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Realtek 8111E; other issues with newer systems on Windows 98


ruthan

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There is no Driver for the 8111E that I know of.

I found a Tenda Driver for a different NIC that apparently has experimental code for the 8111 in it. The INF File had the entry commented out.
It runs, but puts up a warning on boot and only runs at 100Mbs. I have posted on this subject before.

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What's the 8111E device ID?

My ASRock H110M-DVS R3.0 Motherboard has this device id which is present in the 2008 last 98SE .sys driver from Realtek:

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&REV_02

I've yet to test it.

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On 21.7.2017 at 7:40 PM, rloew said:

There is no Driver for the 8111E that I know of.

I found a Tenda Driver for a different NIC that apparently has experimental code for the 8111 in it. The INF File had the entry commented out.
It runs, but puts up a warning on boot and only runs at 100Mbs. I have posted on this subject before.

You can use the NDIS2 driver. 

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NDIS2 is a DOS driver, but using the OEMSETUP.INF provided, it installs alongside the Unknown card in Device Manager as a separate entity, using the Add New Hardware wizard. Note how there's this selection:

netconfnicpropdt.png

Windows 98 (95?) was meant to work with older DOS network drivers in mind. When using an NDIS driver, only the second option is available.

As I've said in another topic, I've used it successfully, though performance was mediocre.

As for the .sys driver for my motherboard, the .sys works flawlessly. Pretty neat for a 2016 motherboard, so I can't help you all with NDIS2 driver, as I don't need it.

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I looked up your Motherboard's specifications.

It lists your NIC as a RTL8111C/RTL8111H.
The RTL8111C is compatible with 9x. I don't know why the dual designation.

The Motherboard has decent USB 2 support and 2 PS/2 Connectors.

It lacks PCI Slots and I did not see any option to turn off AHCI. This could be a problem for Hard Drives.

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I decided to test the performance of the NDIS2 Driver as compared to the Tenda Driver.

I copied a 1GB File within a remote RAMDISK and measured the time needed.

The Tenda Driver set the NIC to 100Mbs and took 196 Seconds (Read + Write) for an expected rate of 10.4MB/Sec.

The NDIS2 Driver set the NIC to 1000Mbs and took 64 Seconds (Read + Write) for a rate of 31.2MB/Sec.

Although significantly slower than full speed, it was 3 times faster than the currently available alternative.

Moving the NET START Command to the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT eliminated any impact on DOS performance so it is a keeper.

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On 22.7.2017 at 0:34 PM, MrMateczko said:

What's the 8111E device ID?

My ASRock H110M-DVS R3.0 Motherboard has this device id which is present in the 2008 last 98SE .sys driver from Realtek:

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&REV_02

I've yet to test it.

So, does your board run w9x? If yes, what GPU do you use? A socket 1151 board running w9x would be news...

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My board works with 98SE. It's not news, rloew uses his Z170 motherboards with 98SE as well.

Currently it's running off the integrated Intel HD 610 GPU from the Pentium G4560 with the VBEMP generic driver. It's good for what it's worth, consideting it's limitations.

I use a USB keyboard and mouse.

The Ethernet card, as I've wrote in my previous posts, works flawlessly with the 2008 98SE driver from Realtek's website, the screenshot shows that clearly.

No Audio, but buying a cheap Chinese USB Audio Card should work.

I'm planning on getting a 7900 GTO. (same as 7900 GTX but with lower memory clocks, the PCB and cooler are identical)

I also must consider on getting a normal HDD, (a 1TB Toshiba should be fine, with the partition limited), because now, I'm running 98SE from my SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 32GB flashdrive (plugged into a USB 2.0 port).

I use the Rufus utility to create a MS-DOS bootable stick (can't do it on Win10, I had to use the free virtual machines MS provides), then I copy the Win98 folder from the 98SE CD onto it (and remove fluff from USB stick that Rufus creates except for IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM, obviously). Then I boot from it, run "setup /is /ie /iv /iq /im /nr /p i" and let the first part complete. (it completes with no errors)

Then I copy the Vcache patch by Xeno to SYSTEM/VMM32, and the HIMEMX.EXE file to root. I put HIMEMX.EXE into CONFIG.SYS with the /MAX parameter in bytes (I've used 512MB, but 1GB should work too). Those two things make it so that I don't have to modify SYSTEM.INI to get to the second part of the install.

Then I finish the second part (it might freeze, but a restart fixes that). After it boots. I've installed the VBEMP driver, and the LAN driver, also copied the latest portable version of AIDA64 to showcase the PC specs. And that's pretty much it. This is the only method I've tried that works...and I've tried A LOT!

Of course the USB drive works entirely in 16-bit DOS compatibility mode (Windows complains a lot in system properties), so any file operations hang the system for a good while. It is REALLY annoying!

And of course, I've turned Legacy USB, CSM, XHCI Hand-Off, PS/2 Emulator all ON.

So as you can see, it's not perfect, but with a few purchases, I might have the world's fastest 98SE build with the best 3DMark scores, we shall see...Maybe I won't have to buy the SATA or NVIDIA patch at all.

I know there's no Legacy SATA option in the UEFI. So maybe the SATA patch will be a necessity...or I develop one on my own :angel

This is my only PC, normally it runs Win10 on a 240GB SSD. (will back to Win7, since Win10 is getting on my nerves more and more with every day). I obviously won't install 98SE on it, I could in theory do a multi boot with Win7/Win98SE once I get the 1TB HDD, but I would have to switch the GPUs for every OS. (I'm getting a GTX 1050 Ti), and that takes (albeit not much) time... Also, almost all of the 1TB space would be wasted.

20273208_933147450157917_936108430_o.png

Edited by MrMateczko
More words!
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I don't have a Z170 Motherboard. I have a Z87 Motherboard. User 98SE is the only one I know experimenting with a Z170.

My other Motherboards are AMD based.

Your Motherboard may have a problem with AHCI. I didn't see any setting in the User Manual.

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11 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

My board works with 98SE. It's not news, rloew uses his Z170 motherboards with 98SE as well.

Currently it's running off the integrated Intel HD 610 GPU from the Pentium G4560 with the VBEMP generic driver. It's good for what it's worth, consideting it's limitations.

You put a lot of work there - and i like what i see. Thank you for sharing the info in so much detail!

Edited by ragnargd
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Apologize to rloew, I probably misread that old post of yours.

But even it if was an older motherboard, the procedures would have been pretty much the same. They can apply to any modern motherboard. So putting bare-bones 98SE on any modern PC is easy. The drivers and patches are what's more important, and those must be decided on individual bases.

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Sometimes even the bare-bones Installation can be a pain.

Lack of PS/2 Ports can make things rather difficult.

ACPI Problems are another.

One Computer required my SPLIT8MB Program as well as my RAM Patch to work.

If they ever drop CSM, then 9x is history.

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4 hours ago, rloew said:

If they ever drop CSM, then 9x is history.

Yeah, very right.

Still, i have the gut feeling, making w9x run on Ryzen will be easier than making XP run there.

XP has a much more sensitive kernel (i can see BSODs coming a lot), where, in fact, w9x doesn't have one at all (unless you call DOS a kernel... ;-), so it might bother less. But we'll see.

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