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


ragnargd

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22 hours ago, LoneCrusader said:

:wacko: I just said I don't have one of those PCI-E cards.

I have a PCI USB2 card from that company that does indeed use an NEC chipset. It is recognized by the standard drivers from NUSB 3.5. It does not require any special rituals in order to use USB Storage Devices.

:o I thought you meant you were using a different brand of the NEC chipset PCI-E USB card since your Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4P has no PCI slots.

So you are not using any USB cards at all and just the onboard Intel for USB 2.0?

Without NUSB 3.5 drivers loaded were the on board rear USB 2.0 ports working properly for USB mouse and USB keyboard?

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On 8/19/2017 at 3:38 AM, 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

How many files are this this attachment? I couldn't open it due to some compression error in the RTF.  Can you separate the files out individually if they are jpg?

Unplug everything all adapters and cards, hook up a USB floppy drive and bootable disk with a clean 98SE DOS (no config.sys or autoexec.bat) with only the MEM DOS program on it.  All you need is one graphics card 128MB or less for PCIe or you can use a PCI one if it has got 8MB to 64MB video memory and use your PCIe to PCI slot adapter.

Do a DOS Mem check.

MEM > Mem.txt

and attach that here.

MEM /c > Mem2.txt

and attach that here.

 

Edited by 98SE
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2 hours ago, 98SE said:

:o I thought you meant you were using a different brand of the NEC chipset PCI-E USB card since your Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4P has no PCI slots.

So you are not using any USB cards at all and just the onboard Intel for USB 2.0?

Without NUSB 3.5 drivers loaded were the on board rear USB 2.0 ports working properly for USB mouse and USB keyboard?

No, I'm not using any cards for USB on the X99 system. Only the onboard Intel USB2.

I don't know if the rear ports would work or not without NUSB 3.5 (my installation source is slipstreamed with this already in it) but I highly doubt it. This and many other newer board have USB2 controllers but no USB1 controllers, so unless a USB2 driver is loaded (and USBD.SYS manually placed or added to be copied in USB2.INF) then there will be no USB functionality under 98SE.

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10 hours ago, 98SE said:

How many files are this this attachment? I couldn't open it due to some compression error in the RTF.  Can you separate the files out individually if they are jpg?

I can open the attachment from a completely different PC - check your environment, or that you have an actual version of 7zip. The effect that some screenshots are distorted was just the situation on the PC.

10 hours ago, 98SE said:

Unplug everything all adapters and cards, hook up a USB floppy drive and bootable disk with a clean 98SE DOS (no config.sys or autoexec.bat) with only the MEM DOS program on it.  All you need is one graphics card 128MB or less for PCIe or you can use a PCI one if it has got 8MB to 64MB video memory and use your PCIe to PCI slot adapter. Do a DOS Mem check. MEM > Mem.txt and attach that here. MEM /c > Mem2.txt and attach that here.

I tore down the system already, sorry, I'll rather spend energy on other projects now (i.e. identifying another modern platform that is easier to handle, or finding and installing multi-boot on a ConRoePE). Waiting for Zen2 and retrying is an option, too, as i.e. the AM3+ chipsets changed considerably, the 770 chipset being unusable, while 970 is quite good (after patching w98s, that is... - RLoews interrupt-patch still is no trivial fix that could have been done by everyone...).

IMHO, the problems that showed up are not sign of not having enough memory, or anything that can be changed by analysing the data with (just) DOS-tools. This requires analysis with tools on a modern OS (linux, Win 10 64bit), and perhaps comparison with legacy hardware used by the same modern OS, and THEN, perhaps, another memory-manager (NOT himemx.exe for sure!) can be choosen.

While this can be done by, maybe, RLoew :worship:, i lack the skills and experience with tools for that. And the endurance, perhaps... :unsure:

None the less: Thank you for all your suggestions! :thumbup

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1 hour ago, ragnargd said:

I can open the attachment from a completely different PC - check your environment, or that you have an actual version of 7zip. The effect that some screenshots are distorted was just the situation on the PC.

I tore down the system already, sorry, I'll rather spend energy on other projects now (i.e. identifying another modern platform that is easier to handle, or finding and installing multi-boot on a ConRoePE). Waiting for Zen2 and retrying is an option, too, as i.e. the AM3+ chipsets changed considerably, the 770 chipset being unusable, while 970 is quite good (after patching w98s, that is... - RLoews interrupt-patch still is no trivial fix that could have been done by everyone...).

