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(failed) Ryzen and Fall of the Roman Empire... sort of...


ragnargd

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Your BOOTLOG.TXT shows that ASPI2HLP.SYS failed. WININIT.INI shows that VMM32 hasn't been aggregated so you never reached protected mode.

You should have gotten further without any patches or workarounds.

Either your Installation CD is bad or you have a serious problem with your Computer.

Do a Memory test if you haven't previously.

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Ok, did W10 installation: Everything (esp. RAM) seems to be ok.

The Ryzen 1600X seems to have the same single-core speed as my i7 3770@stock. I won't tinker with RAM-overclocking, as that might irritate ole w98se...

Everything is blinking in RGB (Ram, Wraith Spire RGB, Mobo), which is nice... :yes:

If all the new shiny parts (DDR4/PCIe 3x/x370 chipset) aren't the cause, it may still be my hardware, although i can't say which part of it (with Ubuntu or W10 all parts seem to work fine).

I have some doubts about my 7600 GT PCIe 256MB, and my slowly ageing SATA II SSD, so i'll try to get some spare parts to rotate.

My vacations end today, and i have to do a quite difficult certification for my job (OSCP), so i will meditate a bit about the situation, and go slow.

So don't expect much progress in the next time... :}

Edited by ragnargd
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3 hours ago, ragnargd said:

Ok, did W10 installation: Everything (esp. RAM) seems to be ok.

The Ryzen 1600X seems to have the same single-core speed as my i7 3770@stock. I won't tinker with RAM-overclocking, as that might irritate ole w98se...

Everything is blinking in RGB (Ram, Wraith Spire RGB, Mobo), which is nice... :yes:

If all the new shiny parts (DDR4/PCIe 3x/x370 chipset) aren't the cause, it may still be my hardware, although i can't say which part of it (with Ubuntu or W10 all parts seem to work fine).

I have some doubts about my 7600 GT PCIe 256MB, and my slowly ageing SATA II SSD, so i'll try to get some spare parts to rotate.

My vacations end today, and i have to do a quite difficult certification for my job (OSCP), so i will meditate a bit about the situation, and go slow.

So don't expect much progress in the next time... :}

I see what you are doing to try and shortcut from a fresh W98 install.  But I was migrating a P4 98SE install this way to a Z77 and the Z77 failed no matter what I tried.  Then after trying all sorts of options which all failed I decided to do a fresh install and the Z77 completed it without a problem.  I noticed on your motherboard there are no PCIe slots and using PCIe with PCIe to PCI slot adapter.  The Ryzen 5 doesn't have an iGPU so I would recommend you remove all cards except use one PCIe card in the 6000 series for testing.

So on the cloned 98 test were you able to see the SB Audigy in the Device Manager still showing up and did you try to get audio output from the card to see if it worked?  This is important.

The 16GB DDR4 - Since no AM4 with DDR3 motherboard I could locate you cannot use the 512MB DDR3 test so you are stuck with DDR4 capacities.  I have seen them go as low as 4GB and I think I saw a 2GB one but nothing in the 1GB and 512MB size yet.

Upload your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files as an attachment for inspection.

Do you have a USB Floppy drive and Bootable 98SE CD?

What is the capacity of that SSD you have?

Do you have any SATA SSD or Hard drive 128GB or smaller?

Also I would avoid that Usher / Non-Usher method.  I don't see the point if you couldn't get into 98 properly how the Safe Mode will benefit you.  If you need to modify any of the INIs it can be done in DOS.

Although this Usher method is the best.

 

One more thing I need you to test out on the AM4 BIOS.  Do you know how to underclock it?

If so what is the slowest MHz you can set it?  Also check if you can disable cores from 6 to 1.

 

 

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Small advance: All hardware tested, and found to be working.

See also post about "PCI-to-PCIe-adapters work...", which is helpful for all experiements with boards with too few or none PCI-Slots (not restricted to AM4):

 

Edited by ragnargd
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On ‎14‎.‎08‎.‎2017 at 0:57 AM, 98SE said:

[...] a lot of helpful ideas [...]

Thanks for the heads-up!

I tested from both ready Installation, as well as from fresh sources.

The ready Installation got me into the operating System, the fresh Installation led me nowhere. So for a while i'll stay with pre-installed Systems.

I still suspect the problem with the missing identification of the PCI-bridges to be crucial.

The PCI-to-PCIe-adapters work great in W10 and ubuntu, delivering full functionality, and they seem to be invisible to w98se on other machines  (and i absolutely need them for the compatible SATA-add-in), so i'll continue with them (perhaps waiting a bit with the Audigy because of the Mechanical Challenged Position (tm) ...).

I'll experiment with Usher and alternatives, as per RLoews analysis, i did not get into protected mode at all, and that may still hint for a problem with memory-management.

Trying out all those things will take time, of which i do not have very much atm.

On ‎13‎.‎08‎.‎2017 at 0:26 AM, rloew said:

Your BOOTLOG.TXT shows that ASPI2HLP.SYS failed. WININIT.INI shows that VMM32 hasn't been aggregated so you never reached protected mode.

You should have gotten further without any patches or workarounds.

Either your Installation CD is bad or you have a serious problem with your Computer.

Do a Memory test if you haven't previously.

Memory looks good, at least on Ubuntu (memcheck). I'll try a new Installation on a compatible machine with "setup /p i", and try to transfer that to the AM4-board.

