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best/fastest hardware platform that supports 98SE


krick

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I am not sure what the R stands for in VT8237R. It seems to be used very inconsistently and I imagine that it cannot stand for anything of critical importance.

I tried to check VIA website and it seems there are (were) three parts:

VT8237 (obsolete): http://web.archive.org/web/20041016054147/...hbridge/vt8237/

VT8237R: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets...hbridge/vt8237/

VT8237A: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets...bridge/vt8237a/

All of them support RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1.

The specification for VT8237 and VT8237R seems to be exactly the same, i.e. VT8237R looks like renamed VT8237.

It's not easy to find the difference between A and R version, I tried to compare the page with specs and just the description of audio differs:

VT8237R:

VIA Vinyl integrated 5.1 surround sound

» AC '97 audio

» VIA Six-TRAC codec

VIA Vinyl Gold onboard 7.1 surround sound

» 24/96 resolution audio

» VIA Envy24PT + Six-TRAC + additional DAC

VIA Stylus Audio Drivers

» Integrated Sensaura technology

» Full 3D gaming support

VT8237A:

VIA Vinyl™ Multichannel Audio Suite

VIA Vinyl HD Audio

VIA Vinyl AC'97 Audio integrated 6 surround sound

VIA Vinyle Gold Audio onboard 8 surround sound

» 24/96 resolution audio

» VIA Envy24PT + VIA Eight-TRAC Codec + additional DAC

I'm not sure if there is any real difference or just the description differs.

The comparison chart at http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets...on_c-series.jsp show just VT8237A and VT8237R Plus - with no visible difference.

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2166&s=1

The main difference between the 8237A adn the 8237 is the introduction of HD audio capabilities, like Intel's ICH7, the chipset will support output of up to 8 channels and 192k/32bit. Otherwise, VIA VT8237 and 8237A is exactly the same, pin for pin. To utilise the HD Audio capabilities of the chipset, all mainboard manufacturers have to do is to place a HD capable audio codec onboard, like the Realtek 880/890.

Petr

Edited by Petr
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In addition to Windows 98SE support, I'd like to have the option of running DOS 7 as the primary OS.
Don't worry about DOS support. DOS 7 will run on anything newer than a 386 since it does not deal directly with chipset/video/other hardware, rather it uses the BIOS to do so.
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Anybody ever heard of this brand?...

MACH SPEED:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813187010

The features look pretty good I've never heard of them and their website is kinda crappy...

http://www.machspeed.com/

It doesn't even list this board yet.

On the positive side, their boards do have a lifetime warranty. Which, I guess is good, as long as they stay in business to honor it.

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Hi there, once again,

I noticed that quite a few people have had a look at this topic, so maybe there is some general interest towards it.

Although this posting does not contain much that is new, I decided to satisfy my own striving for completeness by coming back just to post an overall summary of my recipe to build a high-performance 98SE system.

Please note that some areas are covered incompletely and only to my own satisfaction, but maybe this will at least be of some guidance if you wish to do further research.

How to assemble a relatively up-to-date and 98SE-compatible system:

0. MAIN POINTS

Choosing to have 98SE compatibility will limit your system performance below what would otherwise be possible.

Build a socket 939 based system with a single graphics card.

The performance of your system will be limited mainly by the graphics card so you may want to consider how costly a CPU to buy.

The first thing to do is to decide upon and/or secure a suitable graphics card (see below).

You are most likely better off with an AGP system rather than a PCI-E system, because:

- Nearly all graphics cards with current 98SE support have AGP versions, and AGP therefore provides most flexibility.

- In their most recent 98SE drivers, ATI offers only "beta" support for PCI-E graphics cards, and nVidia none at all.

- There is no real performance benefit from PCI-E in itself.

- The benefit from PCI-E is restricted to making it possible to install a faster but non-98SE supported graphics card.

1. The GRAPHICS CARD is the most critical and problematic component.

I would suggest three main categories to choose from:

i) Fastest AGP/PCI-E cards with current "beta" driver support:

ATI Radeon X800 and X850 series probably offer the fastest cards with some level of 98SE driver support:

- Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition would be the fastest

- Radeon X850 XT would be the second fastest.

