the 'ASPI Layer' must be

[GeminiAlpha]

Hi Gape,

When my HD got broke, I bought myself a new big one (200G) and decided to implement the win98 SE SP. Install win98se from my original CD cd first and the SP afterwards.

I followed your implementation plan and got in trouble very soon. Long before the steps 7 and 8 on your list (installation order) every time the new HD was full of corrupted files in all 3 partitions. I didn't get a well working 'basic' installation. During file copying every time I ruined lots of files and I can't tell you how many times I have seen MS Scandisk processing.

My search on internet to the cause of this took very much time. Searching Maxtor's KB, I found 2 items to check in relation to 'big' HD's: 1) ver. of Fdisk (MS KB263044) and 2) ver. of Esdi_506.PDR (MS KB243450). These were ok, probably because of the 'slipstreaming' trick? I digged some more in Maxtor's KB and found a hint that the ASPI layer should not be older than ver. 4.60 (1021). There could be conflicts between the Aspi driver(s) and the IDE driver(s). This link brings you to the KB article at the Maxtor site: KB article Maxtor

After installing a new Aspi Layer (from Adaptic's site) my trouble finally ended after 10 days and now I can get on with the next step(s) of the implementation.

I propose to implement a fresh ASPI Layer in your Win98 SE SP or (at least) indicate to fresh up the ASPI Layer yourself. The one on the win98se CD is way too old.

I hope this contribution, in some way, may benefit you all.

Bye, have a nice day.

Rudolf.

added info

To test the stability, after the install of the fresh Aspi files, I copied "tons" of files back and forth, directly between HD drives & partitions and/or via the local network. No more corrupted files, nor corrupted directories. This extensive test gives me confidence for the rest of the win98 SE SP action.

Edited January 23, 2006 by GeminiAlpha

[Petr]

When my HD got broke, I bought myself a new big one (200G) and decided to implement the win98 SE SP. Install win98se from my original CD cd first and the SP afterwards.

I followed your implementation plan and got in trouble very soon. Long before the steps 7 and 8 on your list (installation order) every time the new HD was full of corrupted files in all 3 partitions. I didn't get a well working 'basic' installation. During file copying every time I ruined lots of files and I can't tell you how many times I have seen MS Scandisk processing.

My search on internet to the cause of this took very much time. Searching Maxtor's KB, I found 2 items to check in relation to 'big' HD's: 1) ver. of Fdisk (MS KB263044) and 2) ver. of Esdi_506.PDR (MS KB243450). These were ok, probably because of the 'slipstreaming' trick? I digged some more in Maxtor's KB and found a hint that the ASPI layer should not be older than ver. 4.60 (1021). There could be conflicts between the Aspi driver(s) and the IDE driver(s). This link brings you to the KB article at the Maxtor site: KB article Maxtor

After installing a new Aspi Layer (from Adaptic's site) my trouble finally ended after 10 days and now I can get on with the next step(s) of the implementation.

I propose to implement a fresh ASPI Layer in your Win98 SE SP or (at least) indicate to fresh up the ASPI Layer yourself. The one on the win98se CD is way too old.

I hope this contribution, in some way, may benefit you all.

Hi Rudolf, just a few notes:

1. Win98 SE SP already contains an option to install Adaptec ASPI layer 4.60 (1021).

2. ESDI_506.PDR does not support disks bigger than 137GB, if you want to use 200GB disk, you have to

a) use the first 137GB only by defining partitions to fit fully below the 137GB border (and lose 63GB), or

B) use vendor specific IDE driver if exists, or

c) use commercial 137GB+ patch for ESDI_506.PDR, or

d) use add-on IDE controller board.

