Windows 9x on a Dell Vostro 400

[Tommy]

@rloew: If I wanted to add the second gig module in my machine, I would need your patch, correct? Would I need to do anything other than install the patch?

If you want to make use of that second Gigabyte, definitely.

Considering the Gigabit Network you have, you will probably need the /M option.

Gigabit Ethernet sometimes causes issues even with less RAM. The /M Option fixes it.

As far as your Video card is concerned, you can get a DVI adapter to use with your Monitor.

I did go and buy an adapter, but here's what it is. It's actually not DVI at all, it's DMS-59, which I've never heard of before but apparently it's a dual monitor setup situation. The reason I was taken by surprise is I do have a DVI to VGA connector, and it was nothing like it at all except for the size and shape. The seller didn't have that even listed nor a good picture of the card so when I first saw it, I totally assumed DVI because it looked so much like it. So anyway, an adapter I bought today, just have to wait for it, it was cheap so I'm fine with it as long as it works.

Does your patch use a special license per computer or can I use it on all my 98 machines? I just installed Windows 98 on another machine that can and will take more than a gig of RAM. I will list details about that below. I just have to wait to either get the job I just applied for or go back to work in the spring since I'm running out of money.

Anyway, as for my other project I'll just list here since it involves the same type of deal but a different computer. I'm working on my Dell Vostro 400 machine. It has a G965 Intel Chipset board in it, I believe it's actually a Foxconn board though. The downfall? It's completely 100% SATA driven. So this required a bit of extra work.

I through the Windows 98 install CD directory on a flash drive and booted from the Windows 98 CD, which it does at least boot but I have no access to it otherwise. I was able to fdisk and format the main drive, no problem. I decided to go with dencorso's method about the BIOS. This computer has a very crappy Award BIOS, which generally I love Award but the BIOS is so stripped down, it's useless basically. At least I have IDE emulation but that doesn't apply to the CD-ROM drive. But that's okay for now.

So, after all it said and done, setup /p i here we come. I go ahead and install it as is. However, we still had a bit of a wrench in that plan as it froze after the second install reboot but we could boot into safe mode. That's right, we had to go into msconfig and enable drive compatibility since we're dealing with a SATA hard drive. Oh, and of course I installed Xeno's vcache patch after the first part of setup. So i was all set there. After the reboot of changing drive compatibility, we went onto the third part of setup just fine. That completely lightning fast truthfully. Before I knew it, I was to the desktop.

Now sadly, just about none of my hardware would be detected as the graphics is an Intel G31/G33 family and as far as I can tell, there's no WIndows 98 driver for it. The onboard LAN is an Intel 825xx based LAN, which I found no 98 drivers from except these little shady outfits which I like to call them that claim they are Windows 98 drivers, but you need to download the driver using their special 'driver detective' software. I will not do that, not unless I'm sure it is safe, which as far as I'm concerned unless someone tells me different, it's not. The sound is a Realtek High Definition codec so out of luck there. So with 2 PCI slots on the board, one 1x PCI-E and 16X PCI-E....we have installed a basic 3COM internet lan card which has 98 drivers built into the OS itself, so we're good there. A C-Media sound card I bought used from the local computer shop for $1. Works fine for my needs. So no more PCI slots open. That's where my new video card comes into play, that I cannot hook a monitor up until I get the adapter. It's an ATI Radeon X600 which I've seen is somewhat unofficially supported. So I will definitely be trying that out.

So for the specs,

Dell Vostro 400

Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.3GHz

Standard VGA graphics (for now, hoping to upgrade to ATI Radeon X600 with 256MB of RAM)

C-Media CMI8738 sound card

1 gig of RAM

160GB SATA hard drive (using 48LBA 137GB patch)

3COM Etherlink adapter of some kind lol

and WIndows 98 SE

Luckily all is good so far. I hooked up an external USB DVD drive to it but My Computer seems to freeze when I open it up with it connected so I may have to look into that but other than that, every works great.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Tommy

[dencorso]

Sorry, I decided to split the thread at this point to separate a successful install just finished from a new one already ongoing (and showing a lot of progress already).

So let me add some info at this point. The unofficial modded SNAP drivers pointed by LLXX may be able to gate your onboard video (and maybe sound, too), so you should definitely give them a try. And you might get your SATA CD/DVD going with a DOS driver, like GCDROM.SYS + SHSUCDX.COM. And, although it is an unfinished project, you must definitely read Sfor's thread on the Eee PC 701 for context and some interesting posts.

[rloew]

Does your patch use a special license per computer or can I use it on all my 98 machines? I just installed Windows 98 on another machine that can and will take more than a gig of RAM. I will list details about that below. I just have to wait to either get the job I just applied for or go back to work in the spring since I'm running out of money.

The License is for one Computer. You are allowed to have more than one instance of Windows 9x on that Computer.

[Tommy]

Well, I'm riddled with quite a few problems when it comes to hard drive controllers and also a few USB ports, I thought they were Intel ICH9. Even though I'm CompTia A+ certified, this is going a bit beyond my actual knowledge, but I'm sure willing to learn what's going on inside this machine.

I didn't get SNAP working but I did get the VBEM Standard Graphics Adapter drivers working so even though I have no hardware acceleration, at least I have full colors and better resolution so I can use that computer without vomiting over the awful colors. lol

But with SNAP, I'm finding conflicting reports because I've read G965 graphics is covered yet I can't get it to work and from what I've seen, it only went up to G945 because it doesn't work for me. So I'm not 100% sure what's going on there but my cable is on the way so I'm not going to spend a bunch of time with this in particular since I'm quite sure my PCI-E card should work even with regular Catalyst drivers, but for now this makes it much easier to work on the machine.

