rloew

Sometimes even the bare-bones Installation can be a pain. Lack of PS/2 Ports can make things rather difficult. ACPI Problems are another. One Computer required my SPLIT8MB Program as well as my RAM Patch to work. If they ever drop CSM, then 9x is history.

The basic instructions come with the SATA Patch. I provide instructions for the more complicated installations on an individual basis. ATA0104.INF is for Controllers in RAID Mode. This is mainly for VIA Controllers. ATA0106.INF is for Controllers in AHCI Mode. This is used with the AHCIBIOS Product. ATA0180.INF is for Mass Storage Controllers. This is for PCI/PCI-E Controllers. The Primary and Secondary Controllers cannot be removed even in Safe Mode. The Dual Controllers can be removed in Safe Mode. I cannot read Czech so I don't know what the Error Message says. It looks like it is not Enabled. Try Enabling it. You may have to search your Registry for an Entry called "NoIDE" and remove it if you can't enable the Driver. You don't have either of my TeraByte Patches. Which one are you referring to? I don't think you can load an NTFS Driver if the Drive is in compatibility Mode.

I discovered setups where FIXINTR and FIXINTR# stopped a system from Booting, so I developed FIXEOI as an alternative. It was added in Version 3.0 of my Package. Since it polls for missed Interrupt EOIs, it probably would not work well with a Sound Card, as it could cause pauses. Try it and report the results. It may help understand the issue with the Sound Driver.

I don't have a Z170 Motherboard. I have a Z87 Motherboard. User 98SE is the only one I know experimenting with a Z170. My other Motherboards are AMD based. Your Motherboard may have a problem with AHCI. I didn't see any setting in the User Manual.

T+328800 Interesting. Apparently the Soundblaster Driver is not properly handling Interrupts. Which did you use, FIXINTR, FIXINTR#, or FIXEOI?

I examined that Driver to determine what Versions it supported. It supports Device IDs: 10EC:8136, 10EC:8167, 10EC:8168, and 10EC:8169. There does not appear to be any Revision Checks so it could possibly support newer Versions as they come out.

It works fine. I measured a transfer rate of around 300Mbs through a 1Gbs Switch to an RTL8111B System. Not full speed but much better than the alternative.

I decided to test the performance of the NDIS2 Driver as compared to the Tenda Driver. I copied a 1GB File within a remote RAMDISK and measured the time needed. The Tenda Driver set the NIC to 100Mbs and took 196 Seconds (Read + Write) for an expected rate of 10.4MB/Sec. The NDIS2 Driver set the NIC to 1000Mbs and took 64 Seconds (Read + Write) for a rate of 31.2MB/Sec. Although significantly slower than full speed, it was 3 times faster than the currently available alternative. Moving the NET START Command to the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT eliminated any impact on DOS performance so it is a keeper.

I looked up your Motherboard's specifications. It lists your NIC as a RTL8111C/RTL8111H. The RTL8111C is compatible with 9x. I don't know why the dual designation. The Motherboard has decent USB 2 support and 2 PS/2 Connectors. It lacks PCI Slots and I did not see any option to turn off AHCI. This could be a problem for Hard Drives.

There have been some recent postings on the NDIS2 Driver. It is a DOS Driver, not a Windows 9x Driver. It will be interesting to see how well it performs.

@ragnargd T+1800

There is no Driver for the 8111E that I know of. I found a Tenda Driver for a different NIC that apparently has experimental code for the 8111 in it. The INF File had the entry commented out. It runs, but puts up a warning on boot and only runs at 100Mbs. I have posted on this subject before.

I have a MSI 970A SLI Krait. It will support SATA Drives using my SATA Patch. My SATA Patch will support most PCI-E SATA Cards as long as they are not RAID-only or AHCI-only. The jMicron Controllers appear to work.

I see five sets of Disk Controllers listed. This can cause problems. I recommend that you remove all of the Controllers that you can from Safe Mode, and then let Windows redetect them. Also I noticed that two sets (ATA0104) are set to RAID Mode. If you did this as a workaround for the VIA Problem, run the PATCHPCI Program and then switch the Controllers to IDE.

The SATA Patch was updated in 2011. Only the INF was from 2009. Only a few people ever got the 2009 Version. Try logging your Boot and finding the last Driver loaded in BOOTLOG.TXT. The only Optical Drive issue I know of is that Microsoft does not allow an Optical Drive to be a Primary Master on a Legacy Controller. If your DVD Drive is connected to the SIL3512 Card, you either need their Driver or the ATA0180.INF File that is a free Option on my SATA Patch.

