Can Win98SE work on this motherboard?

[Shep]

I have a motherboard that runs XP Pro SP2 beautifully, and it's approved for Windows Vista. I'm not really interested in Vista, nor do I feel like paying the large sum of $$$ for it. I don't really have any need for it at this time.

What I'd like to do is set up a dual boot system with Windows XP Pro and Windows 98SE (for older games and compatibility).

I've been reading a lot of posts on various sites on how Win98 won't install on newer motherboards, due to drivers. I've done some searching and I think I found Win98 compatible drivers, but I thought I could double check here also and see if any of you would know if this motherboard would work with Win98.

Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3, AM2 processor type

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz, AM2 (dual core)

North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6100; internal graphics chip

South Bridge NVIDIA nForce 430

Audio chip, Realtek ALC883

Has 1 IDE channel, and 4 SATA channels

Although I would like to get a 500gig Sata drive, and partition a 20-30gig section just for Win98, I have read that there have been troubles with Win98 and SATA. So, if I can't do this, then i do have an old 20gig IDE drive I can use specifically for Win98. Other than that, I think I have found Win98 drivers for sound and also Nforce. I'm not sure if I need anything else.

So, would this setup work for a dual boot of Win98 and XP Pro? I thought about doing multiple boot of MS-DOS, Win98, XP Pro, and possibly Vista later.... but, I think DoxBox or "dos mode" in Win98 will take care of what I need. Any advice on this would be helpful.

Thanks.

[RJARRRPCGP]

I have a motherboard that runs XP Pro SP2 beautifully, and it's approved for Windows Vista. I'm not really interested in Vista, nor do I feel like paying the large sum of $$$ for it. I don't really have any need for it at this time.

What I'd like to do is set up a dual boot system with Windows XP Pro and Windows 98SE (for older games and compatibility).

I've been reading a lot of posts on various sites on how Win98 won't install on newer motherboards, due to drivers. I've done some searching and I think I found Win98 compatible drivers, but I thought I could double check here also and see if any of you would know if this motherboard would work with Win98.

Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3, AM2 processor type

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz, AM2 (dual core)

North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6100; internal graphics chip

South Bridge NVIDIA nForce 430

Audio chip, Realtek ALC883

Has 1 IDE channel, and 4 SATA channels

Although I would like to get a 500gig Sata drive, and partition a 20-30gig section just for Win98, I have read that there have been troubles with Win98 and SATA. So, if I can't do this, then i do have an old 20gig IDE drive I can use specifically for Win98. Other than that, I think I have found Win98 drivers for sound and also Nforce. I'm not sure if I need anything else.

So, would this setup work for a dual boot of Win98 and XP Pro? I thought about doing multiple boot of MS-DOS, Win98, XP Pro, and possibly Vista later.... but, I think DoxBox or "dos mode" in Win98 will take care of what I need. Any advice on this would be helpful.

Thanks.

non-Intel platform=Better chance of Windows 98 crashing and Windows 98 has been known to cause a serious performance loss!

Windows 98 is likely to spontaneously reboot on AMD-platforms!

You're better off with an Intel platform!

Edited July 17, 2007 by RJARRRPCGP

[tap52384]

The answer to your question could also be answered not only by the need for an Intel architecture, but also the available drivers for the motherboard and chipset, and other on-board devices.

[Shep]

non-Intel platform=Better chance of Windows 98 crashing and Windows 98 has been known to cause a serious performance loss!

Windows 98 is likely to spontaneously reboot on AMD-platforms!

You're better off with an Intel platform!

You know, it's interesting you would say that. Back when I was using Win98, it was on an old AMD motherboard. It was pretty unstable, which is why a friend recommended going to XP. After that, I did get an Intel board but never thought of putting Win98 on it. After that, I went back to AMD, just because I like AMD better. I have no regrets with that either, because it works great.

Well, it won't hurt to try installing Win98 on this small HD when I'm able to free it up. I'll disconnect my XP drive to test it out Win98. I'm curious if I can get it to run and how well it would run.

[gpatrick]

Just to correct some people, Some AMD motherboards do support windows 98se.

I had on old emachine that had windows xp (no service packs) on it.

The restore cd had most of the drivers for the system for windows 98se. The modem was the hard part.

The pain was changing the system to a fat 32. Installing windows 98se and then installing windows xp. I had to cheat install windows xp using the I386 folder. That would take me awhile to explain. They way I did it was legal.

Edited August 28, 2007 by gpatrick

[Rjecina]

It will not work with Windows 98

Chipset is wrong

[gpatrick]

It will not work with Windows 98

Chipset is wrong

Mine did.

What type of Chipset do you have?

However, I did use one of the Via chipset drivers and it worked without any problems.

Check in their archive section.

[Shep]

It will not work with Windows 98

Chipset is wrong

Mine did.

What type of Chipset do you have?

However, I did use one of the Via chipset drivers and it worked without any problems.

Check in their archive section.

I believe, South Bridge NVIDIA nForce 430 is the chipset. I have actually found an NForce Driver for Windows 98 here: NForce Windows 98 Driver

I'm not sure if the driver works yet, but I'll know soon. I've got a new hard drive coming, and I'll be doing a small test to see if it works. If not, no harm done and I'll not worry about W98 or I'll use Virtual PC for it.