Petr

Edited January 23, 2006 by Petr

[Gape]

1. Win98 SE SP already contains an option to install Adaptec ASPI layer 4.60 (1021).

2. ESDI_506.PDR does not support disks bigger than 137GB, if you want to use 200GB disk, you have to

a) use the first 137GB only by defining partitions to fit fully below the 137GB border (and lose 63GB), or

B) use vendor specific IDE driver if exists, or

c) use commercial 137GB+ patch for ESDI_506.PDR, or

d) use add-on IDE controller board.

e) Delete ESDI_506.PDR

[Petr]

1. Win98 SE SP already contains an option to install Adaptec ASPI layer 4.60 (1021).

2. ESDI_506.PDR does not support disks bigger than 137GB, if you want to use 200GB disk, you have to

a) use the first 137GB only by defining partitions to fit fully below the 137GB border (and lose 63GB), or

b ) use vendor specific IDE driver if exists, or

c) use commercial 137GB+ patch for ESDI_506.PDR, or

d) use add-on IDE controller board.

e) Delete ESDI_506.PDR

e) may have big impact on performance, my test on Intel 915 board shows that the speed without ESDI_506.PDR (i.e. in DOS compatibility mode) may be up to 20x lower.

Petr

[Gape]

e) may have big impact on performance, my test on Intel 915 board shows that the speed without ESDI_506.PDR (i.e. in DOS compatibility mode) may be up to 20x lower.

I think if you install DOS UDMA drivers, it should be much faster...

[Petr]

e) may have big impact on performance, my test on Intel 915 board shows that the speed without ESDI_506.PDR (i.e. in DOS compatibility mode) may be up to 20x lower.

I think if you install DOS UDMA drivers, it should be much faster...

Do you mean this no longer maintained project?: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/...dos/udma/devel/ ?

Have you any experience with combining this driver and Windows 98 SE?

Do you know about any benchmark results comparing this driver and ESDI_506.PDR?

I will try how it works on my 915 board. Do you know about any good utility for measuring disk transfer rate? For native devices I use HDTach, but it does not work for disks in DOS compatibility mode.

Petr

[Gape]

Do you mean this no longer maintained project?: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/...dos/udma/devel/ ?

Have you any experience with combining this driver and Windows 98 SE?

Do you know about any benchmark results comparing this driver and ESDI_506.PDR?

I will try how it works on my 915 board. Do you know about any good utility for measuring disk transfer rate? For native devices I use HDTach, but it does not work for disks in DOS compatibility mode.

In fact, I mean XDMA.

I have not any experience yet, but I'm going to try it. I think you can use HDTach to comparison. I should work in compatibility mode, too.

[MDGx]

Native MS-DOS mode HD + CD/DVD U(ltra)DMA/U(ltra)ATA drivers [all free]:

HD:

* UDMA2.SYS v2.7 DOS UATA/UDMA Hard Disk Driver 16-bit TSR for MS-DOS 5/6/7/8

+ Windows 3.1x/9x/ME allows up to 4 UATA/UDMA Hard Disks to run at full speed

in native DOS:

http://www.sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=505366

UDMA2.SYS [84 KB]:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/...el/Udma2_27.zip

Works ONLY with UATA/UDMA Hard Disks connected to motherboard built-in

UATA/UDMA controllers, NOT to 3rd party/add-on/proprietary controllers!

Takes 1 KB of upper DOS RAM if loaded with DEVICEHIGH in CONFIG.SYS (upper

memory manager required in CONFIG.SYS). Example:

DEVICEHIGH=C:\UDMA\UDMA2.SYS /O

* XDMA.SYS v3.1 DOS UATA/UDMA Hard Disk Driver 16-bit TSR for MS-DOS 5/6/7/8 +

Windows 3.1x/9x/ME allows up to 4 UATA/UDMA Hard Disks to run at full speed in

native DOS:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/freedos/xdma.html

XDMA.SYS [42 KB]:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/freedos/file/xdma_v31.zip

Works ONLY with UATA/UDMA Hard Disks connected to motherboard built-in

UATA/UDMA controllers, NOT to 3rd party/add-on/proprietary controllers!

