rloew

Well, I've tried installing the non-RAID drivers forcefuly, already. The driver was not working and all the partition from the drive were in DOS compatibility mode. So, changing the device ID in the .inf file will not do, I think. I have no idea how can I reflash the BIOS in the controller. Unitek does not seem to provide any BIOS upgrades for their PCI-SATA-2R controller. Many Vendor supplied Drivers hard code the PCI IDs in their code, so changing the INF Files isn't sufficient.

Where can one find a copy, there is no mention at http://rloew1.no-ip.com/ I just wrote the program and have no instructions written for it. It's main purpose is to classify the Controllers and detect AHCI mode. You would need access to the Motherboard and/or Cards to use the Program. It would not tell you if a Motherboard or Card you are planning to buy is useable.

I was able to get the same version of drivers installed. But nothing have changed. I can not force the 1.5GBit transfer rate on the ST31000524AS. The other drive is WD10EARS, so it does have the jumpers to force the 1.5GBit transfer rate. The drives are both working correctly, when connected without the other one to the same controller. So, the 1.5GBit transfer negotiation should be working fine. The problem starts only when both are connected, in the moment the windows driver is initializing. In some point the HDD LED stops blinking and gets permanently lited. The system gets frozen, before GUI kicks in. As a workaround I'm using a IDE to SATA adapter in order to connect the ST31000524AS through the mainboard IDE port. I have had mixed results with Silicon Image Drivers. My girlfriend's Computer would not boot with the provided Driver, so I installed my SATA Patch. It can handle two SATA Drives.

I went to my Motherboard DVD and got the XP Version of the SMBUS Files. They installed successfully. Thanks for the lead. I turned off the Motherboard Audio, so I am now down to only one warning in my Device Manager. The PCI standard host CPU bridge has a Yellow Exclamation due to a resource conflict.

Since you cannot have a local KERNEL32.DLL, you would need to modify your apps to use a different DLL.

By this definition, the GA-MA785GM is not compatable, as it does not support built in graphics. Are you saying that the built-in graphics is the *only* component you don't have win-98 drivers for ??? No. There is no Audio either. But this is listed as Optional. I use no Vendor supplied Drivers. My TBPLUS and SATA Packages take care of DOS Compatability Mode and SATA support.. I use ME USB and NUSB USB 2.0 Drivers. I had to add a PCI Video Card to support higher resolutions. I have also added a PCI Audio Card. Ethernet Drivers are available on the Internet. 3. A PCI Card entry for the built in Audio, the PCI System Management Bus, and a PCI Standard Host CPU Bridge. AHCI is not important (or is of no consequence) when you have vendor-specific SATA/Raid drivers. The use of win-9x/me Sata/Raid drivers (when available) is always preferable to Legacy IDE mode to allow the use of large hard drives (breaking the 128/137 gb barrier). If AHCI is enabled. Windows 9x will crash. Even compatability mode cannot be used. No Driver can fix this. Drivers are fine if they are available. I solved the 137GB barrier for IDE mode 8 years ago, and the 2TiB limit more recently. Even Windows XP did not (does not) have AHCI support "out of the box". That started with Vista. I'm not even sure that anyone other than Intel supports or offers AHCI as part of their SATA controller / driver (or motherboard) functionality. Both of my recent Gigabyte Motherboards have AHCI mode. Both of them also enable AHCI when using RAID mode. So Native Mode is the only one that can be used. The Highpoint Rocket 620 HBA Cards shipped with the Western Digital 3TB Hard Drives are AHCI only. I reflashed the Firmware to allow it to work in Compatability Mode but have no Driver for it.

I usually use ESDI_506.PD_ or ESDI_506.OLD when testing.

1. Try renaming the ESDI_506.PDR file in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS folder and rebooting. 2. If you are using an Add-on Graphics card, disable the Internal Graphics using the BIOS Setup. 3. Select Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT) from the Startup Menu. After the crash, reboot, copy the C:\BOOTLOG.TXT and C:\BOOTLOG.PRV Files and post them.

By this definition, the GA-MA785GM is not compatable, as it does not support built in graphics. TBPLUS is only for Hard Disk Controllers and Drives. It already includes an extended ESDI_506.PDR Driver, which is used for all PATA and SATA Drives. No other Drivers are needed. I haven't seen a Motherboard yet that doesn't work. USB and Firewire Drive Controllers are supported by others. Only the FileSystem Patches in TBPLUS are currently used. As far as newer Add-on Cards I have tried, only the Marvell AHCI SATA Controllers, sold by HighPoint with some of the 3TB Hard Drives don't work. Some old cards don't work, but they have Windows 9x Drivers. I recommend the Silicon Image Cards for PCI and the JMicron Cards for PCI-E. Making a Database would entail testing many Motherboards and Cards, or having others test them. It is not practical for me to create one of significant size. If a Motherboard or Add-on Card does not force RAID or AHCI Mode, it should work. Some newer Motherboards use AHCI when running in RAID Mode. Download a manual and see if a Motherboard, you are interested in, can be set to IDE or NATIVE Mode. A driver cannot be written for AHCI in Windows 9x, nor can any visible Partitions be present on any attached Drives. I now can provide a test program that can be used to do compatability tests.