[Rjecina]

Nvidia has stoped support for Windows 98SE with nvidia 3 chipset, because of that nForce 430 is not supporting this OS

This forum is having list of MBO which support Windows.

You can look that list

[gpatrick]

Nvidia has stoped support for Windows 98SE with nvidia 3 chipset, because of that nForce 430 is not supporting this OS

This forum is having list of MBO which support Windows.

You can look that list

Does not really matter, he found a driver. Supported or not. It should still work.

I have update drivers available for my modem, I never update them. It disables a function that I like on it.

[Shep]

Well, I tried it...

But I couldn't get far. Windows 98 SE did see my SATA drive with no problem, and I got W98 installed. Then it was time for a reboot, and that's when things went down hill.

Once I got the W98 splash page, the loading of the OS slowed to a crawl. The cycle bar towards the bottom went really, really slow and it got stuck on this screen for almost 10 minutes before I gave up on it. I'm figuring that W98 saw my dual core AMD processor and 2 gig of memory and wasn't sure what to make of it. That and the chipset on the board. So I couldn't get far enough to install the NForce driver that I found. I was hoping it would work, because I have a few games that just don't work right under XP. I guess I can try Virtual PC, although I expect the emulation for gaming won't be so good. I don't play those old games much anymore, so it's alright. It would've been neat to have W98 to play around with though for some of that old software.

[CLASYS]

There is nothing particularly AMD or Intel-centric about Win98 [sE being the variant of choice in the 9x world; see the 98SE unofficial SP sub-forum here on MSFN]. That said, drivers are crucial. Stability is ONLY determined by how well the hardware-specific drivers are correctly written for the hardware, not anything else. Irrelevantly, there is more built-in ANCIENT Intel drivers, thus this hasn't been an issue in years; today you have to add on everything, etc.

However, 98 is designed to run in much less than 1.0 GB of memory and will crash with "too much" memory unless you set specific limits within system.ini which can be reached in safe mode once the system is up enough. Failing that, access the file from DOS and hand-edit in the changes. [Ask on the forum for safe starting values to get the system up.]

Unless these changes are made, it is likely that the installation will stall after the first reboot [saying something to the effect of "running windows for the first time"]. If you can make your machine temporarily have .5 GB memory, it shouldn't have this problem, and then you can add the fixes later [a standard feature of the unofficial service pack].

The usual killer preventing 98 SE install is the lack of a video driver that can work properly, and that in turn often requires the underlying chipset support that also may not be available. With regard to the hard disks, you can use SCSI disks on any supported host adaptor without problem, or you can use up to the first 127 GB of any IDE disk as long as it closely resembles the PATA IDE disks usually used [and a patch is available to use the rest of the disk as well, but only if partitioned to 127 GB or less per partitiion]. The standard files usually work in this regard, albeit not necessarily optimally.

There is a last-ditch way to get the video up to avoid using "compatibility mode" which in turn forces you to have 640x480 in 16 colors. It's a little bit better than that, but slow:

There exists from MS a driver that was intended for Windows 3.1 to run in VBE mode. This is EXACTLY what XP does when it lacks a driver for the video card. It runs slow, but is still capable of at least 256 colors, perhaps even 16-bit color. This takes advantage of the fact that for many years, all video cards are VESA VBE compatible.

The only problem is that the driver didn't quite get its VESA act together and only ran on a small set of then-current ATI cards. However, there is a patch for supervga.drv that makes it truly VBE-compliant compatible. As such you can select 640x480x256, 800x600x256, and 1024x768x256. However, since this is a driver for Windows 3.1, and not Windows 9x, you lose a minor convenience point: We are all too accustomed to the slider that changes the resolution. In this driver set, there is only one setting per driver, so to change the screen resolution, you have to select one of the three each time. Other than that, Windows 3.1 drivers are compatible with Windows 9x!

I have built Win 98SE for a T43p ThinkPad using this method. There can be a glitch: You may not be able to select full-screen text mode for the MS-DOS prompt and instead use a window of any size you wish, and just never hit alt-enter to flip it, etc.

Yes, it's as slow as XP running without a driver, which isn't all that bad on a modern machine. However, no driver is running in MS-DOS compatibility mode, so all else is fine. You can limit all your partitions to FAT32 and 98 can access all of the drives, and can also defrag all of them a whole lot better than that built-in Diskeeper garbage. [And better yet, use the specific one from Windows ME, which does it better and faster still.]

Note: In some cases, you may get 98SE up if you can limit memory temporarily to 1.0 GB depending on the machine, but don't count on it; be prepared to make those system.ini changes so it cannot screw up regardless of actual memory size.

Note: there are no problems whatsoever using 98SE on AMD boards with VIA chipsets and CPU's such as Athlon XP 3200+ on down. Again, assuming the memory problem is contained either before or during the install, once the proper VIA drivers are in, all is totally stable. Of course, if NVIDIA you are totally at the mercy of their [lack of] support, etc.

