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Windows 9x on Geforce 8200/nForce 730a


Stefan43

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Hello,

 

is there someone who has experience with Windows 9x on an Asus M3N78 motherboard with the nForce 730a chipset? I don't use the onboard graphics. Also, I have an external sound card which is compatible with Windows 9x.

 

 

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Read my post #2 in this thread, same applies to your question.

 

Also of note, as far as I know ASUS uses AMI BIOS, which can be very unfriendly to Windows 9x depending on the application. I know Intel uses a modified version of AMI BIOS, and it causes a lot of issues for 9x on Intel-branded boards where 9x was not officially supported. These issues vanish completely on virtually identical hardware (3rd-party boards with Intel chipsets) when an AWARD BIOS is used.

Edited by LoneCrusader
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Hi,

 

no, no experience, and never heard of anyone.

 

The last supported nForce chipset for W98SE is nForce3, with ASRock AM2NF3 and ASRock ALiveDual eSATA2 being the only boards inofficially supporting W98SE and Athlon II/Phenom II at the same time.

 

I wasn't able to even boot W98SE on a 630a, the predecessor.

 

There is no W98SE driver for anything on that board (chipset, VGA, Sound, USB, PCIe-bridge, IDE, SATA), so even if you get that board to boot, you may not have enough PCI-slots for all the helping PCI-addin-cards to actually DO anythin with it (i.e. playing games).

 

If you already own that board, you may of course still try, it won't harm the board, as long as you have time for it, but it does not seem to be a good idea to invest money in it, as for that money you may get a working board plus CPU on eb*y. If you do, please report the results back here... :-)

 

All this, just my unqualified opinion.

 

Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

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  • 3 weeks later...

And what about my Dell Optiplex 380? It has an Intel G41 chipset. I have an external graphics card and sound card, which both work with Windows 9x. The Optiplex doesn't have IDE, so I think I need an adapter, if it works? I have 2GB DDR3 RAM, and an Intel Pentium E6600 processor.

 

When I boot from the Windows 98SE CD, Windows 98SE can't find the SETUP files. I have a SATA CD Drive, so I think it needs to be an IDE drive?

Edited by Stefan43
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And what about my Dell Optiplex 380? It has an Intel G41 chipset. I have an external graphics card and sound card, which both work with Windows 9x. The Optiplex doesn't have IDE, so I think I need an adapter, if it works? I have 2GB DDR3 RAM, and an Intel Pentium E6600 processor.

 

When I boot from the Windows 98SE CD, Windows 98SE can't find the SETUP files. I have a SATA CD Drive, so I think it needs to be an IDE drive?

 

A G41 chipset system could work, but there are several factors that determine the level of 98SE compatibility. Since your system is a "prefab" OEM-branded one, Dell may or may not have made tweaks or other modifications to the motherboard BIOS that can cause conflicts and other oddities when trying to run an unsupported operating system. I have seen an Intel-branded DG41TY board that would not work with 98SE whatsoever unless it was installed with ACPI disabled (SETUP /p i). However third-party G41 boards by manufacturers such as Gigabyte, MSI, etc may never show any of these issues. Based on my experience so far I recommend avoiding any motherboard not running an AWARD BIOS, but there is no way to find out for sure whether a system will work with 98SE or not without trial and error.

 

You will need a DOS SATA CDROM Driver such as GCDROM.SYS to access the Windows 98SE CD, or you will need to copy the SETUP files to a folder on the hard drive using a different machine.

 

With no IDE, you can check whether or not your BIOS can set the SATA Controllers to Legacy IDE mode. If not, you will need rloew's SATA Patch.

 

With more than 512MB of RAM, you will need to experiment with the various RAM tweaks floating around; or, you will need rloew's RAM Patch as well. I recommend the RAM patch as the tweaks never worked for me.

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Thanks for your reply. How can I install gcdrom.sys? Do I have to put in on the Win98 CD?

 

You will have to integrate it into whatever you are using to boot the system in order to run SETUP. This means you have to add it to your Boot Disk if you are using a Floppy, or you will have to extract the boot image of the 98SE CDROM and modify it like a floppy with a tool such as WinImage, and then burn a new Windows 98SE CD using the modified boot image. You use GCDROM.SYS by adding it to the CONFIG.SYS file. See the line already there referencing OAKCDROM.SYS for reference (the Microsoft-provided file that works for virtually every IDE PATA optical drive but not SATA). You can add a line for GCDROM.SYS after OAKCDROM.SYS and that way OAKCDROM.SYS will be loaded first for any drive that it does work with, and if it fails, then GCDROM.SYS will be loaded instead.

 

If you are not familiar with creating your own Bootable CD's, modifying Floppies, or editing CONFIG.SYS, it might be best to read up some on this before you dive into this. I'm sure some other members can offer better insight, instructions, and links on this than I can.

 

PS - I got your PM, but this is best discussed here on the open forum where others can help as well.

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This is the CD section in my CONFIG.SYS:

 

[CD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off
device=gcdrom.sys /D:mscd001 
device=btdosm.sys 
device=flashpt.sys
device=btcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=aspi2dos.sys
device=aspi8dos.sys
device=aspi4dos.sys
device=aspi8u2.sys
device=aspicd.sys /D:mscd001
 
I replaced oakcdrom.sys with gcdrom.sys.
 
But it still doesn't work?
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You may need to add more lines for GCDROM.SYS specifying which SATA controllers to probe for drives, especially if your SATA CD drive is not on the primary SATA controller. See the Examples section here. (I personally find this very annoying, I wish I knew how to alter the code so that it would automatically scan more than one controller by default...)

 

Beyond that I'm not sure how to proceed. More information about your system and what methods you are using might help. Maybe some others members will join the conversation...

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