The latest 98SE drivers (Catalyst 5.9) for these cards are "beta". This status has actually worsened as the previous 98SE drivers for the same cards (Catalyst 5.2) are not labeled as "beta". (you may want to check the most recent driver status)

The Catalyst 5.9 drivers for 98SE also claim to support PCI-E, but I have no direct experience of this. The happiest situation would occur if the "beta" status refers mainly to PCI-E support, in which case you might be roughly OK with AGP versions of the cards, but again, I have no experience on this.

ii) Slightly slower AGP cards with proper driver support but poor availability:

NVidia GeForce 6800 series AGP cards have proper 98SE driver support:

- GeForce 6800 Ultra would be the fastest

- Geforce 6800 GT would be the second fastest (I have them and they are OK)

These cards could roughly be compared to the X800 series in performance, but they are poorly available and may be impossible to find. There are other members in the 98SE-supported 6800 family, that generally have lower performance but may have some availability.

The latest nVidia driver (81.98) only supports AGP with 98SE. (Whether previous drivers do support PCI-E, or their release notes are incomplete, is unclear to me.)

The one exception within the 6800 series is the new 6800 GS, which has performance similar to the 6800 GT, but is so far only available as a PCI-E version and without 98SE support (you may want to check the most recent status).

iii) A safer but even slower AGP card:

NVidia GeForce 6600 GT is a safer but slower solution for 98SE:

- Performance is roughly comparable to the slowest 6800 cards, but perhaps with better working hardware video decoding support

- Proper 98SE driver support

- Good availability

- Possible issues concerning rigidity of cooling assembly

As above, the latest drivers only support AGP with 98SE.

2. The choice of MAINBOARD is less difficult but may still be tricky

I would recommend a mainboard with the VIA VT8237 southbridge because it is fairly mature and works nicely with 98SE. It supports SATA/RAID as well as USB 2.0, and all drivers are easily downloadable. See previous postings for more thoughts and info on this.

It also appears to have the benefit of being able to recognise SATA hard drives as IDE drives before installing any drivers, so you just may be able to boot 98SE from a SATA drive. However, I have not had any need to test this in practice so you should not take my word on it working in reality.

I would recommend a mainboard with an AGP graphics port to be on the safe side, in which case you would most probably have the VIA KT800 Pro northbridge.

If you decide to go for a VIA-based PCI-E mainboard, you would probably have the VIA K8T890 northbridge. Note, however, that there are two versions of this: the later one supports dual-core processors and the earlier one does not.

The concern here is that as the world turns towards PCI-E, the availability of suitable AGP mainboards is reduced. Also, VIA chipsets in general do not appear to be very popular these days and may therefore have limited availability.

Remember to make sure that your graphics card physically fits on your mainboard!

3. The CPU is no major issue as long as it is AMD socket 939

Just go for any socket 939 processor that pleases you (64, X2, FX). For 98SE alone you would get the most bang for the buck from a single core CPU as one core is all that 98SE can utilize. To benefit from two cores you would have to run some other dual-core capable operating system on the same system.

Personally I am still holding back on this to see how the situation develops:

- Maybe FX-55 will be replaced by a cheaper non-FX part (who knows?)

- Maybe the 64 4000+ will become still cheaper as X2 matches it in speed.

- Maybe the whole single core line will come down in price

- Beware, however, a possible "Sempron effect" in the future and pounce before that

4. RAM - yes, please.

I would go for 2x512MB, but this is discussed in more detail elsewhere in this forum. Just remember to do the necessary tweaks to the 98SE VCache settings.

5. HARD DRIVES

Leaving out any SCSI-stuff or other special arrangements, three things are to consider:

- Have two hard drives and locate the Windows Swap file on the second one.

- 98SE typically needs a Parallel ATA hard drive to boot from

- Keep in mind the max. 137 GB drive size limitation for 98SE however you do it.

I actually use in my pure 98SE system two Maxtor (supports UDMA133) 9 or 10 series 160 GB drives, which I have configured with the help of a Maxtor utility program to report their sizes to the BIOS as 137 GB exactly.

6. RESPONSIBILITY

For the purpose of assigning responsibility over making hardware investment decisions, please consider these guidelines as the mindless ravings of an over-aged lunatic, who wildly overestimates his understanding of modern computers, and only blame yourself if you are reckless and gullible enough to base any actions on them.

