In my experience, they are referred to by socket number, or type, as in SlotA, Slot1, not by CPU. And I noticed the same thing recently. I was building my own to some extent before and after the 486s, and there were none (MB drivers) for 386s.

To put it in a most crude and basic way, the higher the level of the Operating System, the more information it needs and collects from the motherboard.

By the time Win98SE came out, it already supported many mobos out there before it, and came prepared with many common drivers with it. Most of the time you don't need to supply additional drivers.

I have installed all versions of Win9x on many different systems ranging from Socket 5 to LGA 775 based motherboards. So far, the only drivers I needed to supply to the OS during installation are for the Graphics, Sound and Network cards. And occasionally the Intel chipset inf., which is provided by the motherboard vendor.

But still, my experience during installation of a Win9x OS is acutely limited to Intel and nVidia based chipsets and Socket 5 systems and above only.

Since the Advanced/EV uses an intel chipset, you should have luck finding an older edition of the intel chipset .inf drivers for Win98.

I don't believe you'll *need* them. However, there may be some performance improvements gained from using the appropriate Intel chipset drivers.

Also, in some cases, there are system devices that show up in the unknown category of the device manager that may not be critical, but nonetheless, won't be recognized until you install the chipset drivers.

Hmm so if they exist, how come intel's website doesn't have these .inf drivers?? Is intel just a shoddy company when it comes to customer support? Seems like it would require little effort to keep a few old drivers available...

I didn't have too hard a time finding them:

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/sb/CS-022821.htm

Just follow the link for Intel 400 Series chipsets near the bottom of the page. You'll have to drill down a bit, but they are there.

However, I just looked up the Advanced/EV. It's a i430FX board. This is one of Intel's first chipsets for Pentium processors. I'm not sure that you need anything from Intel for that chipset. I do believe all the system devices are supported out of the box in Win98+.

Thanks! I guess I still need to get better at internet-ing 🤣. Or get better at dealing w/ intel's crappy website...

Seriously, their site is so retarded! I go to download center and type in advanced/ev into the obvious field which says "Enter product name, filename or keywords", and it gives me 0 results! Then I type in the exact same thing into the more general search in the top-right corner, and then it does give me a link which takes me here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_result … =All&submit=Go!

And that page doesn't mention anything about that what you dug up, so I figured that was all they have...

Anyhow, *end rant*

Another small question, if you please: why do you call it i430FX instead of just 430FX? When I run pc wizard on the oldie comp it says 430FX for chipset, without the i.

P.S. I don't know how to make that url a working link... I'm pretty sure i did the syntax correctly.

wtf why is my post coming up blank??

Thanks! I guess I still need to get better at internet-ing 🤣. Or get better at dealing w/ intel's crappy website...

Seriously, their site is so retarded! I go to download center and type in advanced/ev into the obvious field which says "Enter product name, filename or keywords", and it gives me 0 results! Then I type in the exact same thing into the more general search in the top-right corner, and then it does give me a link which takes me here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_result … s=All&submit=Go!

And that page doesn't mention anything about that what you dug up, so I figured there was nothing else available...

Anyhow, *end rant*

Another small question, if you please: why do you call it i430FX instead of just 430FX? When I run pc wizard on the oldie comp it says 430FX for chipset, without the i.