Many programs need to know the exact size of a File. Otherwise they are going to see extra data after the actual end of the file. There is no inherent limit on chaining as far as I know. I'm not sure why, but it does simplify some coding. Microsoft does use the reserved bits in the FAT Header. Not only would you still have the same problem as in the first part on large files, but you would limit normal operation to 2GiB. There are other fields in the Directory entry that would be more suitable. @Joseph_sw: Windows 9x actually limits Directories to 2MiB (65536 entries). This is not related to Cluster chaining. "Actual" size is not an issue as unused entries in a Cluster must be either 0's or marked "Deleted".

Won't work. I tried that a long time ago. Windows 9x IOS uses 32-Bit File Pointers, so the Pointers are truncated before they even reach the FileSystem Drivers. This includes the Network Redirectors. Well, I can confirm that winrar running on win-98, decompressing a multi-part RAR file that is larger than 4 gb to a network drive on a machine running NT4-server, will NOT display any error message during the decompression, and the decompression will appear to run fine all the way to completion, but the resulting file sitting on the NT4 server will be exactly 4.00 gb (4.2-something billion bytes). In this case, an mkv file that I could not get VLC to play. (I assume that NT4 does not have a 4 gb file-size limitation... ?) What I don't understand - do you really need a file pointer when you open a file for binary sequential output and just start writing out data to it? Do network file transport protocals like NetBEUI or TCP/IP specify a hard-coded size for a file pointer - perhaps something larger than 32 bits? If so, does Win-98 simply pad the extra bits with zero? I wonder if a hook in the right place could watch the 32-bit file pointer during read/write operations, and when the pointer is reaching or has reached FF FF FF FF then set a flag to look to see if the next pointer value is 00 00 00 00 - which would indicate a roll-over, and simply append 01 to the 5'th byte of the pointer so that the pointer becomes 01 00 00 00 00, and keep checking for pointer monotonicity while the flag is set, and set the flag to 0 if monotonicity is broken for that particular file handle. This might only work for networked file operations where you know that the destination drive is running NTFS or exfat or fat64, but it might also work on a local FAT32 drive as long as correct cluster chaining takes place. It might not really matter that the FAT file-entry lists an incorrect file size so long as the actual clusters that are used are chained correctly and reported as being in-use. Or maybe this is all messed up when DMA is used to read/write from a drive. But DMA would not be involved with network file access. edit: Just putting the issue of the size of the file pointer aside for a minute - what is really stopping FAT32 from storing files larger than 4 gb - assuming you can tolerate an incorrect file-size in the file table? Why couldn't an NT-based OS (2k, XP, etc) using 8-byte file pointers, create files larger than 4 gb on a FAT32 volume? What does 2k or XP (etc) use for a file pointer anyways? Is it 8 bytes? 6 bytes? There are a variety of Kludges that may provide some functionality, but nothing simple will make the functionality seamless. The simplest would be to hack KERNEL32.DLL to create shadow files to hold the excess data and manage the File Pointers. The shadow files would create issues with file searches and file uniqueness but would allow programs to think they are working with larger files. This would be a KernelEX type of Project. Although the standard functions allow you to stream your reads and writes past the 4GB boundary without requiring a Pointer, internally all I/O must point to absolute positions in a file so errors will occur.

Won't work. I tried that a long time ago. Windows 9x IOS uses 32-Bit File Pointers, so the Pointers are truncated before they even reach the FileSystem Drivers. This includes the Network Redirectors.

Try to continue. If not, then Uninstall and reinstall.

There's no RAID option, AFAIK, sorry. But he should enter BIOS setup, set the Flash Cache module to "OFF", then set the SATA Operation to "ATA". If it works for Win XP, it should work for Win 9x, too. A little more detail on this here. Of course, after doing this, he should follow my instructions in my previous post, and hope for the best. In IDE Mode, the ESDI_506.PDR Driver is loaded. Without my Patch, SATA Drives may lock up. He should try renaming the ESDI_506.PDR file to force compatability mode.

Set your SATA Drives to RAID Mode.