Bye again,

Inki

Edited by Inki
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Krick, did you read the reviews? seems that a couple of probs did crop up, overall pretty good, but you should read in case you run into anything :)

Yeah, I saw the reviews. It's hard to know which ones are genuine problems and which ones are just user error.

In researching some of the VIA K8T800 Pro boards further, I discovered that these two boards are nearly identical...

http://tinyurl.com/95hqa

If you compare the images on the newegg site, you'll see that they even have the same manual and bundled yellow drive cables.

The specs list VIA VT6106 on the Jetway and VIA VT6103 on the Mach Speed board and the Jetway supposedly has 5.1 audio while the MACH SPEED has 8 channel audio.

Also the Jetway board has a listed memory limit of 2GB, however I think that's a typo considering it has 4 memory slots and other boards with 4 slots and the same chipset support 4GB.

The specs listed on the Jetway and Mach Speed site are both different from what the Newegg site lists, mainly in the Audio and LAN areas.

A little more digging on the Mach Speed site reveals these two quotes...

"Mach Speed Technologies is one of the only American owned and operated motherboard manufactures."

"Buy American-Buy Mach Speed!"

However, I'm pretty sure their board is identical to the Jetway board from Taiwan. In fact the latest BIOS update is bit for bit identical to the same Jetway BIOS update...

http://www.machspeed.com/biosupdates/k8t8as/K8TAIA08.BIN

http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/download/BI...as/K8TAIA08.BIN

So either they are really the same company, or use the same manufacturer. Or I guess it's possible that they are both using the VIA reference design and BIOS but I seriously doubt that.

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...

Personally I am still holding back on this to see how the situation develops:

- Maybe FX-55 will be replaced by a cheaper non-FX part (who knows?)

- Maybe the 64 4000+ will become still cheaper as X2 matches it in speed.

- Maybe the whole single core line will come down in price

- Beware, however, a possible "Sempron effect" in the future and pounce before that

...

You'll know I'm clueless from my question ... what is the "Semprom effect?"

Also, I was looking at some of the "last of the best" mobos (-- the "MACH SPEED Viper939AGP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail" mentioned by krick, looks interesting for example--) some call for a "24-pin" powersupply -- Q>Will my existing Enermax 460w "EG465P-VE FC" PS drive a mobo with a 24-pin powerconnector? I installed my Enermax in a "standard" 4-half bay ATX case-and it's a great power supply (--and it made my computer run twice as fast --lol-- at least, it seemed that way because the old powersupply was so underpowered on the +12v side that I lost stability--I found out that sometimes, the dreated bsod can mean inadequate powersupply)

---

also, the following is a comment taken from a newegg comment ... any chance anyone might be able to explain an interupt table ... I understand IRQs, from my old dos days, but I've never had a handle on the four Int-A,B,C and D channels (I'll be closing down one moboUART, using agp (?int-A&B), onboard sound(?int-B), onboard lan(int-?), and adding a scsi-2940)

PCI 1 shared with int A

PCI 2 shared with int B

PCI 3 shared with int C

PCI 4 used int D (Waste of a pci slot)

PCI 5 shared with int A

gabit lan shared with int B

Serial ATA shared with int C

AGP slot shared with int A

So with my sound card in slot 5, Im sharing with my AGP card, so when video plays its unbearable... Now I have the card in slot 2, so its sharing with the disabled gigabit lan... but its STILL distorting...

This is a very helpful thread for old foggies like me, as 98 will definitely be my last MS system.

Also, as a lowend video, I was looking at a "MSI Geforce MX4000 MX4000-T64 Low Profile Video Card - Retail" -- any thougnts? It looked like it might be simpler and have lower power demands (and temps) than some of the gamer cards. (I'm not a gamer, so lowend power, w98 generic, and stability are more important to me than ... getting sexed by bill gates' latest effect.)

Edited by Molecule
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THE SEMPRON EFFECT?

I guess I must answer this as I just made it up.

The Sempron effect means the replacement of a previous high-end part by another part that may not be not quite as good but is more cost effective to manufacture.

This happens when the performance of the previous high-end part begins to lag behind newer parts, and its selling price goes down so as to seriously bite into the manufacturer's margins.