Takes 1 KB of upper DOS RAM if loaded with DEVICEHIGH in CONFIG.SYS (upper

memory manager required in CONFIG.SYS). Example:

DEVICEHIGH=C:\UDMA\XDMA.SYS /O

CD/DVD:

* ATAPICDD.SYS v0.2.14 16-bit Universal DOS mode IDE/ATAPI CD/DVD driver for

MS-DOS 5/6/7/8 + Windows 3.1x/9x/ME [also part of FreeDOS:

http://www.freedos.org/]:

http://www.darklogic.org/fdos/projects/atapicdd/readme.txt

Direct download [76 KB, free GPL]:

http://www.darklogic.org/fdos/projects/ata...icdd.0.2.14.zip

Works with most IDE/ATAPI compliant internal CD/DVD drives of ANY speed.

ATAPICDD.SYS takes 12 KB of upper DOS RAM if loaded with DEVICEHIGH in

CONFIG.SYS (upper memory manager required in CONFIG.SYS). Example:

DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\ATAPICDD.SYS /D:MYCDROM

See "CD-ROM DRIVERS 4 DOS" for details:

http://www.mdgx.com/newtip1.htm#CDROM4

* XCDROM.SYS v1.9 16-bit Universal DOS mode IDE/ATAPI CD/DVD driver for MS-DOS

5/6/7/8 + Windows 3.1x/9x/ME:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/freedos/xcdrom.html

Direct download [39 KB, free GPL]:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/freedos/file/xcdrom19.zip

Works with most IDE/ATAPI compliant internal CD/DVD drives of ANY speed.

Takes 2.5 KB of upper DOS RAM if loaded with DEVICEHIGH in CONFIG.SYS (upper

memory manager required in CONFIG.SYS). Example:

DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\XCDROM.SYS /D:MYCDROM

More like this:

http://www.mdgx.com/drv.htm#DRV

http://www.mdgx.com/drv.htm#CDR

Hope this helps.

[azagahl]

> Have you any experience with combining this driver and Windows 98 SE?

Yes. The UDMA / XDMA drivers (any version) do not work on my PC.

The programmer and I communicated for a while but no solution was found.

[GeminiAlpha]

Hi Rudolf, just a few notes:

1. Win98 SE SP already contains an option to install Adaptec ASPI layer 4.60 (1021).

2. ESDI_506.PDR does not support disks bigger than 137GB, if you want to use 200GB disk, you have to

a) use the first 137GB only by defining partitions to fit fully below the 137GB border (and lose 63GB), or

B) use vendor specific IDE driver if exists, or

c) use commercial 137GB+ patch for ESDI_506.PDR, or

d) use add-on IDE controller board.

Petr

Hi Petr, back to my problem...

My new 200Gb Maxtor drive was "fdisk'd & formatted" with Maxtor's MAXBLAST v.10.48 into 3 partitions: 40, 80, 80 Gb. (Bios recognizes the HD.) From what you wrote I understand managing this 3 partitions bij Win98se and it's accompagning Dos should be no problem. Correct?

In my opinion the ASPI drivers 4.60 (1021) should be installed ASAP after 1st install the fresh Win98se. I think I wrecked my filesystem by NOT doing that and copying many files from second HD to the new one. But I'm not sure about that.

Still struggling,

Rudolf.

Additional info.

At the moment I study what MDGX wrote. Could it be that ONLY adding the XDMA driver to config.sys solves my described problem? If not, I'm eager to hear other opinion(s).

Thanks, MDGx for adding your comments and tips!

14:00

Tested in an existing environment XDMAJR.SYS and got this:

Message from Windows about a new DOS driver which might decrease system performance.

Finally Windows shows up, it works slower and no CDrom drives are mounted.

Tested with XDMA.SYS /O that's worse, much more time before Windows desktop shows up and also NO CDrom drives available.

In the mean time I fdisk'd and formatted my 200Gb drive again with Maxtor utils. Hang on...

