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Compatible Hardware with Windows 9x


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The upgraded FDISK was not adequately debugged. If you use it to create a small Partition in the first 8GiB, it may produce a corrupt entry if an odd number of cylinders are assigned to the partition.

That's not good!

Any chance of a community patch?

We could call it rloew's FDISK Patch. :)

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The upgraded FDISK was not adequately debugged. If you use it to create a small Partition in the first 8GiB, it may produce a corrupt entry if an odd number of cylinders are assigned to the partition.

That's not good!

Any chance of a community patch?

We could call it rloew's FDISK Patch. :)

Due to more fundamental limitations, particularly the inability to define a Partition without erasing it, I created my own Partitioning tool called RFDISK.

It provides many more features than FDISK including the setup of a Dual-Boot or Multi-Boot system.

It is also not limited to 512GiB. It can easily handle 2TiB. An experimental version should support 512TiB.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Microtek's scanners currently support Windows 9x, and they are also updating the drivers.

I'm using ScanWizard 5 v6.61, released February 2009 in Windows 98SE.

So, if anyone needs a scanner that works in Windows 98/SE/Me, then Microtek is the answer.

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  • 1 month later...

Sony Vaio VGN-A115M laptop works fine on 98SE, except wireless lan.

- Intel Pentium M 715 Dothan (2MB) 1.5 GhZ - - Intel Speedstep utility v3.1 - Allows multiplier/voltage switching, keeps CPU cool

- Intel 855PM Chipset - Official driver from Intel Version: 6.3.0.1007

- Mobility Radeon 9200 (both ATI Catalyst 6.2 and corresponding Omega drivers)

- Intel 100Pro/VE 100mbps network connection - Intel website

- RealtekAC97 Sound

- ESI Waveterminal U24 USB soundcard

No drivers for:

- Intel 2200BG network connection (wireless lan)

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Epson on the other hand still produce 9x drivers for their consumer printer range, and you will always be able to download existing drivers!

I've always had Epson printers since the earliest dot matrix days.

Go Epson! :)

EPSON with support win98:

Epson D92, Epson D120 and Epson R285

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have a Medion MIM 2080 cheapie laptop, with mostly VIA components, and I run Windows 98 stably with drivers for sound, LAN, modem, VGA, and everything. One or two ?s in Device Manager but as far as I can see everything does work. And to make it even faster, I ripped out all the webby 'enhancements'.

When I can get the exact hardware spec I will edit here. I bought it in 2006.

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Nearly everything about disk capacity limit is wrong.

I regularly use W95b on disks exceeding 32GB and exceeding 137GB. No particular measure for it.

W95-98-Me-2k-Xp-2k3 (but not Fat32) is limited to about 2TB disk capacity for coding sector numbers on 32 bits, a limit of both Windows and of Mbr-type partitions. And Fat32 is the same from W95b to WMe.

W95-98-Me is not limited to Lba28 and doesn't even notice the 137GB barrier. It completely relies on the Bios, and operating these Win over 137GB works without any effort if the Bios is able of it.

Added drivers - like Intel's one - do not modify Windows' behaviour at 137GB, but shortcut a limited Bios to enable Win accessing bigger disks. Just like the "disk installers" provided by disks manufacturers do.

About processors, I've just installed a W95b on a 1400MHz PIIIs 80GB without any patch. This confirms once again that the 350MHz refer to Amd processors.

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Nearly everything about disk capacity limit is wrong.

I regularly use W95b on disks exceeding 32GB and exceeding 137GB. No particular measure for it.

W95-98-Me-2k-Xp-2k3 (but not Fat32) is limited to about 2TB disk capacity for coding sector numbers on 32 bits, a limit of both Windows and of Mbr-type partitions. And Fat32 is the same from W95b to WMe.

W95-98-Me is not limited to Lba28 and doesn't even notice the 137GB barrier. It completely relies on the Bios, and operating these Win over 137GB works without any effort if the Bios is able of it.

Added drivers - like Intel's one - do not modify Windows' behaviour at 137GB, but shortcut a limited Bios to enable Win accessing bigger disks. Just like the "disk installers" provided by disks manufacturers do.

The 32GB limit is a flaw in the original version of ESDI_506.PDR in Windows 95. It will access more than 32GB, but if for any reason a retry occurs, it switches to CHS mode and will corrupt the Hard Drive if the access was above 32GB.

All of the Windows versions mentioned are limited to 137GB as they only support 28-Bit LBA. Unless running in compatability mode, they do not use the BIOS.

The BIOS must also support 48-Bit LBA, for proper operation, since it is used during Boot before the Hard Disk Driver is loaded.

The 2TB limit is a separate limit due to 32-Bit Sector Addressing. I have written software for Windows 9X to go beyond 2TB.