Thank you to all of you until now!

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The file was damaged. After replacing it, this seems better now.

I'm not able to start any setup procedure (/P I or not), Setup.exe always complains about "sector not found", and dies.

I exchanged all parts (Controller, sound, SSD, GPU), but to no avail. Windows 10 is running rock-solid meanwhile (i dual-boot via BIOS atm.)

I then copied my Installation from my ASRock 890FX Deluxe5, and was able to boot into w98se, as before.

Some screenshots as an attachment (Reporting AMD Ryzen with 157,0 MB Ram... :blink:) - the scrambled Pixels are like that on the Desktop... this is an installation with inoff. SP3.0 and NUSB, and (normally) drivers for all add-in-cards (7600GT, sata-pci, SB Audigy, LAN) already installed - they are just not used, imho because all those bridges don't work. But i have the gut-feeling the missing bridges are not the cause, but just a symptom of a more fundamental problem.

Activating the driver for the 7600GT will thrash the System irrevocably.

Something important is definitely broken, and i have no idea what it is.

(@RLoew: The files i sent seem basically identical in the critical aspects).

Hardware.7z

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3 hours ago, ragnargd said:

The file was damaged. After replacing it, this seems better now.

I'm not able to start any setup procedure (/P I or not), Setup.exe always complains about "sector not found", and dies.

I exchanged all parts (Controller, sound, SSD, GPU), but to no avail. Windows 10 is running rock-solid meanwhile (i dual-boot via BIOS atm.)

I then copied my Installation from my ASRock 890FX Deluxe5, and was able to boot into w98se, as before.

Some screenshots as an attachment (Reporting AMD Ryzen with 157,0 MB Ram... :blink:) - the scrambled Pixels are like that on the Desktop... this is an installation with inoff. SP3.0 and NUSB, and (normally) drivers for all add-in-cards (7600GT, sata-pci, SB Audigy, LAN) already installed - they are just not used, imho because all those bridges don't work. But i have the gut-feeling the missing bridges are not the cause, but just a symptom of a more fundamental problem.

Activating the driver for the 7600GT will thrash the System irrevocably.

Something important is definitely broken, and i have no idea what it is.

(@RLoew: The files i sent seem basically identical in the critical aspects).

Hardware.7z

I underclocked my system to the lowest speed possible before installing.

Can you test how low you can set Core Ratio to reduce to the lowest MHz possible on the Ryzen?

Also see if there is a BIOS option to reduce from 6 cores to 1 core.  This will drop the heat down and maybe you can remove or unplug the CPU fan?

Try 6600 GT card 256MB instead of the 7600GT.

Copy 98SE install CD folder to the SSD and run the 98SE install from the SSD directly.

Do you have a SATA to USB adapter?

If internal SATA 98 install doesn't work try installing via USB 2 port not USB 3 using SATA to USB adapter.

If it can install 98SE then you can try the standard nVidia drivers first for 6600 GT card.

Edited by 98SE
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A "sector not found" error suggests an error on your Installation media. Either a bad Sector or corrupted FileSystem data.

I see duplication of at least some the Bridges, some working and some not. Delete everything that has the Yellow Mark on them and see if they are redetected.

I saw a couple of Laptops, during my search, that fragmented the available RAM. This may the reason your System only reported 157MiB.

Many years ago, I ran some experiments with 98SE which included creating gaps in RAM. It often crashed and even corrupted my Hard Drive sometimes.

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21 minutes ago, rloew said:

A "sector not found" error suggests an error on your Installation media. Either a bad Sector or corrupted FileSystem data.

I see duplication of at least some the Bridges, some working and some not. Delete everything that has the Yellow Mark on them and see if they are redetected.

I saw a couple of Laptops, during my search, that fragmented the available RAM. This may the reason your System only reported 157MiB.

Many years ago, I ran some experiments with 98SE which included creating gaps in RAM. It often crashed and even corrupted my Hard Drive sometimes.

I invested quite some time using different media (SATA-SSD, IDE-SSD, classical IDE-HDD), but it all remained the same, and the exactly same disks worked without any fault in my other systems. I basically installed on AMD FX boards, tested thoroughly, and then built in the disks into the AM4 system.

So i also came to the conclusion, especially if the errors appear in DOS already, that there is a problem in the communication between the DDR4-memory-controller, and the OS, or a problem in the line of this.

This also explains all the upcoming behaviour (scrambled video-memory, 157MB Ram, errative detection of components, etc.).

This all pretty goes along with your observations of the other systems you mentioned.

Sorry if i did not watch all your posts, but did you do any experiments with boards that have DDR4?

At the moment, summing up the data collected, at least my board will never run w98se beyond what can be seen on the screenshots.

Edited by ragnargd
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I have no DDR4 systems.

I would think that if there are problems with DOS, you would not be able to run any non-UEFI OS either.

What about the 9x Installation CD?
Did you verify that it is not damaged.

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Quote

I have no DDR4 systems.

  My X99 has DDR4, just type of ram is not problem, problem is modern wild bios, i have too 920 Mb in any 32 bit, i wonder how much RAM will available in 32bit Win 7 / 8 on this Ryzen system..

  Its a bit wild, but you could install it from USB by my method..

  But i doubt that it will fix setup start crash, but 5,10 minutes to test it..

Edited by ruthan
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