Edited January 26, 2006 by GeminiAlpha

[LLXX]

ASPI has nothing to do with large hard disk support. When you mentioned that you installed the new ASPI layer and it worked, that was probably a secondary consequence that it installed a new driver for the HDD that handles 48-bit LBA correctly. The Maxtor article you linked applies to "1394 ext. Storage Device" - I assume you're not booting from and installing Windows on an external IEEE1394 drive!?

The large disk problem is due to ESDI_506.PDR only.

[GeminiAlpha]

...My new 200Gb Maxtor drive was "fdisk'd & formatted" with Maxtor's MAXBLAST v.10.48 into 3 partitions: 40, 80, 80 Gb. (Bios recognizes the HD.) ...

In the mean time I fdisk'd and formatted my 200Gb drive again with Maxtor utils. Hang on...

Hi,

My search for info about a 200 Gb disk, driven by Windows98se, ended. By reading quite a lot on Internet, my only conclusion is that without a (commercial) driver to replace ESDI_506.PDR my system will never become a successful & reliable working environment.

I just didn't know to buy a HD not bigger than a 120 Gb (smaller than 137 GB).

So my win98se SP project has come to an end and I'm installing Windows XP Pro on my 200 Gb now.

This for 2 reasons: 1) I finally found a XP driver for my old Mustek scanner and 2) Windows XP can drive my new 200Gb harddisk flawlessly.

Thank you all for reading and some for their reaction(s) to my question. My (computer) life goes on, uh... in another forum.

Bye, Rudolf.

[Acheron]

My workaround for now is to dualboot between Windows 98 and Windows XP having 2 harddiscs, a Seagate 40 GB and a Maxtor 250 GB. My Maxtor 250 GB is formatted as NTFS to make sure Windows 98 won't ever write to it.

[Eck]

You could purchase something like the Adaptec ASH-1233 Ultra ATA/133 Controller Card.

I found out the hard way that only XP lets you install the driver during installation. You prepare the floppy just like installing the Via Sata driver, and press F6 when XP asks.

But I don't need the thing for XP!

What I tried was installing 98SE with the hard drive hooked up to the PCI controller card. When the first boot occured, there was none. Apparently 98SE can't boot to it until the drivers are installed.

So, what you would do is just partition like 120GB using your big hard drive and having it hooked up to your normal IDE controller. Leave the rest unpartitioned.

Once you have 98SE installed and the motherboard chipset drivers, you shut down, put the PCI card in (leave your HD hooked up to the IDE!), and boot up and install the Adaptec driver.

Then (and here I'm just guessing, as I have yet to do it, but I will) you shut down and move the drive to the PCI controller, enter your bios and set it to boot to either other devices or that drive if it specifies it, and boot away.

Then you'd use something like Partition Magic to expand the partition to the whole drive. The 48LBA site suggests making new partitions, but I'd rather just expand the one.

Set ScanDisc in MSCONFIG Advanced to not run on bad shutdown, as it is not compatible with the large drives. Install something like Norton Utilities 2002 (I've got that, haven't used it in years), and set it's tools to replace 98SE's scandisc and defrag. I plan to try all this and only install those 2 things. I don't want the rest. Certainly not the Protected Recycle Bin thing. I think I have to deselect the unerase thing to leave that out.

I have no idea if this works, and the Adaptec documentation refers you to the readme on the cd fpr information on installing the operating system fresh, but there is none there! They must have left that out of the newer cd's. The only documentation are pdf files which only offer instructions for installing the driver after Windows is already installed. Same on the FAQ's on the Adaptec site.

I got frustrated like you and now have XP on my big drive. This one's a SATA, but the one I mean't for 98SE is a 250GB IDE drive. We'll see if I can get it done on my other box, leaving this intact for the moment just so I have something to plug in and use if it fail's like the last time.

[LLXX]

Now that I see more users experiencing problems with large hard disks I will attempt to accelerate progress on a project I have been working on, to completely rewrite the ESDI_506.PDR to work with large disks properly. I will release it to the public when I'm finished. The problem becomes more and more urgent as disks become bigger and bigger...