Welcome, RLoew! Your valuable adivice is much needed in this thread. osiff is using ATA (=IDE Mode), not AHCI. That's why I think he'll be in compatibility mode until adding either your patch or a (rumored) SATA driver included with the IAA. I wouldn't know whether threre really are Intel drivers for SATA, because I'm a true believer in AMD. I knew osiff wasn't using AHCI Mode, but he wondered about it. So I posted the statement so he would not retry it. If set to IDE Mode, Windows 9X will load ESDI_506.PDR. Without my SATA Patch that can lead to crashes. If my SATA Patch is not installed, the SATA Drives should be set to RAID so that no Driver is loaded. IAA is fairly old and tied to specific Chipsets, so I doubt that it would support any SATA compatable Chipset. I don't know if it is hackable. I prefer AMD also. AMD's implementation is easier to use than Intel's. All of my newer machines are AMD based. I had to add a significant amount of code to my Mutli-Core SDK to work with RFMaster's Intel CPU.

It'll work in compatibility mode, at best, IMO, because there's no driver for it. It's slow but should be enough for solvin the problms with > 1GiB RAM. However, once that's solved you should install the Intel Application Accelerator, to give it a proper performance. Yeah. That should work. AHCI Mode is incompatable with Windows 9X, even in compatability mode. It will crash during Boot if any Partitions are recognized. RAID Mode can be used if you have a Driver. My SATA Patch will support it if set to IDE Mode. I doubt that the Intel Application Accelerator will help, since it is limited to certain Chipsets.

Try the Demo Version of my RAM Limitation Patch. If you have Gigabit Ethernet, use the /M Option.

The Demo is working but it is not properly counting the Cores. I have attached another DEMOCORE.VXD and COUNT.EXE that will report the number of additional cores detected. Replace DEMOCORE.VXD and run COUNT.EXE. Let me know the result. Demo1.zip

Hi dencorso , I already know this but I was a little confused because he (Mr. RLoew) mentioned that the application should run from DOS, also my English is not perfect so I can not always clearly say what i want but now it does not matter. ^RLoew sorry you waited this long but I had to first change the video card because modded nvdia drivers causes Windows Protection Fault when I go to MS Dos Mode. ADUMP.zip All of my modern Computers use AMD Processors. Although very similar, Intel did not support a couple of APIC commands, including one I used to determine the number of Cores. I have attached a modified copy of my Demo. Replace the DEMOCORE.VXD file in your system with the new one. Reboot and run the DEMO.EXE Program in Windows. Also try running a second instance in another DOS Box, while the first one is running, to verify it is not miscounting the number of Cores. Democore.zip

Does anybody know why WinME can recognize 1gb out of the box but Win98SE can't ? They are so close. Windows ME has a slightly better Memory Manager.

I was referring to which 4Core Dual SATA2 board you were interested in. No particular reason. One PCI-PCI Bridge and the SM Bus Controller have no driver as well as an unknown PCI card (the HD Audio Controller). Depends upon the purpose of the Chipset Function. I am using a PCI Video Card. Again I was referring to which 4Core Dual SATA2 board you were interested in. The Realtek Ethernet Controllers often have Windows 98 Drivers. NVIDIA Controllers such as the MCP61 do not.

Thank you Mr Loew. As this operates in kernel mode, will it take precedence over FineSSE (or the VC 4.2 debugger), or do I need to uninstall the later from 'win.ini'? Joe. Correct. I don't think you need to uninstall FineSSE. It should not get activated unless other errors occur.

P6CPU.VXD was written for GOM. It does not support Flash or mjpegtools. I have not updated P3CPU.VXD since it did not seem to solve the Flash problems even though it Patched the Illegal Instructions. Misinterpreted Instructions cannot be detected or Patched using a Trapper, Code analysis is needed. I have attached it for your experimenting. NOTE TO EVERYONE! This is NOT Production Code. It is for Experimental use only. P3cpu.zip

Right. Also, if the CMOV is near the start or end of a procedure, there might be five free bytes for a far jump within range of a near jump (2 bytes). A string of CMOVs would be the easiest to parse and would also yield the best performance. Ideally the upper word of the far jump address would also form an illegal instruction or breakpoint in case it is a target address itself. None of these would be easy to automate. I looked at the preceeding and following instructions to see what I needed to Patch to get the 5 Bytes for the Calls. I may be able to write a program around my Disassembler Subroutine to show the before and after instructions for each CMOV and try to detect any possible Call or Jump targets within. I would still have to manually classify each one before running a Patching Program to do the Patches. I'd love to study all or part of this log if you want to email it to me. I'd have a better idea of what instruction sequences to target first. I'm not sure that would help much. I got about 50 with the first Video. I Patched them all and could play the Video. A different Video produced a comparable amount of additional CMOV Instructions. You would have to exercise every possible Codec to get them all. It is probably easier to just do all of the CMOV Instructions. Then Gretech will update GOM and you get to start all over.