Modern motherboards which are working with Windows 98 (discussion)

[AnX]

Hi everyone.

 

I’ve recently been trying to install windows 98 se on a dell precision t5810 I picked up, just out of curiosity. So the install goes how you would expect it - except for the fact that once you install the NUSB drivers all of the USB ports stop getting recognized by windows 98. My question, is there a fix for this that doesn’t involve adding in another pci(e) card? (It does have a pci slot). The system has an intel c610/x99 chipset for reference.

[ruthan]

Has it PCI slot, or only PCI-E? If PCI one it would be cheaper, if PCI-E there are also USB2 controllers.

[AnX]

26 minutes ago, ruthan said:

Has it PCI slot, or only PCI-E? If PCI one it would be cheaper, if PCI-E there are also USB2 controllers.

It has a PCI slot too. But why doesn’t the onboard usb work? Is there a limitation?

[ruthan]

First of all without MB name / specs.. nobody can say. If it has only USB3 controllers, what is probably they simply arent backward compatible without drivers and there are only XP+ drivers, and for Intel only WIn7+

[AnX]

8 minutes ago, ruthan said:

First of all without MB name / specs.. nobody can say. If it has only USB3 controllers, what is probably they simply arent backward compatible without drivers and there are only XP+ drivers, and for Intel only WIn7+

There are usb2.0 ports too. As a matter of fact, the motherboard can completely fall back to usb2.0. It works just fine under windows xp and 2000 without any drivers (except for the annoying win2k usb bug)

 

this is a dell precision t5810, the chipset is intel c610/x99, and the socket is lga2011-3.

Edited May 11, 2020 by AnX

[ruthan]

This not MB types its just machine name, to you have google manual and see mb specs details.

  If you mean, that ports are just black, no blue.. it doesnt means anything they are / could be just probably connected to some UBS3 controller, its normal.. parent controller is important, no just port color visual. Intel USB3 controller has possiblity of lots USB2 ports.

  Here are X99 specs for Intel stuff:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81761/intel-x99-chipset.html

 up to 6 USB3 ports and up to 14 USB2 ports. - all of these are using Intel USB3 drivers. So far i never saw X99 board with native USB2 onboard controller.

[AnX]

2 minutes ago, ruthan said:

This not MB types its just machine name, to you have google manual and see mb specs details.

  If you mean, that ports are just black, no blue.. it doesnt means anything they are / could be just probably connected to some UBS3 controller, its normal.. parent controller is important, no just port color visual. Intel USB3 controller has possiblity of lots USB2 ports.

  Here are X99 specs for Intel stuff:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81761/intel-x99-chipset.html

 up to 6 USB3 ports and up to 14 USB2 ports. - all of these are using Intel USB3 drivers. So far i never saw X99 board with native USB2 onboard controller.

I’ve already mentioned that windows 2000 and xp see the usb2.0 controller with their own built in drivers. I’m just intrigued why windows 98 doesn’t once you install the NUSB package.

[ruthan]

Unless we will know exact controller type.. its hard to say.

[AnX]

54 minutes ago, ruthan said:

Unless we will know exact controller type.. its hard to say.

00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
    Subsystem: Dell C610/X99 series chipset USB Enhanced Host Controller
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18, NUMA node 0
    Memory at f7138000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
    Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
    Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0
    Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features
    Kernel driver in use: ehci-pci

This is what i get on lspci -v with Linux. I'm planning to KVM/Passthrough windows 98 anyway, this was just a small experiment to see if I could run the OS on bare-metal.

Edited May 11, 2020 by AnX
Fixed formatting.

[ruthan]

Hmm, im not aware that Dell made own USB controller, try to post Device manager Hardware IDs.

Otherwise Windows 98 pass through look at this:

https://www.win-raid.com/t6017f53-Windows-SE-on-Modern-Hardware-5.html#msg105571

[Goodmaneuver]

The latest NUSB has a WinME file and installing a previous version of NUSB might fix this as the ME file may need  accompanying ME files.

VIA USB driver files for Win9x should have suffix 11 which are the latest ones and are required for some game controllers. I need these for the USB steering wheel and USB hand held game controller. The updated drivers are also best in a general sense as the original WinME divers only accessed up to 32GB.

The latest VIA USB divers are contained in VIA_USB2.0_v2.7.zip. Link https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/1210/

Edited May 11, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[AnX]

21 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

The latest NUSB has a WinME file and installing a previous version of NUSB might fix this as the ME file may need  accompanying ME files.

VIA USB driver files for Win9x should have suffix 11 which are the latest ones and are required for some game controllers. I need these for the USB steering wheel and USB hand held game controller. The updated drivers are also best in a general sense as the original WinME divers only accessed up to 32GB.

The latest VIA USB divers are contained in VIA_USB2.0_v2.7.zip. Link https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/1210/

Thanks, I'll test this out later. Windows 98 corrupted itself when I went to install the SE-SP3, and I've had some other work, which is why I've been holding off thus far.

[pangoomis]

Enhanced Host Controller means USB 2.0, therefore it should be able to work with 98SE. (note the kernel driver: it's ehci-pci not xhci)

Which unofficial USB drivers are you using? Try these:

http://www.mdgx.com/spx/NUSB.EXE

http://shell.stare.pro/~mrmateczko/U98SEUSB.EXE (part of the unofficial SP3, not an install option in the INFEX window)

Edited May 14, 2020 by MrMateczko

[Goodmaneuver]

There are a lot of Errata in the chipset spec update https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/chipsets/x99-chipset-pch-spec-update.html mainly due to USB problems.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Carlos S. M.]

I recently got Windows 98 SE installed and working on a Gigabyte GA-EP41-UD3L (Intel G41, ICH7)

Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
4 GB DDR2 800
nVidia Geforce 7800 GTX with modded nvidia 81.98
120 GB HDD
Realtek 8111C/D (works)

Realtek ALC888 (doesn't work)

pic: https://imgur.com/a/OJZf7Yk