IMHO, the problems that showed up are not sign of not having enough memory, or anything that can be changed by analysing the data with (just) DOS-tools. This requires analysis with tools on a modern OS (linux, Win 10 64bit), and perhaps comparison with legacy hardware used by the same modern OS, and THEN, perhaps, another memory-manager (NOT himemx.exe for sure!) can be choosen.

While this can be done by, maybe, RLoew :worship:, i lack the skills and experience with tools for that. And the endurance, perhaps... :unsure:

None the less: Thank you for all your suggestions! :thumbup

I have no problem opening the attachment it's the RTF file I can't open maybe because you are using Office or something to save it.  What was inside the RTF and can you split it OR upload it to another location for download?

See if you can just do that simple DOS Mem test for me and pull the two mem files commands and upload them.  I know you've given up but I am getting AM4 MB on the way and want to do a comparison of the results to see.  Also using a Windows based tool is not the same as what I'm asking.  This might not solve your problem but it might give some ideas of what could be happening since I also use DDR4 on the Z170.

First provide the results of the original 16GB DDR4.

Then if you can get a 2GB DDR4 or 4GB DDR4 repeat the same test and upload the two files.

There are some other tests I could have you do to see if AM4 compatibility is better than Z170 afterwards.

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, 98SE said:

I have no problem opening the attachment it's the RTF file I can't open maybe because you are using Office or something to save it. 

It opens just fine in XP Wordpad, just for the record.

And - for example - this online converter seemingly wotks just fine with that RTF file:

https://convertio.co/document-converter/

Attached result from above.

jaclaz

Hardware.pdf

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6 hours ago, 98SE said:

See if you can just do that simple DOS Mem test for me and pull the two mem files commands and upload them.  I know you've given up but I am getting AM4 MB on the way and want to do a comparison of the results to see.  Also using a Windows based tool is not the same as what I'm asking.  This might not solve your problem but it might give some ideas of what could be happening since I also use DDR4 on the Z170.

First provide the results of the original 16GB DDR4.

Then if you can get a 2GB DDR4 or 4GB DDR4 repeat the same test and upload the two files.

There are some other tests I could have you do to see if AM4 compatibility is better than Z170 afterwards.

You'll do that yourself? That is something else completely, I'll get you the results (may take some time, though, but they'll come, I promise).

(I just can't with the smaller modules, as i only own those two 8GB modules from type DDR4.)

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4 hours ago, jaclaz said:

It opens just fine in XP Wordpad, just for the record.

And - for example - this online converter seemingly wotks just fine with that RTF file:

https://convertio.co/document-converter/

Attached result from above.

jaclaz

Hardware.pdf

I was mistaken, it didn't extract properly.  The converter from .7z to .Zip seemed to correct something and the inside file extracted properly.

I now see the 157.0MB shown in the photo.

Can you upload your config.sys and autoexec.bat files that you had for that system you booted?

Add the system.ini in case you modified it.

 

Edited by 98SE
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1 hour ago, ragnargd said:

You'll do that yourself? That is something else completely, I'll get you the results (may take some time, though, but they'll come, I promise).

(I just can't with the smaller modules, as i only own those two 8GB modules from type DDR4.)

Just don't tear down the system right away when you're done.  Just let me know you can make a clean bootable 98SE DOS floppy and copy MEM to it and you should be good or need help.  I assume you're pretty good with DOS or you wouldn't use 98SE since it is a love hate relationship with DOS/WIN.

 

I have a 4GB DDR4 here.  I used it to troubleshoot the Z170.  The other ones I have are single stick 16GB DDR4 which are too large but since you have 16 GB in (8GB x2) and a single 8GB x 1 I can do some comparisons.

 

Do two tests pulling the two mem commands outputs I listed.

Two for the 16GB (8GB x 2)

and repeat the test for the

8GB x 1 single stick

So you should have 4 mem output text files.

the last two you can output to mem3.txt and mem4.txt to differentiate before attaching to upload.

When I get a chance to try out the AM4 I'll probably use the 4GB DDR4 unless I can find a 2GB DDR4 for cheap.