Caching will provide an improvement over not having a Cache, particularly if the same Sectors are being reread. Since Compatibility Mode uses the Real Mode Mapper to access the Disk, you do not get most support from the Windows 9x subsystems. Performance will still not be comparable to Full 32-Bit Mode. Safe Mode puts everything in Compatibility Mode. There is a design flaw in SmartDrive that limits a Partition to 137GB in DOS or Windows. Corruption can occur on larger Partitions.

Safe Mode displays all Devices, recognized or not. They are not loaded so you don't get excamation points. In Normal Mode, go to "Add Hardware" in the Control Panel and manually Install the PCI Bus Driver.

Looking for the routine causing a crash by examining the Export Addresses may not be particularly effective, especially for KERNEL32.DLL. KERNEL32.DLL APIs often consist of a small piece of validation code followed by a jump or call to the main routine elsewhere.

Apparently enough controllers did not work properly, so they turned DMA off by default. When you turn it on, a warning is displayed saying that turning DMA on may cause problems.

I think a few classes of USER and GDI Objects were moved to the larger Memory Blocks but unfortunately the major bottlenecks remain.

I would think that any significant fix would make a major change in usage. You need to note the usage before the app runs and take the difference. You can get more accurate results by making multiple runs and averaging the results.

Actually, I was referring to running Windows 98SE directly from the CD, which you can't. Running Windows 98SE from a RAMDisk, loaded from a CD, is easy. The RAMDisk is not immutable so I can modify AUTOEXEC.BAT.

I get the impression that your fluency in English is rather limited. You keep ignoring what I say and repeat the same arguments. Since you admitted possessing my RAM Limitation Patch in public, it is like having the iPad with you and showing it off. If you had kept your mouth shut, no one would have known you were my Customer. So you brought attention to yourself. Your refusal to verify your statement was particularly suspicious. You also basically provided the serial number as well. VFAT BSODs related to my Patch occur for a different reason and require the /M Option to fix. Adding Command.Com to the Autoexec.bat does more than display the version information. It loads another instance of the Command Shell. I never said I just wanted a Command Prompt. I want a Command Prompt to do DOS work OR to make changes before continuing to Windows. You obviously didn't try my suggestion, so you repeated your irrelevant statement about EXIT. I don't run 98SE prior to DOS. That only works because it also creates a second instance of the Command Shell. Who said anything about modifying a CDs AUTOEXEC.BAT File? I modify it after installation. I could also modify AUTOEXEC.BAT and burn a new CD. You can't run Windows from a CD so I don't have to deal with an unmodifiable source. I did make a BD-RW that appeared to be a writable Drive, but I could not get Windows to work with it. You can't replace partitions on the fly with Microsoft tools. You need a third party Imager. I said a number of times, my Windows 98SE OS Partition is 8GB. The Physical Drive is 4TB. There are about a dozen OS Partitions, none bigger than 32GB. Most of the Drive is data. Why use a 2TB Hard Drive when I can use a 4TB Hard Drive? The 384TB limit is 24 x 16TB. DOS can be used with 32KB Sectors which allows 128TB per Partition. The 3072TB limit is 24 x 128TB. exFAT and NTFS are not going to help much with Windows 9x. When I talked about Drive Banking, I was referring to dismounting a Partition from a Drive Letter, then mounting a different Partition to that Drive Letter. This can give access to more then 26 Partitions. I probably could code a 32-Bit Version one although there is very little in common with a DOS Version. A 32-Bit Version would probably not have enough of an advantage over a 3rd party one to justify the price. Only a 64-Bit one would be unique. I added the "32-Bit" to clarify that you need to compare a true Windows 9x RAMDisk implemented as a 32-Bit Driver rather than a 16-Bit RAMDisk DOS Driver mapped into Windows 9x. I already said a 16-Bit RAMDisk running in Windows 98SE will not be as fast as a 32-Bit RAMDisk in any reasonable OS.

