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HD + AC97 audio & beyond the 137GB/128GiB barrier


tillewolle

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19 hours ago, tillewolle said:

So, easiest way to patch it afterwards?

If the installation went OK, and you're seeing no other issues, then yes, just verify that you install the update before attempting to add more data to the HDD.
As noted USP3 may have already provided the fix (I don't use USP3, so I'm not familiar with all its contents).
The point jumper makes is also true; however I doubt that a board this "new" would suffer from a lack of 48-bit LBA support.

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>>That's all well and good, but how is this helpful to the OP?

I do not think I explained this good enough. The updated files are so that network drives up to 2TB are reported correctly. The 2 files I think that are required are Nwlink.vxd and Vredir.vxd but experiments can be done as those I mentioned on page 5 are the only VXDs I have updated.

Just to be clear, I am running with the original ESDI_506.pdr for WinME which may mean a restriction in IDE and SCSI size but no problems so far, largest IDE I have is 200GB. I have had to scan disk my 300GB SCSI drive and had no problems about doing it. Here is a link that talks about ESDI_506.pdr for Win98 https://msfn.org/board/topic/78592-enable48bitlba-break-the-137gb-barrier/page/2/ ESDI_506 may be for removable discs. I may not be using ESDI_506.pdr as I use a VIA IDE driver version 2003 vs 2.0.950.3020 which uses its own mini port driver ViaDsk.mpd.

Edited by Goodmaneuver
Added extra info at end
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Sigh, envy you guys for understanding all that complicated stuff and being able to update. Not just LBA, but other important stuff too. Anyway, just a short question:

on an unpatched system, would this be safe or risky:
A big USB backup disk with several partitions, used by 2 computers, one 98se, the other XP or newer.
With win98 only writing in the first partitions (together < 128gb), and using the further partitions only with xp?
And if not writing, only reading with 98, would the further partitions be readable at least without risking data loss?

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I would assume you would need NUSB33e.exe (not sure if latest) installed to view the USB drive. This version is for Win98SE only, the following applies to the NUSB33e driver. When buying a new HDD the GUID Partition Table will have to be changed to Master Boot Record. The size limitation for MBR is 2.2TB per partition. Up to 4 primary partitions can be made or use extended partition if more are required. The large USB drives usually have a USB to SATA Adapter inside the box and Logical Block Addressing would be used for the raw sector accessing. They should be formatted on the OS you intend to use them on. A WinME/98 formatted disk will have a 9MB free area at the end of the drive when viewed with Disk Management on modern OS. It is not free really and if you partition it on modern OS without the MB shown free at the end, it will take longer to open the drive on WinME/98. If more than one computer is required to access the drive then a network drive could be considered for convenience. See here https://msfn.org/board/topic/178190-windows-98-and-nas-network-attached-storage/?do=findComment&comment=1160247 Why if used for backup only, the need for one drive? I think your asking how will Win98 go without patching. WinME without patching could access a maximum size of 32GB on USB so any partition larger than this can not be used. I have USB to IDE adapters and large size partition access was fixed with the updated files. I am not well informed about 98.

Edited by Goodmaneuver
Important, format large HDD on 98/ME
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On 12/18/2019 at 9:48 PM, jumper said:

But first your bios must have LBA support for > 137GB.  If not: backup the HDD, repartition, then restore.

BTW, USP3 and Kex are still not fully compatible.

 

How do I check BIOS? and what means USP3 and Kex? Is it needed to make them compatible?

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Kex is short for KernelEx Jumper is working on updating its functioning. USP3 is unofficial service pack 3 for Win98SE. Your mother board is modern and would have 48 bit hard drive access from the initial boot so that large drive sizes are supported at boot time. Otherwise, an old machine specification can be looked up to see maximum drive size that can be used. An IDE to Sata adapter overcame these obstacles from my memory of such up to the OSs limit of 470GB at the time (my ME system still is AFAIK for IDE). I do not know exactly what is or what is not compatible about the USP3. The files contained within USP3 are supposed to be compatible with Win98SE without KEX. It is for Jumper to answer this part.

The 4th partition on the mobile card, perhaps they were pushing the size of card & possibly were not FAT32 partitions. Some WWW comments say 4th partition should be extended but I do not know.

Edited by Goodmaneuver
48 bit & added still is limit
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19 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

I would assume you would need NUSB33e.exe (not sure if latest) installed to view the USB drive. This version is for Win98SE only, the following applies to the NUSB33e driver. When buying a new HDD the GUID Partition Table will have to be changed to Master Boot Record. The size limitation for MBR is 2.2TB per partition. Up to 4 primary partitions can be made or use extended partition if more are required. I would format a new drive on later OS. The large USB drives usually have a USB to Sata Adapter inside the box and Logical Block Addressing would be used for the raw sector accessing. If more than one computer is required to access the drive then a network drive could be considered for convenience. See here https://msfn.org/board/topic/178190-windows-98-and-nas-network-attached-storage/?do=findComment&comment=1160247 Why if used for backup only, the need for one drive? I think your asking how will Win98 go without patching. WinME without patching could access a maximum size of 32GB on USB so any partition larger than this can not be used. I have USB to IDE adapters and large size partition access was fixed with the updated files. I am not well informed about 98.

