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Modern motherboards which are working with Windows 98 (discussion)

Rjecina
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vick1111

vick1111

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Posted

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Compatibility report for Asrock 4coredual-sata2 -Intel core 2 quad processor -2 Gb of DDRII -

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I have now windows 98 up and running fast.

I was not able to make the on board sound card to work with the Via driver: (Hardware not recognized).

I have upgraded to service pack 2 for 98 SE english Version over the Windows98Se italian Version without problems.

The problems I have had installing Windows 98 are related to the use of 2 Gb of ram and possibly with The ATi RAdeon 9600 card I am using on this board (Even if I believe that the use of another graphic card would not solve problems):

(take a look at: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...109574&st=0

)

I can use 1022 Mb of Ram even if the system does not behave perfectly cause this small problems are present:

I cannot install XMSDSK.

I am able to start 2 (only two) fresh dos windows before I get the out of memory at the 3rd dos istance.

Sometime when many programs are already open I cannot just start DOS.

I believe that a wiser installation could have solved this small problems,

unfortunatly I Have found the only useful piece of information in russian and too late :

http://www.ixbt.com/soft/windows9x-memory.shtml

using Google translation I was able to understand a way to install windows 98 on new motherboards with large memory.

Maybe someone on here can experiment this and tell us if it works:

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Windows 98 Installation tip on system with large memory (above 1Gb)

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after formatting and before installation put in the disk the windows directory and the system.ini file with the following entry:

[386Enh]

MaxPhysPage=10000

This would limit the amount of memory that windows sees from the very start and possibly give a better installation.

Only after installation of all phisical devices and virtual disks (XMSDSK) remove this entry and substitute with the maximum value that can still make the system boot normally.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is now too late for me to try this attempts cause I have now an almost full functional and fast windows 98 system that satisfies me.

I plan to still use this pc and windows 98 in the next 5 or 6 years.

next month I am going to get a second Sata disk (the first Sata disk I have is dedicated to Linux) and will experiment Fat32 on it with the use of VIa drivers.

Happy new Year to everyone!

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nicke85

nicke85

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I have just buyed and tested 'Biostar GF7100P-M7S' work perfect with unofficial nVidia drivers.

Integrated graphic is nVidia 7100 and chipset is nForce 630i.

P4 3.2 GHz (64bit) s.775 fsb800 work also great on this board (on 32bit) and it has DDR2 with 800MHz!

Only sound chip is Realtek ALC662 HD 5.1 and must have another sound card.

This board is also very cheap about 40-50 euros.

Fastest chipset,DDR2 800,GeForce 7100 with 600MHz core and 512 shared memory,very cheap seems that this is the best buy for 98SE lovers!

I hope it help! :hello:

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  • 2 weeks later...
Rjecina

Rjecina

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MBO Socket 775 which are still in shops:

Abit I-S71, SiS 671

Gigabyte VM900M (VIA P4M900) GPU

MSI PM9M-V (VIA P4M900) GPU

ECS 671T-M (SiS 671FX) GPU

ECS P4M800Pro-M2 (Via P4M800Pro) AGP (?)

ECS P4M890T-M (Via P4M890) --It is having really bad GPU

Foxconn P4M9007MB-8EKRS2H (ViaP4M900)

ASRock 4CoreDX90-VSTA R2.0 (VIA P4M900) Core 2 Quad support

AsRock 775i65G

Chipset information:

Via P4M900 chipset is having direct x 9.0 integrated GPU. This chipset is having Windows Vista logo. Problem is that for this chipset GPU we must use drivers of CN896 chipset, because they have similar GPU ( both are having Via chrome 9 GPU). For other drivers we need to use normal drivers from Via site.

Vis K8M890 chipset is having direct x 9.0 integrated GPU and Windows Vista logo.