But I want to check out these 4 output files first.  I had noticed something similar on the Z170 losing 1GB of RAM out of the first 4GB but that was on XP.

 

Edited by 98SE
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The RTF was fine under Windows XP.

I tried a AMD 770 Motherboard. It was much better at overclocking than the 970.
I was able to get it to work, but it didn't seem very stable and there was something I didn't like about it so I returned it.

The amount of RAM, once you exceed 4GiB, will not make any difference whatsoever.
Having one, two or four sticks might make a difference in performance due to interleaving.

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11 hours ago, rloew said:

I tried a AMD 770 Motherboard. It was much better at overclocking than the 970.
I was able to get it to work, but it didn't seem very stable and there was something I didn't like about it so I returned it.

I never overclock, this old stuff is valuable, don't want to lose it to popping condensators...

770: Same with me, not running stable with w98se (ASRock 770 iCafe).

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15 hours ago, 98SE said:

Just don't tear down the system right away ...

As is  said, it is a present for my son, and will finally go down tonight - but i will get what you asked for before, as far as possible.

My ConRoe865PE just arrived, with 4*1GB of DDR400 CL 2,5 (by "GEIL", with nice heatspreaders... :)), for a nice price.

For anyone interested, and capable of reading german: https://www.cbo-do.de/

They have a lot of old stuff, and by my impression, have a good quality control, and are a reliable trader. Or i was lucky...

 

 

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1 hour ago, ragnargd said:

As is  said, it is a present for my son, and will finally go down tonight - but i will get what you asked for before, as far as possible.

My ConRoe865PE just arrived, with 4*1GB of DDR400 CL 2,5 (by "GEIL", with nice heatspreaders... :)), for a nice price.

For anyone interested, and capable of reading german: https://www.cbo-do.de/

They have a lot of old stuff, and by my impression, have a good quality control, and are a reliable trader. Or i was lucky...

 

 

Good to hear. I'll outline again what I'd like you to test since the system will be for your son after tonight.

MAKE SURE THE 98SE BOOT DISK you created is clean and unaltered.  IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM should be original and untouched do not patch to what you had called the "Usher method"

 

Use the Format A:/S with a 1.44MB floppy disk booting off your original 98SE CD.

Copy Mem.exe from the Windows\Command directory off the 98SE CD to the Floppy disk.

 

 

[Test 1]

Clean 98SE DOS boot disk (no config.sys no autoexec.bat) with mem.exe from 98SE CD.

16GB installed (8GB x2)

Mem > Mem1.txt

Mem /c > Mem2.txt

 

[Test 2]

Clean 98SE DOS boot disk (no config.sys no autoexec.bat) with mem.exe from 98SE CD.

8B installed (8GB x1)

Mem > Mem3.txt

Mem /c > Mem4.txt

 

[Test 3]

You can use your modified files you called the Usher method here.

98SE booted off your config.sys and autoexec.bat settings that you had but going straight to DOS

So set the MSDOS.SYS for BOOTGUI=0

16 GB installed (8GB x2)

Mem > Mem5.txt

Mem /c > Mem6.txt

 

[Test 4]

You can use your modified files you called the Usher method here.

98SE booted off your config.sys and autoexec.bat settings that you had but going straight to DOS

So set the MSDOS.SYS for BOOTGUI=0

8 GB installed (8GB x1)

Mem > Mem7.txt

Mem /c > Mem8.txt

 

 

Now finally upload all test files Mem1-Mem8 making sure no mix up for the filenames for each corresponding test.

Add the config.sys, autoexec, and system.ini files as well used in your "unworking" 157MB Windows 98SE boot up.

 

Later if you have time to follow up just two minor BIOS tweaks before building the computer for your son.

How low can you set the Core Ratio or Underclock the System in MHz?

Were you able to switch Cores from 6 to 1?

 

Edited by 98SE
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46 minutes ago, 98SE said:

MAKE SURE THE 98SE BOOT DISK you created is clean and unaltered.  IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM should be original and untouched do not patch to what you had called the "Usher method"

And AGAIN, there is NO PATCH whatever in Usher's method.

IT DOES NOT INVOLVE ANY PATCH, only some minor modifications to SYSTEM.CB (only useful in Safe Mode).

jaclaz

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