Nothing baffling. I said Windows 3.1 didn't run from DOS 7. I never mentioned other programs. Some of my System Programs had to be upgraded to run on Dos 7. Windows 3.1 is intentionally blocked from running from DOS 7. Someone found a way to remove that block but I did not know it at the time. Having DOS 6.2 to run Windows 3.1, I wanted to expand it's capability to more than 8GB per Drive, so I developed the DDO. Remember this was the 20th Century, I don't use DOS 6.2 now. Your Instructions are stupid because they are written for a 5 year old and I already told you I am not interested in configuring any system in that way. The DDO did not backfire. It worked fine. Only FDISK was the problem. I was able to repair everything. I eventually wrote RFDISK to facilitate Partition editing years later. It doesn't support this configuration in any case. I NEVER said that EXIT boots into Windows if you go straight into DOS. EXIT terminates the Second Instance of COMMAND.COM and then continues the normal boot sequence into Windows. Try reading what I said before commenting. I didn't gloss over anything, I rejected it due to lack of relevance. I wanted to extend the access of DOS 6.2 to more Hard Disk Space. Access from DOS 7 was never an issue. The Soundblaster provides a DOS Driver and Windows Driver making it a Tertiary Controller. I don't remember the Model but it was an ISA Card. I said 6 IDE Register set I/O Address Ranges were defined back then, nothing about implementations. I have never seen a Motherboard use more than two. Any additional Controllers use Native Mode. Since FDISK uses the BIOS, it doesn't care if a Drive is IDE or SATA. The experiment is much more feasible now than back then. Of course I was experimenting. I did get the DDO to work. I just happened to be curious what FDISK would show, not expecting it to cause damage. You cannot navigate Partitions after Z:. They are not mounted. The Drive Mounter requires that at least one Drive Letter be free. That is why I said, I would have to develop a Drive Dismounter to bank Partitions. The types of utilities I develop are not amenable to your freeware approach. They do their job and there is little room for more features. Very few would buy the upgrades. Less than the number who would pay upfront. That would be like giving away Windows and charging for a Browser. I run a Business not a Charity. Paying customers are much faster reporting bugs than freeware customers.

Your reference to purchasing my Patch is equivalent to carrying the iPad into the store, even if it has been turned off for a while. That 30 Second Video can be summed up as follows: "You get a BSOD without the Patch. If you Install the Patch you will not." 75 Bytes instead of ~600,000 Bytes. The Video may be fancier, but it is not more informative. Incidentally, you don't get a BSOD without my RAM Limitation Patch. You get an error message. Nothing I said about COMMAND.COM is incorrect. If you remove or rename CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, it will behave as you describe because you have removed the reinstancing of COMMAND.COM by AUTOEXEC.BAT. All you have to do is add the following line to the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT COMMAND Then reboot. Do not modify MSDOS.SYS. Do not Press F5 or F8. My System doesn't actually go straight to Windows when I type EXIT, I added a command in-between to run my AHCI Disabler before going to Windows so I would not have problems if I have AHCI set. There was no need to have it run while actually working in DOS. 4 to 6 SATA Ports are more common than 8. I have no problem moving data around. I use Trayless SATA Drive Trays on all my newer Systems. This allows me to transfer "internal" Drives from Computer to Computer at will. I also wrote a fast DMA Copier than can duplicate a 4TB Hard Drive in less then 8 Hours. My OS Partitions are fairly small. They are in various places within the 4TB Hard Drive. Unlike you, I can repair, restore, or replace any Partition I want separately. I don't need to limit the size of my Boot Drive. Using a feature I put in RFDISK, I can completely restore the Partition structure from scratch using a small Save File, without disturbing any data. I can hook up as many Internal Hard Drives and all the External Hard Drives you mentioned as well. I am also not limited to 16TiB per Drive in Windows 98SE. I can use up to 384TiB with Windows 98SE, or 3072TiB with DOS, of total Hard Disk Space. More if I use a Drive Banker. Of course I could find a RAMDisk. I probably have one downloaded somewhere. I just have no reason to test it. You can't just port a DOS RAMDisk (XMS or not) to Windows. The DOS RAMDisk uses 16-Bit Code, which is why it is slower. A Windows only RAMDisk uses 32-Bit Code and does not need to run in Virtual Mode. A Windows XP RAMDisk such as Gavotte is a 32-Bit RAMDisk. There isn't a lot of overhead in DOS, but then you have to compare it to another DOS or 16-Bit RAMDisk. There is no such thing in XP. The Grub4dos RAMDisk is not a XP RAMDisk either, it just can load and boot it. Get a true 98SE 32-Bit RAMDisk and then compare it to your XP RAMDisk.