NUSB 3.3 is not the last version, but the newer NUSB 3.5 doesn't really include anything useful unless you intend to use USB Composite devices (that require USBCCGP.SYS). IIRC, NUSB 3.5 does also include SYSDM.CPL from Windows ME, which will allow USB storage drives to be "autoinstalled" without prompting like on later systems rather than prompting for you to search for a driver, but has the side effect of displaying "Windows Me" in the System Properties rather than Windows 98 and causes an icon bug in the Device Manager.

To make the "sizes of new external drives" bit much more simple: Do not exceed 2TB. 1TB and below is even better. Exceeding these limits requires more patches.

There is no such thing as a 32GB limit under Windows Me. And the same Windows Me USB storage driver is used for 98 in NUSB, so therefore there's no such limit there either. Where did you get that? (There's an old MSKB article out there with rubbish about 32GB partitions under 95 OSR2, but that's not true either.)

7 hours ago, tillewolle said:

How do I check BIOS? and what means USP3 and Kex? Is it needed to make them compatible?

Your system will be LBA48 compatible, don't worry. This was only a concern on older systems. I did see that your motherboard has SATA ports; if you want to use them with Windows 9x you should probably use rloew's line of patches (PATCHATA, PTCHSATA) on ESDI_506.PDR rather than BHDD31. This would allow you to use all of the PATA (IDE) and SATA controllers at once if desired.

You do not "need" USP3 or KEX, unless you plan to run something that requires them. USP3 provides various updates, official and unofficial. Some of these may be useful. KernelEx allows you to run some newer programs that were written for Windows 2K/XP and don't work on 98 out of the box.

It really depends on what you want to use this 98 machine for. If you're using it for retro gaming, etc. and don't plan on trying to use it online or for "experimenting" then you don't need much beyond vanilla + BHDD31. If you're going to use it for "experiments," then you may want some of these unofficial packages. But be aware that the unofficial packages are not always intercompatible.

6 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

An IDE to Sata adapter overcame these obstacles from my memory of such up to the OSs limit of 470GB at the time (my ME system still is AFAIK for IDE).

An IDE to SATA adapter will not overcome a BIOS limitation, but it isn't a concern here anyway. You mention another arbitrary limit of 470GB.. I don't remember there being any such limit. rloew offered a patch that's needed at 1TB, but AFAIK there's no limit below that when it comes to the actual filesystem. I vaguely remember a limit related to SCANDISK.. but as long as you don't run SCANDISK on or attempt to defragment a partition larger than ~470GB, then there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

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NUSB driver update is not for WinME though and will not work. A 32GB USB stick was not available in 2000 AFAIK and it uses different accessing to that of IDE as Jumper has said. I tested USB sticks and the highest size that works with vanilla WinME is 32GB. Also tested external USB to IDE on drive and yes the same thing 32GB is the limit there. I did try vanilla 98 at one time and it did not work the USB sticks without the NUSB driver update. I have purchased several IDE to Sata adapters and have used it on old Socket7 machine. Part of their advertising was that it overcame the IDE size limit problem. This makes sense as the Sata driver would need to access drives of the current time of manufacture. I used it on Socket7 mother board where access timings and switching strength were strong & slow enough to work a failing Sata drive. The other way is to use USB to IDE on a strong USB 1 port. At around 1998 - 1999 SCSI raid controllers had a maximum 470GB raid size. It was large for that time. I assume vanilla WinME had this limit as well as when I viewed the 500GB Sata drive with Partition manager it did not display the partition quite right. It was the first time I saw an error with size on IDE.
 

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24 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

NUSB driver update is not for WinME though and will not work.

 

Of course NUSB is not for Windows ME, because Windows ME already has a native USB Storage driver! The SAME USB Storage driver that is used, by NUSB, to provide the functionality under 98SE! :rolleyes: :crazy:

24 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

A 32GB USB stick was not available in 2000 AFAIK and it uses different accessing to that of IDE as Jumper has said.

Yes, it uses a different method of access than IDE. But the fact that a 32GB USB Stick was not available then does NOT mean that it or anything larger will not work.

26 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

I tested USB sticks and the highest size that works with vanilla WinME is 32GB. Also tested external USB to IDE on drive and yes the same thing 32GB is the limit there.

Then somewhere, you have a hardware problem. Or user error.

27 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

I did try vanilla 98 at one time and it did not work the USB sticks without the NUSB driver update.

Yes. Because Windows 98 does not have a "native" USB storage driver. Hence the reason for the creation of NUSB, which borrows that driver from Windows ME.

28 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

I have purchased several IDE to Sata adapters and have used it on old Socket7 machine. Part of their advertising was that it overcame the IDE size limit problem. This makes sense as the Sata driver would need to access drives of the current time of manufacture. I used it on Socket7 mother board where access timings and switching strength were strong & slow enough to work a failing Sata drive.