When socket 939 was launched, this happened to the Athlon XP product line which was replaced by Semprons that were otherwise fairly similar but had a smaller cache and a lower front-side-bus speed. It may begin to happen to the Athlon 64 product line as a result of the upcoming AM2 launch.

This has also happened or is still happening to the GeForce 6800 graphics card series. It will be interesting to observe whether or not the Radeon X800/X850 graphics cards manage to receive non-"beta" 98SE drivers before something nasty possibly begins to happen to them. Still, they may get those drivers even posthumously.

Partly because of this effect there exists only a relatively short window during which it is possible to make good deals on high-end parts with legacy support before they are completely wiped off the market and replaced by newer parts without this support.

I guess the new 6800 GS may be an example of a newer replacement part, which possibly may end up never being supported for 98SE, but I really cannot know whether or not this is the case. (For your information: I have no involvement whatsoever in the electronics or software industries)

Inki

And, by the way, Molecule, my initial response to your other question, that I can comfortably relate with, is that, as a graduate-level physicist I do not immediately see any obvious way to link platonic solids with gaussian modulation of rotation.

Edited by Inki
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also, the following is a comment taken from a newegg comment ... any chance anyone might be able to explain an interupt table ... I understand IRQs, from my old dos days, but I've never had a handle on the four Int-A,B,C and D channels (I'll be closing down one moboUART, using agp (?int-A&B), onboard sound(?int-B), onboard lan(int-?), and adding a scsi-2940)
PCI 1 shared with int A

PCI 2 shared with int B

PCI 3 shared with int C

PCI 4 used int D (Waste of a pci slot)

PCI 5 shared with int A

gabit lan shared with int B

Serial ATA shared with int C

AGP slot shared with int A

So with my sound card in slot 5, Im sharing with my AGP card, so when video plays its unbearable... Now I have the card in slot 2, so its sharing with the disabled gigabit lan... but its STILL distorting...

I'm guessing that this guy just doesn't know what he's doing.

The PCI bus (includes AGP) only gets 4 IRQ lines to share regardless of the number of physical slots. Also, most of the onboard devices hang off the PCI bus as well and use IRQ lines. This includes... onboard video, onboard sound, onboard LAN, USB controllers, RAID controllers, additional SATA and PATA controllers.

So needless to say, in a modern motherboard, there's going to be some IRQ sharing even before you plug in any PCI cards. If you are plugging in PCI cards that don't like to share, like SoundBlaster Live and his buddies, or older nic cards, you can run into problems.

In Windows 2000/XP, the whole interrupt thing is given a new virtual interrupt layer that prevents stuff from crashing for the most part but you can still have performance problems when PCI devices decide to not play nice.

The most common IRQ assignment I've seen is this...

INTA - PCI1 and AGP

INTB - PCI2 and onboard lan if present

INTC - PCI3 and onboard sound if present

INTD - PCI4 and PCI5 and SATA

Then throw in a liberal sprinkling of USB controllers in there too. A modern motherboard with 8 USB ports requires 4 IRQs just for USB. So you pretty much have to share with USB, no way out of that.

Here's the fun part. If you want to use a PCI sound card, you should probably plug it into PCI3. You should disable onboard sound first, of course. The idea is to put the PCI card in a slot where it shares with the least stuff. Typically, at least on Abit and Asus boards, this has been PCI slot 2 or 3.

I almost never use slots 1, 4 or 5.

However, I had problems with my Adaptec SCSI controller on my old motherboard. It didn't play nice until I stuck it in PCI slot 1, sharing an IRQ with my AGP card. Go figure.

Keep in mind that all this is totally motherboard dependent. I've seen a few boards with VERY different IRQ to PCI assigments.

Here's my ritual that I do with every new motherboard...

Hook up the board but leave all drives disconnected so it can't actually boot into windows.

Boot with just an AGP card and write down the IRQ assignments as reported by the BIOS POST screen.

Plug a simple PCI card (a NIC card is good for this) into PCI slot 1, boot, note the IRQ assigments

Move the card to PCI slot 2, boot, note the IRQ assigments

continue in this fashion until you have a complete map of the IRQ assignments.

