nforce 3 drivers for Win98SE

[mrbigmouth502]

So, over the last few days I've been playing around with this old HP Pavilion a530n, trying to get Win98SE installed on it, and I finally had some success, but I noticed that after I installed the latest nForce unified drivers (version 4.27), it slowed the system down to an absolute crawl! Uninstalling the drivers remedied this, and right now the only drivers I have installed are BHDD31 for large harddisk support, NUSB33E for usb mass storage support, and Nvidia Forceware 44.03 for the Geforce FX5200XT. It runs well, but naturally I'm missing sound and networking support. I could throw in a spare PCI soundcard and ethernet card as a last resort, but I want to try getting the onboard sound and networking going first.

Anyhow, what I'm trying to get at is, are there older nForce 3 drivers for Win98SE, and if so, where can I find them? I've been googling around without any type of luck.

Oh, and thanks in advance.

Edited April 28, 2013 by mrbigmouth502

[submix8c]

Your PC Specs -

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&docname=c00068941

Inside is the link to your Motherboard -

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00064822&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en

You need Sound Drivers for this

Audio = Integrated AC97 Audio

AC'97 CODEC device = Realtek ALC650/ALC658

You need Network Drivers for this

Ethernet 10/100 LAN supplier = Realtek 8201BL PHY

Don't confuse Chipset for OTHER devices/chips.

Normal sequence of Install -

1 - Chipset (the "board")

2 - Video

3 - Other Devices

Your MoBo Manual is here -

www.elhvb.com/mboards/oem/hp/manual/ (scroll to dom_manual.pdf)

Read here - http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/oem/HP/index.html

Scroll down and see the notation for your Mobo - Yours is the Diablo (see first link).

NOTE: The Manual given says "nForce 3 250" whereas the HP site says "nForce 3 150 SPP", so...

A list of nForce Chipset variations -

http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/chipsets/Nvidia/

Chipset drivers -

ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/nForce/

Seeing none for less than Win2k other than Ver. 4.20 and 2.41. No clue if these are good for YOUR ChipSet. Notice I said SET - that means NorthbridgeChip+SouthbridgeChip - that is VERY important to know BOTH. YOURS says it's an "SPP".

Edit - from the Package you tried to use -

This nForce Win9x driver package contains the below components:

Audio driver version 4.31

Audio utility version 4.31

Ethernet driver version 4.16

GART driver version 3.77 (WHQL)

Memory controller driver version 3.38 (WHQL) with updated uninstaller files

SMBus driver version 4.04 (WHQL) with updated uninstaller files

Installer version 4.31

I'm thinking these are useless to you. Better to find the Vid/Pid of the devices and/or look for the Namse given form HP site (I also supplied them above). Now we know what a "Forceware Unified Driver" means (note - they ALL say nVidia inside the INF's).

This is the one you must have used -

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_win9x_4.27

Edited April 28, 2013 by submix8c

[mrbigmouth502]

Thanks for the link. I'm going to give version 4.20 a try.

And just something I'd like to note, the Realtek 8201BL PHY doesn't actually have its own drivers; it needs drivers from the nForce driver packs. I know, it really weird that they did this, but blame Realtek.

EDIT: Just tried installing the 4.20 drivers. At first the installer wouldn't even run, so I extracted the driver files and tried installing them manually, which resulted in the exact same problem I had before, save for a lack of an uninstall option. Lucky for myself though, I made a working copy of the OS right before I went through with this, so once I restore this backup I should be good to go. As for looking for the ethernet and audio drivers, I'm not even going to bother. I'll just slap in a spare NIC and soundcard and call it a day. I don't know what I'll do for the SMBus driver, but whatever.

EDIT2: I just remembered that I could install the generic AC97 drivers, and also that the only spare soundcards I seem to have are a Soundblaster PCI 128, and a Dell "Soundblaster Live" (not really a "real" SBLive, but a different card branded as one that Dell threw into some of their boxes). Would either of these cards actually provide a performance benefit over AC97? I just want to reduce CPU utilization.

Edited April 28, 2013 by mrbigmouth502