclamation marks remain. I'm at a loss as to why this is still happening with this minimal setup.

Thank you. In the BIOS under "Integrated Peripherals" and "On-Chip ATA devices" I can configure "SATA #1 Configuration" to be either disabled, compatible or enhanced. The regular SATA ports are number 1-4 and the SATA-as-IDE port is #7. At the moment, the SSD with all partitions is plugged into #1, but setting it to "compatible" has no effect (it was on "enhanced" before). According to the manual "Compatible" here is defined as "Legacy IDE Channels will only use IRQ14 and IRQ15". Also PCI busmastering is enabled. But I had it on disabled, too, and there were no changes. But honestly, I don't really know what PCI busmastering is. Also, "SATA#1 configuration" seems to be a misnomer, as when setting this to "disabled" it will disable SATA ports #1 and #2 and remove the 4-port SATA storage controller from the device manager... I can't disable the Marvell 88SE6111 chip, which controls the IDE connector as well as the SATA-as-IDE port since I will want to use the IDE port. Consequently, I assume, that the 4-port SATA storage controller is in fact only 2 SATA ports but listed as 4-port as there might be boards that have 6 SATA ports. The other 2-port SATA controller is therefore the controller for SATA ports 3-4. The SATA-as-IDE port is either not listed as a controller or it is the "Standard Dual PCI SATA controller". It's really confusing... I did install the SATA patch by R.Loew. For that I booted into Safe mode, applied the patch, copied the inf file, removed the "Standard Dual PCI IDE controller" from the device manager and rebooted. After reboot, this device became a "Standard Dual PCI SATA controller", but nothing changed. The thread you mentioned is really long, and I am not too deep into Windowsland to be able to extract all the relevant information. Could you point me to the relevant parts maybe, please? On the last page the AHCI patch by R.Loew is mentioned. Is this relevant to me? There is no mention of AHCI/RAID in the manual. I appreciate any help, but maybe take me a bit by the hand and be more explicit to what I have to do. 2 PATA devices (CD burner and DVD reader). Although one would of course suffice. 2 SATA devices (1 SSD with the operating systems, 1 2TB HDD with mostly game images to be shared by all OSes). The HDD is currently not plugged in as I wanted to get the OSes all working first. It's kind of strange that SATA is working and IDE is not on Win98... I mean, I could just buy a SATA internal CD drive, but where's the fun in that (apologies to everyone witnessing the editing marathon...)

I have an MSI P965 Neo2 board. The PC is a dual boot system with Win98SE and Win XP. There are official drivers for XP for this board, and for Win98SE I used the retrofitted ICH8 drivers to get full support. The issue I'll be describing now is not related to the chipset drivers, however, as the issue already existed before installing the drivers. This board is a bit special. It has one IDE connector for two devices which are occupied by a DVD and a CD drive/burner. Then there are 4 SATA-II ports and one special SATA port that identifies everything connected to it as IDE (very helpful when installing Win98 on an SSD!). Also, there's a floppy drive. An SSD is attached to the first SATA port and an HDD to the second SATA port. The SATA-as-IDE port is currently not in use (only for the installation of Win98). The issue is that on 98SE I am not able to use the two drives connected via IDE. They are not even being recognized. In the device manager under hard disk controllers, there are 3 entries (Intel ICH8 4 port SATA storage controller, Intel ICH8 2 port SATA storage controller and Standard Dual IDE PCI controller). I have those entries in 98 and XP. Each of these three controllers has a primary IDE controller and a secondary IDE controller. In 98, those six controllers all have the yellow exclamation mark telling me that they don't work and/or I should update a driver. They work fine on XP and I can see both IDE drives. On Vogons there is thread that someone fixed this by setting the controller options to either off, both or alike etc. I did that but I had no success. Is there some logical combination I could try that maybe I forgot? What other approaches could there be? As a consequence of those controllers not working, I also have my file systems in MS-DOS compatibility mode and got a blue screen (not "of death") on first boot after installation, that "your multi-function device (Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller) has some child devices using 32-bit drivers and others using compatibility-mode drivers. This configuration is not supported [....] Windows will use compatibility-mode drivers for each child device attached to this multi-function device. [....]". Happy to provide more information. What I already checked is the configuration of the three main controllers on XP. They seem to be using different interrupts there, but I wouldn't know what to make of this.