SiS 671FX chipset GPU is having direct X 9.0 support and Windows Vista logo

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nicke85

nicke85

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Posted (edited)

This is maybe the leader mbo series for 98SE:

Biostar TForce4 U AM2

Biostar TForce U 775

nForce 4 chipset

For AM2 and 775 CPU

AC 97' Audio codec X2

Dual DDR2 4x 800MHz up to 4GB

2X ATA interface port

In stores still avaiable!!! And very cheap with 3 years of warranty. :hello:

b20070507_10.jpg

Edited by nicke85
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Rjecina

Rjecina

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It is important to understand that there is no offical Windows 98 drivers for nvidia 4 chipset and for PCI-E video cards !!

If somebody want to play with unofficial nVidia drivers and then with unofficial PCI-E video cards drivers he must understand that he is playing with sistem and that nobody can say if this will work OK or not !

In this situation must important question is always which video card will work, and which will refuse to work ?

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dirtyoldm

dirtyoldm

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Compatibility report - 98SE on Asus M2V full size ATX with Athlon 64 X2

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was this thread that led me to get an M2V, so here's my results.

You can still find the M2V in Canada but they are gone in USA.

The M2V uses a crappy AMI BIOS which allows only 1 floppy and

doesn't blank the monitor or turn the drives off in DOS.

Have BIOS rev 2001, 1GB DDR2 800 RAM, Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.5 GHz) ADO 65W ver #ADO4800DDBOX.

Running dual boot 98SE (IE removed with 98Lite) and XP Pro SP2.

Both were installed by Ghosting from a drive from an old VIA chipset mbd.

For 98SE we used the 'new profile' trick from

http://www.motherboard.windowsreinstall.com/win98me.htm

It took forever and some blood pressure pills but eventually worked.

98SE cannot use 1GB RAM. In SYSTEM.INI under [386enh] added

MaxPhysPage=39000 (tells it to use 998 MB). System shows 898.0MB.

Word is you can use anything under 40000.

XP chugged and just booted. Installed XP drivers:

LPT1 had '!', says 'DMA 04 is being used by DMA controller' (BIOS shows DMA3).

Fixed after change in BIOS to 'EPP + ECP'

VIA Chipset driver, did both Machine.INF and IDE driver - gave cryptic 'Fail

to Installed' but didn't say which! Seems not to matter.

Asus PC Probe gave 'ACPI driver install fail - not for this model'.

Tried SpeedFan 4.34b26, it worked crudely but in XP only.

98SE:

-----

No 98SE driver was ever written as far as I can find for the onboard Realtek ALC660

sound chip or the Attansic L1 NIC. We used cheap add-in cards and disabled onboard ones in BIOS.

Got a Sapphire AMD/ATI Radeon X550 128 MB PCIe w/TV, VGA and DVI output for about $40.

It has no fan and got quite hot, so we mounted a small ball-bearing fan on its heat

sink, 4.8 CFM 5000 RPM. Works like a charm but wipes out the adjacent PCI slot.

Catalyst 6.2 works in 98SE. Got it at

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/98me/radeonaiw-98me.html

The 8237A's USB 2 requires drivers for 9x - and none are included.

Got VIA driver v2.42L, VIAUSB2V242L.zip.

With just the \Win98&ME files on a floppy, Add New Hdw, point to the USB device,

not the last two Unknown Devices.

Wants USB2VIA.cat, which is absent. Told it Skip, twice.

Device Mangler now has 'VIA PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller'.

It works.

Programmable Interrupt Controller is VEN_1106&DEV_5351

VIA VT3351 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller (caused sleep problem).

Found it in \VIAMACH\VIAMACH.INF (from motherboard CD).

Patched VIAMACH.INF by remarking out 'Exclude from Select' line.

Now Dev Mgr\Properties\Reinstall Driver works.

There are still 2 '?' Devices in Device Manager.

One is the SATA in the VIA chipset, DEV_0591.

The other shows Resources = Mem FED0 0000+, IRQ 0, IRQ 8.

I have no idea what that is, but it doesn't seem to hurt anything.