Basically, you want to get an understanding of how the BIOS distributes the 4 interrupt lines (A through D) among the PCI, AGP, and onboard devices.

Sometimes, the board will distribute them differently if there are 2 PCI cards involved but you probably won't encounter that.

Usually, I use a spreadsheet to keep track of it all.

When you're done, you should have a PCI IRQ map and you should know which PCI slot is *least* likely to share with other devices.

You should disable any onboard PCI bus devices that you don't plan to use like SATA RAID controllers.

Then put the least co-operative PCI device (like a sound blaster) in the least sharing slot.

Add in your PCI network card next, etc...

Boot and make sure that the IRQ assignments as reported by the BIOS are what you expect them to be.

When you're happy with the BIOS IRQ distribution, only then do you hook up your drives and install windows.

Note that pretty much every ASUS motherboard manual I've ever seen includes an IRQ map for you so you don't have to do this.

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I wanted to share my recent experience with implementing what you're discussing here.

For the last year I've been using ASUS A7V880-AthlonXP3200+. Recently the bios in it lost itself (happens to this board, I've noticed in some hardware forums), and the repaired RMA was shipped back to me yesterday.

I couldn't resist the cheap Abit KW7 on NewEgg so for the last week and a half I've been playing with that until the A7V880 gets back. Nice that all my hardware still works so nothing was fried by the failed A7V880 bios!

ATI Radeon x850PRO experience with Catalyst 5.9 -

I recently bought this as probably the best (affordable) upgrade available that still had at least beta 98SE driver support.

I need to manually install the driver, as the ATI install program and the inf don't list this card's VIN pci id numbers as supported by the driver. I first install the corresponding (on the Catalyst 5.9 download page) WDM driver. No reboot. Then I use device manager to update both the primary and secondary display adapters. I direct it to the extracted ATI driver inf folder the install program left and select the C5 inf as that one has the x850 selections. I guessed and installed the 3rd one listed for the x850 and that works for my PRO. I do the same for the secondary adaptor but choose the secondary x850 choice in the list that comes up (again, the 3rd one in the list so we match!) No reboot. I remove both monitors from device manager as on reboot Windows will now recognize and install the plug and play monitor for the primary one instead of default monitor. The secondary one will automatically install the default monitor like it always has. No reboot. I then run the setup.exe from the Control Panel folder of the ATI folders. Now, after rebooting everything will install and work properly. I need to reboot a second time for the remaining WDM driver to install itself.

I don't get Smartgart this way, but do get the ATI Control Panel and as long as the latest Via 4-in-1 used is the 4443 (the lower one on the viaarena download page), AGP works with whatever is set in the bios. Any later Via Hyperion and you don't get AGP, it's turned off and you're on PCI speeds! This even happens with a Radeon 9600XT. On XP all this isn't necessary as the Catalyst install program works perfectly and the inf includes the proper ID for the card.

Okay. The A7V880 worked perfectly with 98SE with this setup. The KW7 however would not boot into Windows (freeze at the splash screen) if I tried to install any PCI card into any PCI slot! Now, this was with a SATA HD and (obviously) the SATA activated in the bios as I put the board into the same box I took the A7V880 out of. I don't know if using a normal PATA HD and having SATA turned off would fix this. I tried turning off the Serial, Parellel ports and even deactivating USB in the bios but 98SE would only boot into Safe Mode if I put any PCI card into a slot! For now, I overcame this by starting over and just installing XP and running VMWare Workstation 5.5.1. 98SE runs fine on the KW7 like this. But of course there's no Direct 3D on 98 this way.

The Abit KW7 latest bios (15) includes a later version of the Via Sata bios than Asus uses on the A7V880 so that may have something to do with why the A7V880 has no problem with PCI ports with Windows 98SE. Something in the update may have broken 98SE support somewhat.

The KW7 seems to be more stable with my AthlonXP 3200+ and Crucial 512x2 (1024MB) 3200 Ram at 400 bus speeds than the A7V880 was. So I think when I get the A7V880 back I'll replace the A7V333 I have in my backup box with the A7V880. I've got an AthlonXP 3000+(333MHz) and 2x512(1024) 2700 Crucial Ram in there so it all should match and be more stable for the slightly more flaky A7V880 board at the lower, 333MHz bus speeds. And I'll duel-boot Partition Magic style with the IDE HD (hiding the 2 Primary's from each other.) I use an add on LAN card on the KW7 for gigabit, but the A7V880 Marvell gigabyte LAN built in works fine.