However, I mentioned that using the USB CD-ROM drive locks the computer up when going to My Computer, now a flash drive does too. So I'm not sure if it's related to those drivers having yellow dots with exclamation points in Device Manager has anything to do with it but the devices themselves are actually recognized just fine. So it's hard to know what's going on there, but I didn't think the flash drive crashed Windows before so I don't know if anything happened in between driver installation and the installation of Windows itself.

So anyway, I will stay committed to this particular project as well. I hope that after these challenging projects, I can be welcomed into the Windows 9x family here on MSFN.

[dencorso]

I hope that after these challenging projects, I can be welcomed into the Windows 9x family here on MSFN.

I, for one, already consider you a most welcome member of the 9x/ME family here!

What you've done up to now more than confirms your comitment to 9x/ME and highlights your patience and persistence, which are qualities seriously needed for one to be able to accomplish most things dealing with 9x/ME, and especially so when newer hardware is involved.

[Tommy]

I hope that after these challenging projects, I can be welcomed into the Windows 9x family here on MSFN.

I, for one, already consider you a most welcome member of the 9x/ME family here!

What you've done up to now more than confirms your comitment to 9x/ME and highlights your patience and persistence, which are qualities seriously needed for one to be able to accomplish most things dealing with 9x/ME, and especially so when newer hardware is involved.

Yay! I'm so happy!

Actually, I've always loved Windows 98 from the first time I used it. I remember back in 2002, I bought a new computer with Windows XP on it. A day later I installed Windows 98 on it, a little bit wrong but it didn't take much to get it going the right way so I used it for quite some time until I was somewhat forced to upgrade to the NT line. But thanks to KernelEx, it brings new life to my favorite OS.

Once I get a little extra time, I'm going to try restoring access to the SATA CD ROM drive for Windows, but of course I'll have to read more into how to do it. Last night was persistence in at least getting a visual display going. Although I forgot to mention, using the VBEM VGA drivers not only does a funky thing with DOS which I've already somewhat saw on another thread that it can happen without a fix, but using FireFox 3.6.28 also causes some very funny effects such as text not displaying for the menus and even parts of the actual window being missing as well. But at 2AM, I figured it was time to hang it up for the night. Since I've been quite persistant, I might go ahead and just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from scratch again since I do have all the right drivers now so I can start out on a clean slate since I did quite a bit of testing with this installation. Thank goodness for the

Maximus-Decim drivers to get flash drives working. But one slight question about this as I don't if it was ever mentioned, but why does installing these drivers change the Windows 98 Second Edition text in the system properties to Windows Me? I know they're from Me but it just seems a bit weird that it would go as far as to change which version of Windows on the system properties.

[dencorso]

Which NUSB are you using, exactly?

[Tommy]

Which NUSB are you using, exactly?

It would be this one: http://www.tmeeco.eu/Fileden/nusb36e.exe which comes from this post: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/43605-maximus-decim-native-usb-drivers/page-30#entry1040482, I had this on my machine for a while since when I got it, the links seemed to be dead and I happened to find that one that worked, and still works. But I know it's definitely this package as it's the only unofficial thing I installed and when I rebooted the machine, it came up as Windows Me on the system properties.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Tommy

[Drugwash]

There's been a long discussion here about that. NUSB 3.6 introduced the sysdm.cpl (Device Manager control panel) from Windows ME in order to take advantage of unattended detection of USB devices. That brought the issue of misleading version information along with an icon bug and unneeded System Restore options. Some of us tried to edit those resources and fix the bugs and I think there's a usable version floating around, maybe in the uSP3 or attached in the respective discussion thread. I do have my own modified version here but I'm not sure it's bug free - it's been too long since I worked on it and just forgot the details.

[jaclaz]

So anyway, I will stay committed to this particular project as well. I hope that after these challenging projects, I can be welcomed into the Windows 9x family here on MSFN.

Wait a minute , you have to take the oath and learn about the secret hand-shake....

jaclaz

[bphlpt]

So anyway, I will stay committed to this particular project as well. I hope that after these challenging projects, I can be welcomed into the Windows 9x family here on MSFN.

Wait a minute , you have to take the oath and learn about the secret hand-shake....

jaclaz

Don't forget about the funny hat.

Cheers and Regards

[jaclaz]

Don't forget about the funny hat.

Cheers and Regards

Yep .

Just for the record, there is an app for it in the Windows Store

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/funny-hats/480c277d-4ce6-423a-a384-11d718365d1c/m/ROW

An example of the Windows 8 productivity tools .

jaclaz

[Tommy]

Haha, you guys are hilarious. XD

@Drugwash: Dencorso helped me out on that one in a private message so for now, it's back to saying Windows 98 Second Edition like it should.

Funny thing though, because I believe the BIOS reads my flash drive as a hard drive while plugged in, leaving it plugged in and going into safe mode, Windows 98 treats it like a hard drive and it shows up without any additional drivers. However, if I unplug it, add new files from another computer, and plug it back in, the changes will not be reflected until I restart the computer. It's kinda cool to have though since then I don't have to use DOS to copy over the USB drivers. In fact DOS recognizes my flash drive so that's neato as well!

Edited March 10, 2014 by Tommy