You may have allocated Partitions extending above the 137GB limit but the problem won't occur until you actually try to put data into sectors above the limit. You will then encounter errors or corruption of files in lower sectors. Newly created files may seem OK but they will have overwriiten other files. SCANDISK will not detect the damage if it is confined to the data sectors of files.

Drivers such as the Intel Application Accelerator or my High Capacity Disk Patch do add support to Windows above 137GB. The Disk Manufacturers Installers supplement the BIOS as does my BOOTMAN. I have had problems getting the Disk Manufacturers Installers to work properly so I wrote my own.

These are two entirely separate fixes.

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The 137GB limit is real all right. Much has been discussed about it. Please refer to the index topic about it that I've compiled, to which there is a link below, in the signature part of this message:

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(Repeat of a post made in another topic, but I felt it was relevant here as well as this is a compatibility thread.)

About processors, I've just installed a W95b on a 1400MHz PIIIs 80GB without any patch. This confirms once again that the 350MHz refer to Amd processors.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I recently installed 95C on a P4 2.0GHz machine and had to use the amdk6upd patch. Probably even the Intel processors at some point above the processor you used hit a limit where the patch is needed.

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I have developed a Patch that should allow the use of 512MB Graphics Cards with Windows 9X.

I do not have a Card to test.

If anyone has a 512MB Graphics Card and a Windows 9X driver for it, and is interested in doing some testing, contact me at rloew@hotmail.com

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Supported Processors:

Opteron

Athlon 64 (FX-57 2.8 GHz is the fastest)

The Opteron 154 is also clocked at 2.8 Ghz and the rare Opteron 156 seems to be the fastest AMD single core at 3 Ghz. Just like the FX-57 they are socket 939 CPUs but I am unsure whether they would work on my motherboard (see my sig) as they are not in the list of supported processors. I did not buy a rather cheap Opteron 154 on eBay last week because of that uncertainty.

Edited by eidenk
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  • 2 weeks later...
I have developed a Patch that should allow the use of 512MB Graphics Cards with Windows 9X.

I do not have a Card to test.

If anyone has a 512MB Graphics Card and a Windows 9X driver for it, and is interested in doing some testing, contact me at rloew@hotmail.com

I would be interested, but I also don't have a 512MB card. I might look into buying one if I can find one that I like. I prefer ATI cards, does anyone know of an ATI 512MB AGP card that has 98 drivers? I am already using the Catalyst 6.2 driver pack with my 9800 XT, and if I go into my adapter driver settings and view all hardware, the newest card listed is the x800 XT Platinum Edition which only came in 256MB versions.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have purchased and tested a GeForcd 6200 512MB AGP Graphics Card.

The Installation CD was limited to XP and Vista, but NVIDIA offers their Forceware 81.98 which works fine.

The NVIDIA Driver doesn't appear to allocate the entire AGP Aperture so it doesn't appear to be limited to 256MB. A 1024MB may work also.

The AGP allocation issue occurs in the ATI RADEON 9600. Since it is only 128MB, there is no problem, but a 512MB Card, with a similar driver, would cause problems.

One person, who answered my request for Beta Testers, has a GeForce 7600GT 512MB AGP Card. He had no problem related to the AGP size but had a Shutdown problem that appears to be unrelated. He has used the NVIDIA 82.69 Driver without Problems.

I am still looking for Testers who have access to 512MB or larger Graphics Cards with Windows 9X compatable drivers to test my Beta AGP Patch.

Edited by rloew
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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest wsxedcrfv
All of the Windows versions mentioned are limited to 137GB as they only support 28-Bit LBA. Unless running in compatability mode, they do not use the BIOS.

I've installed and run win-98se as follows:

- 500 gb WD Sata drive

- drive set to SATA-raid mode in motherboard bios (not IDE compatible mode)

- motherboard was Asrock Dual VSTA (Via 880 chipset)

- win-98 using via driver for hard drive access (not esdi_506)

- device manager identifies the drive controller as scsi device

- hard drive was formatted as single FAT32 partition, 4kb cluster size

- 120 million clusters

- I filled the drive with multiple copies of DVD .VOB files to test for 128 gb problem

- only problem with this configuration was that win98 would not create a swap file on this drive

- formatting this drive with standard 32kb cluster size solved swap-file issue

The issue with large hard drive support (these days) for win-98 is moot (as I see it). Most large drives these days will be SATA, and attaching a SATA drive to a win-98 system will automatically give the user the option of using the SATA driver, which completely side-steps the problem with esdi_506. Anyone using a SATA drive in IDE compatible mode for use with win-98 is just making their life more complicated than it needs to be. Many win-98 sata drivers are available. USE THEM!

Trying to figure out the max cluster-count that win98 (and other apps) is compatible with is more interesting and useful at this point. Formatting large FAT32 volumes with large cluster sizes is not always efficient.

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