Neither board will support the old SBLive Dos-Mode drivers. (No non-maskable interrupt support.) I'm not using that card now, but if one did want to then the old vxd drivers for the Windows dosbox would work fine. As would the later WDM drivers if native 98 dosbox fm emulation isn't important to you. With this speed of computing, the Dosbox .63 program (and the latest CVS) offers all the dos most folks would need. But all the 98 programs that don't run on XP can still be used on good 'ol 98SE on these pretty spiffy computers! I'll use my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum on the KW7 and the built in SoundMAX on the A7V880. (Love that thing, with the Sensaura Virtual Headphone Theatre and Virtual Ear upgrades I managed to buy on digibuy even though the links were taken away from the Sensaura website when Creative bought them.)

So, I've implemented most of the stuff you're talking about here. I hope my info on installing the ATI beta 98SE driver helps any who want to use an x850 card. They don't make it easy, but it works perfectly with the beta driver installed as I described. I don't know why the proper card id isn't in the inf for 98SE. This is a built by ATI retail box Radeon x850 PRO. I got it at BestBuy during the recent sale. So it's the legit card and it even registered properly with the serial number at the ATI site.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think I've finally decided on a motherboard

ASUS A8V Deluxe (using the VIA K8T800Pro + VT8237 combo)...

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=...238&modelmenu=1

I'm pretty sure it has Windows 98SE drivers for everything.

I'm not sure if the onboard sound would work in pure DOS but I'd probably use a SB16 PCI anyway if I decided to go that route.

I'm not sure if they make it anymore but I know some stores still have it. Plus, there's a bunch on eBay from people switching over to PCI Express and dumping their old motherboards.

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The mainboard I'm using right now(EPoX EP-9NDA3J) is still pretty modern despite using the NForce3 chipset. It uses AMD 939 procs up through the ATHLON, FX, and OPTERON series. Only drivers not for win98 for it are the AMD cool-n-Quiet (auto fan speed control) and sata-raid drivers. 1GB LAN for a win98 machine is nice :)

http://www.epox.com.tw/eng/products_content.php?ps=323

Edited by Chozo4
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Very interesting discussion as i would like to get some AMD 64 CPU with PCI-E. Hope that soon the PCI-E issue with Nvidia will be fixed.

! I have do do some important remark to one of you saying Windos 98SE was limited to 137GB HDs !

This is simply not true and refers to the biosses of the onbard IDE chipsets, like the Intel BX.

When using an external IDE controller/a controller with a supportive bios you don´t have that problem. Besides a more than 137GB capable bios for the controller you need, of course, the right and updated >137GB Windows 98 drivers from the manufacturer.

I myself use a CUBX-E with patched bios for the additional onboard! Promise controller. 160GB HDs run flawlessly with full size for more than 2 years with that CUBX-E (partition sizes under 137Gb)!

Edited by k33
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Very interesting discussion as i would like to get some AMD 64 CPU with PCI-E. Hope that soon the PCI-E issue with Nvidia will be fixed.

I really don't think windows 9x will ever have PCI-E support.

I suppose a chipset maker *could* write windows 98 drivers for PCI-E but I doubt they will.

Nvidia doesn't support windows 98 at all with the latest nForce drivers.

! I have do do some important remark to one of you saying Windos 98SE was limited to 137GB HDs !

This is simply not true and refers to the biosses of the onbard IDE chipsets, like the Intel BX.

When using an external IDE controller/a controller with a supportive bios you don´t have that problem. Besides a more than 137GB capable bios for the controller you need, of course, the right and updated >137GB Windows 98 drivers from the manufacturer.

I myself use a CUBX-E with patched bios for the additional onboard! Promise controller. 160GB HDs run flawlessly with full size for more than 2 years with that CUBX-E (partition sizes under 137Gb)!

I think you hit it on the head, you must have hardware, BIOS, and drivers that can handle LBA48, *AND* you must keep the partition sizes under 137GB. There's a whole separate thread that addresses this problem...

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=46752

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