P3 and P4 drivers from Intel vary in support of 9x, but those that not only do but also support the so-called "application accellerator" Intel stuff gain something else: Full 48-bit LBA support, thus no upper limit on drive size per se. [Note: You MUST partition the drives into chunks each no larger than 127 true GB, but there is no part of the disk that would be unaddressable even if you have a 1 TB disk partitioned into 8 logical drives.] There are also third-party drivers available to augment/patch the standard driver in 98SE [for a nominal fee] to accomplish this as well; again how well your disk performance goes varies, but generally just about any disk is compatible enough with the standard driver thus getting adequate performance and full access to the first 127 GB just after installation, etc.

And when the hard disks are connected to BIOS-ROM-enhancing controllers from the likes of Promise, Vantec, etc., all of the drives are accessible from DOS and generally there are MPD drivers to allow full-speed 32-bit access to the disks as well. I understand it might seem silly to hook a SATA drive to a plug-in card when you have 4-6 built-in interfaces, but for example, the VANTEC card allows me to use a full-length external E-SATA cable to a drive in an external enclosure. All of those kludges to give rear-panel access that starts at the motherboard don't work unless the connecting cable is impractically short, etc. If the interface itself is on a plug-in card, you can get a 6-foot cable to the external disk AND have 98SE 32-bit access [as well as XP]. There are variants of this card for PCMCIA, PCI, and PCI-E available, etc. The PC-card supports two drives while the other two support one internal and/or one external whether 98 or not, etc.

The best answer is TO TRY it. Remember the memory problem and learn to solve it, otherwise it can't work. You may be quite happy otherwise due to all of the backward compatibility all manufacturers have to deal with. [Note: Invariably, running some utility on ANY board involves DOS, not even anything called Windows!]

cjl (A small part of the team that created the 98SE unofficial service pack)

[tee charoen]

Truly well said Clasys! Very informative write up there and with things that I didnt even know about viz. the benefits of using an add-on drive controller - something I may have to implement in due time.

Didnt know till you pointed out that those older P4 Intel chipsets which used "application accelerator" did give native 48bit Lba support, no wonder 98se runs so well on one of those boards with a pair of 160gb hd's partitioned in 3 x 50gb partitions per hd. The Intel chipset in particular I'm referring to were the 845pe series - found them great performers for 98se.

The 865pe series didnt use "application accelerator" but 98se performs pretty fine under them too.

At the other end were the Via Kt-133 chipsets which ran 98se also rather decently though not as snappy as the Intel 845/865 chipsets; I havent tried the Kt-3xx etc series, but the latest K8t890 runs 98se in rather high performance orders. Still running 98se on a mix of Intel845pe/865pe Via Kt133/K8t890.

Thanks for your great article

Tony Charoen

member since 06

[gpatrick]

Well, I tried it...

But I couldn't get far. Windows 98 SE did see my SATA drive with no problem, and I got W98 installed. Then it was time for a reboot, and that's when things went down hill.

Once I got the W98 splash page, the loading of the OS slowed to a crawl. The cycle bar towards the bottom went really, really slow and it got stuck on this screen for almost 10 minutes before I gave up on it. I'm figuring that W98 saw my dual core AMD processor and 2 gig of memory and wasn't sure what to make of it. That and the chipset on the board. So I couldn't get far enough to install the NForce driver that I found. I was hoping it would work, because I have a few games that just don't work right under XP. I guess I can try Virtual PC, although I expect the emulation for gaming won't be so good. I don't play those old games much anymore, so it's alright. It would've been neat to have W98 to play around with though for some of that old software.

Like the other poster said. Try limiting your memory to 1 gb or under.

[VCache]

MinFileCache=131072

MaxFileCache=524288

In the system.ini file

(You can keep trying different Min & Max setting to see which works best for you)

Press F8 (After the beep)

Choose safe command prompt only

C:\windows\command\edit c:\windows\system.ini

Then add the setting above.

Note, you may need to do this again, if you are in the middle of setting up windows 98se.

Good Luck

Edited September 4, 2007 by gpatrick

[fastlanephil]

Well, I tried it...

But I couldn't get far. Windows 98 SE did see my SATA drive with no problem, and I got W98 installed. Then it was time for a reboot, and that's when things went down hill.

Once I got the W98 splash page, the loading of the OS slowed to a crawl. The cycle bar towards the bottom went really, really slow and it got stuck on this screen for almost 10 minutes before I gave up on it. I'm figuring that W98 saw my dual core AMD processor and 2 gig of memory and wasn't sure what to make of it. That and the chipset on the board. So I couldn't get far enough to install the NForce driver that I found. I was hoping it would work, because I have a few games that just don't work right under XP. I guess I can try Virtual PC, although I expect the emulation for gaming won't be so good. I don't play those old games much anymore, so it's alright. It would've been neat to have W98 to play around with though for some of that old software.

Shep, in addition to CLASYS's advice you need the following command in c:\windows\system.ini under the [386 Enh] field to limit your W98 system memory access to 1 GByte:

MaxPhysPage=40000

Check out this Microsoft article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304943

If it still runs slow, try limiting it to 768 MByte:

MaxPhysPage=2FFFF