Super Socket 7 Windows 98 Build Issues \ VOGONS

Super Socket 7 Windows 98 Build Issues

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First post, by Jonnyboy161

Posted on 2020-05-24, 17:21

Jonnyboy161 Offline

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Specs:
Motherboard: RedFox AGP-ALi (Baby AT)
Northbridge: M1542 A1
Southbridge: M1543C B1
CPU: AMD K6-2 475MHz running at 500MHz (i've tried setting setting to 450MHz) 2.2v
VIDEO: Asus FX 5200 AGP
RAM: 2x128MB PC 133(Passed multiple memtests)
SOUND: Audigy Zs 2
HDD: Old 30GB WD IDE drive (I've also tried another 40GB WD IDE drive)

First of all I can't seem to find the chipset drivers for this board. I attempted to install the "ALi and ULi Integrated Chipset Installer V2.20 Final" as that is the only one that seemed close to what I needed, but it fails install. It says the program performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. (SETUP cased an invalid page fault in module KERNAL.32.DLL at 0167:bff886df). Win98 preinstalls chipset drivers for the M1541 which from what I understand is the ATX chipset.

I found and installed sound drivers with no issues. I tried both v71.84 and v56.64 drivers for the FX 5200, and both installed fine.

System is mostly stable in Win98 with zero crashes when not in a game(I even tried WinXP for fun and it was very slow of course, but it was stable). It can vary from anywhere from a couple mins to an hour before it freezes up in Quake II.
When I say it freezes it just locks up with quake frozen with the music still going for a couple mins before it goes silent leaving me to simply kill the power. It has blue screened on me a couple of times outside of games saying "A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C004573E in VXD VFAT(01) + 0003ED2. "

The behavior of this system leads me to believe that either that chipset driver, or the graphics card are causing the crashing. I have heard that SS7 boards can be picky about AGP cards.

I'm new to installing Win98 so I could use help. I've included pictures of a couple of the error messages and of the motherboard. Thanks in advance.

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Reply 1 of 8, by ShovelKnight

Posted on 2020-05-24, 17:35

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There is no such things as an a ATX chipset 😀 M1542 is just a different revision of Aladdin V.

Personally I found that the stock Windows 98 drivers for this chipset seem to be the most stable. And using AGP GPUs, especially from NVidia, is a big no. The only AGP GPU that works well with SS7 boards is Voodoo 3.

Reply 2 of 8, by jakethompson1

Posted on 2020-05-24, 17:43

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What is the bus speed set to and what speed are the memory DIMMs?
Edit: I see you said 133. I assume the bus is 100?

Reply 3 of 8, by Jonnyboy161

Posted on 2020-05-24, 18:12

Jonnyboy161 Offline

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ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-05-24, 17:35:

There is no such things as an a ATX chipset 😀 M1542 is just a different revision of Aladdin V.

Personally I found that the stock Windows 98 drivers for this chipset seem to be the most stable. And using AGP GPUs, especially from NVidia, is a big no. The only AGP GPU that works well with SS7 boards is Voodoo 3.

I will try to get a good PCI graphics card to try since Voodoo cards are pretty expensive. Thank you for the info on the chipset drivers.

Any suggestions on good PCI graphics cards?

Last edited by Jonnyboy161 on 2020-05-24, 18:13. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 8, by Jonnyboy161

Posted on 2020-05-24, 18:13

Jonnyboy161 Offline

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-05-24, 17:43:

What is the bus speed set to and what speed are the memory DIMMs?
Edit: I see you said 133. I assume the bus is 100?

That would be a correct assumption. The bus speed is indeed set to 100MHz, sorry I didn't include that in the original post.

Reply 5 of 8, by brian105

Posted on 2020-05-24, 18:57

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I'd wager the overclock being your issue with stability. I tried overclocking my 450 to 500, and I got the same kind of errors in Windows. Not enough to completely make it unstable, but the errors would pop up occasionally, and DOS was stable.

Presario 5284: K6-2+ 550 ACZ @ 600 2v, 256MB PC133, GeForce4 MX 440SE 64MB, MVP3, Maxtor SATA/150 PCI card, 16GB Sandisk U100 SATA SSD
2007 Desktop: Athlon 64 X2 6000+, Asus M2v-MX SE, Foxconn 7950GT 512mb, 4GB DDR2 800, Audigy 2 ZS, WinME/XP

Reply 6 of 8, by Jonnyboy161

Posted on 2020-05-24, 19:21

Jonnyboy161 Offline

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brian105 wrote on 2020-05-24, 18:57:

I'd wager the overclock being your issue with stability. I tried overclocking my 450 to 500, and I got the same kind of errors in Windows. Not enough to completely make it unstable, but the errors would pop up occasionally, and DOS was stable.

Setting it to 450MHz yielded the same results.

Reply 7 of 8, by jakethompson1

Posted on 2020-05-24, 19:25

jakethompson1 Offline

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Yes, but he also said he tried under-clocking.
Johnnyboy161, I don't know if you've done much with Linux, but if so, a classic test of hardware like this was to rebuild the kernel as that heavily uses the memory and CPU, causing intermittent issues to crop up. If you find an appropriate distribution (perhaps Red Hat [not Enterprise!] Linux 6.2) and can get gcc to crash building the kernel, you know it's a hardware issue and not an OS issue.
As to a PCI graphics card, some Newegg sellers still sell brand new PCI graphics cards, at least some of which claim to be Win98 (or even Win95) compatible. I personally have a Radeon 9000 in my Win98SE machine. Its only drawback is it's a little glitchy in DOS games (Commander Keen specifically)

Reply 8 of 8, by Jonnyboy161

Posted on 2020-05-24, 19:55

Jonnyboy161 Offline

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-05-24, 19:25:

Yes, but he also said he tried under-clocking.
Johnnyboy161, I don't know if you've done much with Linux, but if so, a classic test of hardware like this was to rebuild the kernel as that heavily uses the memory and CPU, causing intermittent issues to crop up. If you find an appropriate distribution (perhaps Red Hat [not Enterprise!] Linux 6.2) and can get gcc to crash building the kernel, you know it's a hardware issue and not an OS issue.
As to a PCI graphics card, some Newegg sellers still sell brand new PCI graphics cards, at least some of which claim to be Win98 (or even Win95) compatible. I personally have a Radeon 9000 in my Win98SE machine. Its only drawback is it's a little glitchy in DOS games (Commander Keen specifically)

I have used Linux for the past year to code some ARMv8 assembly and some C++. I might try out your recommendation. I have found some cheap FX 5500 PCI cards on eBay, and I think I will be able to live with the glitchy DOS games performance. Thank you for the recommendation.

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