I'll try later. I'll be putting in a PCIe sound card in the next days that is supposed to work with Win98SE and go with that solution if it works. I removed all software except for the audio drivers, but still a BSOD. Then I removed the audio drivers, and no more BSOD. So it's the driver. I'll keep you updated.

That worked without issues. Didn't even have to fiddle with Waveout.exe. The volume levels were at very reasonable values already. I got blown away by the sheer volume as my speakers were still at maximum... The sound is very clear. However, I still get the BSOD even with MinTimeSlice=120. Also, I got it when opening "Network Neighborhood", so it's not the USB drive, but something else. But it's 98% reproducible when using the CD drive. As soon as I plug it in, I get the BSOD "fatal exception 0E" at some address 0177:BFF8976B (might be the same all the time). If you have any ideas, let me know.

For whatever reason, I found it in the device manager under "System Devices". Maybe that's because I already had a device under "Sound, video and game controllers"? DirectSound plays fine. I will care for the USB CD drive later. Can we set up the volume, please? :-)

Neither had an effect. With MaxFileCache=8096 I got the freezes back and I still get the BOSD with MinTimeSlice=80 and the USB CD drive plugged in. Before we continue without the CD drive and just the volume: Using this method, would there be sound inside apps/games in any way? Also, there is no sound device in the device manager (even when sound is working).

Doesn't seem to freeze any more. I got a BSOD when opening the main explorer window, but I assume this was because of my USB CD-ROM drive. I detached it and there are no more BSODs (I did not have those before installing the HDA driver), but for now I can live without the drive. Will changing the MaxFileCache number from the high value it was at before have any effects on other parts of the system?

The system keeps crashing about 3 minutes in. Just freezes up. Going into safe mode gives me "insufficient memory to go into Windows" or something, computer shuts off immediately after the message. I have Patchmem installed with 8GB of RAM. If I ever want to uninstall, I guess I'll have to be quick in normal mode! Also, just had a BSOD right after start up. It terminated an application, but I could return to Win98. Now there is only a constant sound. Guess we'll have to look deeper into this. In a last attempt, (after a restart) I started a game but there was not sound and the game locked up almost instantly. I won't try anything more for now.

Here you go HDAcfg.ini HDALOG.TXT

And there's sound!!! I now have fully running quadruple boot system (Win98SE, Win XP, Win 10, Debian 12). Crazy! There was some crackling and I had to turn up the volume to almost maximum - but the Win98SE start sound played! I also sounded a bit "wobbly". Is there any way to improve on this? Edit: The sound seems to play fine, it's just not loud enough, yet.

Thank you! I will give this a try right away. One last question: If I hear "anything" after the reboot, does it mean it worked or will there still be some configuration left for me to do? (I will use version L of course. K was a typo)

Thank you. Unfortunately, this is not yet clear @deomsh (I am trying to get this running on Win98SE, not Win 3.1.) So, I downloaded the zip file of version K. In it I find what are probably the sources as well as exe and dll files. There is - HDARUN.EXE in the ACTIVATE folder - QUERYHDA.EXE in the BAUBLES folder - HDATSR.EXE in the TSR folder - WAVEOUT.exe in the VOLUME folder - HDA2.DLL, HDAICOUT.HDA, OEMSETUP.INF in the root folder (other files won't matter I assume?) I created a GENHDA16.INF file with the contents from page 1 (without the ------------ lines) and placed it in the root folder, too. Now: Do I integrate the driver in Win98SE by going to the device manager, selecting the yellow "PCI Card" item and then "Update driver" and select the GENHDA16.INF file? Do I still have to do copying and adding things to SYSTEM.INI or AUTOEXEC.BAT? Or will your INF file do that? Please be very explicit about how to install using your INF file or where it and everything else should be located, what has to go where manually before and what is done by your INF file. Thank you Afterwards we could maybe create a new sticky post with the INF file attached as an actual file and clear instructions for everyone who wants to try.