might also ask those win9x fanatics at msfn.org
http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-959898seme/

ncmark wrote:

OK - I have a SATA question […]
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OK - I have a SATA question

I have an Asus A7v600 board I am looking to get up and running. It as two SATA pots. OK (no laughing please) I have never messed with SATA before.

Things are not looking good for getting a copy of XP - I may try to get it running with Windows 98.

But my question is this - do I need drivers for the SATA? I am guessing not - I would think that would be handled at the BIOS level. On the other hand, if look at a Windows 98 machine you do see chipset drivers installed.

I am not sure. Any input would be appreciated......

Technically no, as long as you use the IDE mode rather then the enhanced mode that only Windows 2000 or later OS's support.

What will happen in IDE mode is that the SATA interface ports will map over the primary IDE connector while leaving the secondary IDE connector free for devices like optical drives etc.

[Thread moved to Marvin Section]

Also, keep in mind that your mainboard will be probably a SATA 1 (1.5Gb) board, and most modern devices are at least SATA 2 (3.0Gb). There are few devices that autodetect SATA speed, but most SATA 2hard disks have some jumper settings to allow lower speeds (in WD hard disks is labelled OPT1).

If your hard disk is not detected by the BIOS, look for the jumper settings. Also, SATA 3 devices (6.0 Gb) don't support SATA 1 speeds (but I don't think you'll buy a SATA 3 disk for that computer).

I have a A7V600 myself and the controller supports only SATA1 and no auto negotiation. Already newer SATA2 HDDs do not have the SATA1-mode jumper anymore and will not work with the A7V600.
In this case I would recommend to switch to a nForce2 chipset as those are able to use auto negotiation on SATA.

My Windows 98 machine is using a SATA hard drive. There's a special pre-boot thing that comes up before Windows so that the drive can be accessed and configured for RAID prior to Windows taking control, though I don't recall if this was a result of drivers or if the boot sector of the drive always worked this way.

However, if you run DOS mode on your Windows 98 machine you may run into issues due to IRQ conflicts. The SATA controller and my PS/2 mouse share the same IRQ. Windows can manage this without any issues, but DOS doesn't like it when two things run the same IRQ and thus attempting to move the mouse and access the HD at the same time on my Windows 98 system without Windows running almost instantly locks up the computer. :P

Good thing DOSBox works in Windows 98. ;)

It sounds like I will be OK as long as I stick to a an older SATA-1 drive

Windows 98 will not support a huge drive away - I was going to order an older one from Spartantech - probably a 120 GB - I will have to make sure it is SATA-1

Thanks for all the feedback

There are few devices that autodetect SATA speed, but most SATA 2hard disks have some jumper settings to allow lower speeds (in WD hard disks is labelled OPT1).

I know some drives include speed jumpers, but I've never encountered an instance where it was necessary to use them. The only time I've ever seen a SATA2 drive that wouldn't work on a SATA1 contoller, it was on a controller from 2003 where the BIOS didn't support the drive size (2TB), rather than any incompatibility with the speed... and a BIOS update fixed the issue.

There's no need to avoid SATA2 drives, they will work just fine.

as long as you set the controller settings in the BIOS to "legacy" or "IDE" mode, it should install without a hitch... you still will need to install chipset drivers because win98 is too old to know what those new chips are

if you want faster performance, then you want it to be in "native" or "AHCI" mode... this will require drivers to be loaded during install... it's been a long time since I extensively messed with win9x, so I'm not sure how you do that... in NT4/2k/XP you just use an "F6 disk" to get this done... you can also just install windows in IDE mode first, then install the drivers afterwards and enable AHCI mode.... but half the time it's more troublesome to do this than just going through the trouble of installing windows that way the first time around

His board is from way before AHCI times. Also, AHCI and Native mode are not the same thing.

By the way, here's a link to the manual for his board.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt6 … 372_a7v600b.pdf

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I know some drives include speed jumpers, but I've never encountered an instance where it was necessary to use them.

The VIA VT8237 southbridge used on his board won't work with SATA2 drives unless they are configured for SATA1. I've run into this a few times. I believe it will either not recognize the drive, or it will just freeze while detecting it.

The VIA VT8237 southbridge used on his board won't work with SATA2 drives unless they are configured for SATA1.

That's news to me. I've used a fair number of boards with that southbridge and never ran into any such issues. I've had plenty of other problems with that POS, but nothing related to SATA2 compatibility.

Though it's possible there were different revisions of the thing, and I've only happened to encounter later ones which fixed the issue. My experience with it is mainly on boards with the 800-series northbridges, i.e., KT800, K8M800, P4M800, and the gazillion other similar variants.

I have been reading some reviews and am getting the impression this is not such a hot board????

It's not a great board, but it's not bad by any means. It's a budget-class board, so it's not the most featureful and it doesn't have spectacular overclockability, but it should be an OK performer and reasonably stable.

You gotta keep in mind when you read reviews, none of the later Via-based Socket A boards really got much love, primarily because they didn't have anything in particular to recommend them... a basic Nforce2 non-ultra board had a bit better performance and usually more features for about the same price.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

That's news to me. I've used a fair number of boards with that southbridge and never ran into any such issues. I've had plenty of other problems with that POS, but nothing related to SATA2 compatibility.

I ran into problems with WD SATA2 drives on two different boards with VT8237. One was Abit KW7 (KT880) and the other a DFI microATX with K8M800. Maybe drives from other manufacturers work ok, or yeah maybe a revision, or a BIOS tweak. Who knows... VT8237 is the only controller I've run into that has a problem with SATA2 drives.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

It's not a great board, but it's not bad by any means. It's a budget-class board, so it's not the most featureful and it doesn't have spectacular overclockability, but it should be an OK performer and reasonably stable.

You gotta keep in mind when you read reviews, none of the later Via-based Socket A boards really got much love, primarily because they didn't have anything in particular to recommend them... a basic Nforce2 non-ultra board had a bit better performance and usually more features for about the same price.

Hmmmm - one of the reasons I got it was because I have an A7v333 that I have been very happy with. BUT - my subjective impression is that the A7V600 is not as good a board. Among other things, it is made in China....

It doesn't matter where it was made. ASUS boards are usually reliable and functional. Does it work stably?

I haven't tried it yet - I need to get a processor 😦

But the question about SATA has made me realize how far behind the times I really am. This computer, when finished, would still be 6-7 years behind.

It makes me lean more towards buying a computer, for the first time.

Thank you guys for all the feedback - it is appreciated

I have had a A7V600 based system in use for many years with a XP 2400+ and later a XP 3200+. It was not impressivly fast but did run very reliably. The board is now in my storage and I expect it to run still as reliable as before.
About the SATA2 issues, I bought at some time a 2 TB drive from WDC and it didn't worked with the KT8237 and the drive does not have a jumper for SATA1 fallback.
So if you want to use larger HDDs with this southbridge make sure they have a SATA1 fallback jumper setting.

A lot of the newer drives have a firmware option for changing the interface speed, which can be set using the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility.

However, some of the early SATA chips had issues with any drive over 1TB. I don't know if that's the case with the Via controller or not, but I know the Silicon Image controllers were especially bad about it. It's something that can usually be fixed with a ROM update, but the problem is that an onboard controller has its ROM integrated as part of the main BIOS, meaning that you pretty much have to modify the system BIOS to replace the old option ROM with a newer version... not a task you want to attempt if you're not familiar with BIOS modding.