Now both partitions work fine, no problems in XP; with these inconveniences in 98SE:

Using only IDE hard drives so far. The front SATA connectors may work in

98SE, the CD has VIA RAID drivers for 98SE - but not tried.

Apparantly the 2 rear SATA connectors run by the Marvell 1621 (88SE6121) controller are hopeless in 98SE.

Disabled the Marvell in BIOS setup.

Edited by dirtyoldm
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  • 2 weeks later...
tonich

tonich

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Posted (edited)
Maybe last new MBO which support Windows 98 SE has come to the market. This is:

AsRock ALiveDual-eSATA2

This MBO support new AMD Phenom microprocessors !!!

nForce3 Chipset is not good for Win98…

No benefits of Phenom Quad Core under Win98, either

You should not mess up with this MB under 98, I suppose… its not worth spending money for hardware, you cannot take advantage of…

A guess, the best option for the time being is a cheap ECS P4M800Pro-M2 or Foxconn P4M9007MB with Celeron Conroe-L, which can handle BSEL mod too. The combo price should be around $100 :rolleyes:

Edited by tonich
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vick1111

vick1111

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Maybe last new MBO which support Windows 98 SE has come to the market. This is:

AsRock ALiveDual-eSATA2

This MBO support new AMD Phenom microprocessors !!!

nForce3 Chipset is not good for Win98…

No benefits of Phenom Quad Core under Win98, either

You should not mess up with this MB under 98, I suppose… its not worth spending money for hardware, you cannot take advantage of…

A guess, the best option for the time being is a cheap ECS P4M800Pro-M2 or Foxconn P4M9007MB with Celeron Conroe-L, which can handle BSEL mod too. The combo price should be around $100 :rolleyes:

From the point of view of multiboot users I guess the point is not what is:

"the best MB tailored for Win98"

In fact for me and other users it is all about:

"the best Mb for Linux and XP (or Vista) still compatible with WIn98" !

(By the way I do not even understand your point of view : If I had to run a simple Win98 OS on a cheap PC I would look directly at the used market.)

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tonich

tonich

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By the way I do not even understand your point of view : If I had to run a simple Win98 OS on a cheap PC I would look directly at the used market.

You don’t have to. ;)

Simply I’d take advantage of extremely cheap DDR2 (much cheaper than DDR or SDRAM) plus cheap and very fast Celeron Conroe.

Indeed, I mean single Win98 OS. I’m not moving on XP soon, anyway! :hello:

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thematrixlives

thematrixlives

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I'm just curious. Has anyone thought about Running Win98/SE in virtual PC or VMWare with XP as the host OS? I've done that when I needed to run Win98 testing for apps and such and found it to be adequate. However, I have not tried playing games through the virtual PC? I imagine it won't be so great. With today's lower cost boards, memory and processors, it makes more sense now to virtualize other OSs.

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j7n

j7n

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I haven't heard of good quality DOS soundcard & VESA video emulation, except VDMSound which I was unable to install properly. VMware 5.5 certainly doesn't have any good audio for Win98. The driver I found is unstable, has no MIDI, and no legacy support. Under VMWare the Windows GUI is does not work smoothly, so even if VESA was available it would play at least as jerky and unsuitable for gaming experience.

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  • 2 weeks later...
nathan bean

nathan bean

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Posted (edited)

ECS EliteGroup motherboard RS482-M754 :thumbup

I just got this one working with Win98SE yesterday... bought it at a Microcenter Store, so it's retail available... anyone else tried this one previously?

I still need to get the display drivers sorted out... i had a better resolution on my older AE31 MOBO from FIC... but it died...

Once i decide I'm keeping this one... i'm pondering hatcheting down the size the OS footprint with 98Lite...

3:12 est I successfully updated ATI video divers with ATI's Catalyst 6.2 drivers and can now fully support up to 1600 x 1200 (but my monitor doesn't.... new monitor time :D

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/98me/radeonaiw-98me.html

the remaining question marks are:

PCI System management

PCI Universal Serial Bus

Edited by nathan bean
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