Can't comment directly on most of this. Maybe there were adapters that could overcome BIOS limits, but I'd like to see some examples of these. I'm not aware of any "adapters" that have drivers. A drive connected to a SATA adapter would appear as an IDE (PATA) drive; which is the point of the adapter to begin with. Now if you are referring to an add-on Controller Card, then this might make sense.

33 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

The other way is to use USB to IDE on a strong USB 1 port. At around 1998 - 1999 SCSI raid controllers had a maximum 470GB raid size. It was large for that time. I assume vanilla WinME had this limit as well as when I viewed the 500GB Sata drive with Partition manager it did not display the partition quite right. It was the first time I saw an error with size on IDE.

A limit on a RAID controller would fall into the same category as a BIOS limit. This has nothing to do with the OS. There is no such limit in the FAT32 filesystem, or in Windows 9x at this size. AFAIK, once you patch for the 137GB barrier and 48-bit LBA, you're clear up to 1TB.

---

There are many long-established threads here that deal with these issues. They have been hashed and rehashed by all of the "experts." Please do read them, and inform yourself, before making assumptions and posting bad information.

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Some Win98SE users are stating they use it vanilla like Siria, it is this that makes the difference and those users need to be informed of the updates as you have admitted. Believe what you want about the 32GB limit on USB with WinME unaltered. RAID controllers operate with their own BIOS in the majority and no matter what you try and do the limit was 470GB. There were triple channel RAID controllers like 3SI each channel could only be configured up to a maximum of about 470GB. I have used RAID controllers of this era. There is a hardware interface change between IDE to Sata and as I said it works.

FAT32 can be formatted to 16TB I think if 64k clusters are used. It is not as simple to say "There is no such limit in the FAT32 filesystem" It was up to the operating system designers. (file system control in clusters). Ifsmgr.vxd is the file manager AFAIK.

Since I have mention the IDE to SATA controller adapter. They seem to accelerate the IDE setting speed and if your IDE is a bit suspect then it won't work. Do not get the bidirectional controllers as both directions can not be used at the same time and they do not work as good (may not work). The old Socket 7 board I used I can not find at the moment had a SIS north bridge & had SIS internal video. As I tried to explain by strong; this means a Quantum Bigfoot hard drive has to work on the IDE.

Edited by Goodmaneuver
edited out StrikeThrough as best for view in profile view
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Thanks for the answers.
Would like to extend all this with my own chaotic probs and partly long since forgotten config stuff, but 1) probably hopeless anyway, for lack of sys clue on my part, and 2) you're probably gonna kill me when not firsting studying the 100 older posts about storage-usb-flash-speed-ide-sata-pcmcia-adapter etc. related probs in depth, and instructions on other sites like mdgx etc, which I did try a bit but quickly gave up, since it's all just far too much for my limited memorizing and also I suspect, most info partly outdated by now, and especially quite scaring regarding all those little side-effects warned about, which sound just suicidal, and 3) this topic HERE has sound drivers in the title, so it would drift yet more offtopic, another reason to get killed ;-)

The core prob of everything is that as stated everywhere, systems give ZERO WARNING before destroying data when running into some size limit or driver issues! One byte too much and Bang :-((

(e.g.: did you know that nearly all modern SD-cards and other Flash storage start self-destroying after just a few months or even weeks without any USE, incl. those guaranteed 5 years lifetime if USED and overwritten continually?! As far as I am concerned the responsible managers should all go into jail for not printing any retention-time warnings on their products, Grrr)

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  • 2 weeks later...

DirectX install problems, try WinXP KernelEx settings.

See here for some ideas for AC97 audio, here What I will add to the next comment by me in that same topic is that the newer files will have to be removed when trying older driver as installer will not over-write newer files from my memory of such. (safe mode should help here)
 

 

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On 12/18/2019 at 4:38 PM, deomsh said:

I don't think you have to worry, you installed SP3 updates already. To be sure you can compare the content of BHDD31.ZIP with your files in WINDOWS, \SYSTEM, \COMMAND and \IOSUBSYS. if your files are older, just run _INSTALL.BAT (after unzipping BHDD21.ZIP to some directory).

Bios was okay. Some files were older so I ran _install.bat and it seemed to work. Now I see the full capacity of the HDD!

 

On 12/20/2019 at 2:05 AM, Goodmaneuver said:

If more than one computer is required to access the drive then a network drive could be considered for convenience. 

I recently ordered a Synology DS216j as a NAS and would love to connect the Win98 machine for easily accessing isos from archive. What are the recommendations to set this up?

On 12/20/2019 at 10:08 PM, LoneCrusader said:

Your system will be LBA48 compatible, don't worry.

BIOS doesn't have a option to NOT enable it, so yeah. Obviously.

 

 

All in all - all of you helped me A LOT with understanding Win98 works and the system is working perfectly. I can enjoy the game that was the reason for this project. No errors in device manager or somewhere else. Time to make a permanent image to just flash it when the system explodes the next 500 times. 

My buddy offered me 2 Soundblasters... so that will continue

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