Try setting Sata to "IDE Mode" in bios [or whatever the terminology equivalent is]. That's what I do.

How big is the partition? Windows 98 doesn't understand LBA48 without a patch.

MSFN forum pages have all the necessary info on the topic. (Software tools as well.)
On one of my PCs, I was using the Terabyte Plus Package by R. Loew for a while for the same purpose but later, for the sake of simplicity, placed an IDE HDD as primary master and booted 98SEtoME from there.

To install MS-DOS 7.1 on a large HDD (320 GB) I used SUPER FDISK (a boot floppy) and created a single 30GB FAT22 partition.

And that should work.

I would not go larger and would not create more partitions.

^ I just use DOS from 98SE with FAT32 partitions since it offers native support for it... I have used a single fat32 partitioned 80GB HDD without any problems whatsoever for several years now... the only "problem" is that most programs will report free space as 2GB only, but that is to be expected since they are not fat32-aware...

New information:
I finished installing Win98 on the IDE drive. Next I wanted to use the SATA (formatted with FAT32) to store all the installers for programs I plan to add. When I connected the SATA drive I encountered a screen telling me something about child devices mixing 32-bit drivers and compatibility drivers, this is unsupported, Windows will now use only compatibility drivers for all child devices. When Win98 rebooted the SATA drive was accessible as D:\, however the optical drive will no longer show up within Windows even after the SATA drive is remove. And I don't know how to switch back to 32-bit drivers. If the same occurred when the SATA drive was being used to boot I understand why it would freeze at screen it did.

tincup wrote:

Try setting Sata to "IDE Mode" in bios [or whatever the terminology equivalent is]. That's what I do.

The closest that can find is ATA/IDE Configuration.
DISABLED: All IDE resources disabled.
LEGACY: Up to 2 IDE chanels enabled for OS requiring legacy IDE operation.
ENHANCED: All SATA and PATA resources enabled.
I have this set to Enhanced. I don't to see a way to configure SATA separately.

For an individual drive connected through SATA I have options for:
Type [Auto] [User]
LBA/Large Mode [Disabled] [Auto]
Block Mode [Disabled] [Auto]
PIO Mode [Disabled] [0] [1] [2] [3] [4]
DMA Mode [Auto] [SWDMA0] [SWDMA1] [SWDMA1] [MWDMA0] [MWDMA1] [MWDMA2] [UDMA0] [UDMA1] [UDMA1] [UDMA3] [UDMA4] [UDMA5]
S.M.A.R.T. [Auto] [Disabled] [Enabled]
All of them are set to Auto.

squareguy wrote:

How big is the partition? Windows 98 doesn't understand LBA48 without a patch.

Using Acronis Disk Director 10 I created 1 partition that is hidden with 20GB of unallocated space before it. Windows 98 formatted and installed to the unallocated space. I later plan to delete the hidden partition, make a backup partition at the end of the drive, and resize the main partition to fill the remaining space. Having done this many times before with Windows 98 makes me think there is something special about SATA that is causing me to encounter roadblocks now (see new information above). Currently the partition is only 20GB.

Jolaes76 wrote:

MSFN forum pages have all the necessary info on the topic. (Software tools as well.)

Link to relevant information, please?

Mau1wurf1977
keropi
Sorry, I don't follow.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

...The closest that can find is ATA/IDE Configuration. DISABLED: All IDE resources disabled. LEGACY: Up to 2 IDE chanels enabled […]
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tincup wrote:

Try setting Sata to "IDE Mode" in bios [or whatever the terminology equivalent is]. That's what I do.

...The closest that can find is ATA/IDE Configuration.
DISABLED: All IDE resources disabled.
LEGACY: Up to 2 IDE chanels enabled for OS requiring legacy IDE operation.
ENHANCED: All SATA and PATA resources enabled....

Give the LEGACY option a shot. The manual for one of my older sata motherboards indicates something like this setting for W98se. It constrains the number of channels but allows it to work. However you may be out of luck without an IDE Mode for the sata setup - that setting is the usually the kicker. Track down a PDF for your motherboard if possible.

Also, in case your aren't, install W98se on a partition no larger than 138gb, and keep any other partitions it will encounter under this too.

Google MSFN forum - it does have everything as Jolaes notes.. good luck.

Switch IDE configuration to "Legacy", you should get an option to swap in the SATA connections as either your primary or secondary IDE controller instead of one of the PATA channels like below. Set it to one of the last two options.

Legacy IDE Channels
• PATA Pri only
• PATA Sec only
• PATA PRI and Sec (default)
• SATA P0/P1 only
• SATA P0/P1, PATA Sec
• SATA P0/P1, PATA Pri

Technical Background: Intel ICH5 boards predate AHCI, so they normally present on the onboard SATA connectors as a 3rd IDE controller, but at a non-standard hardware address (nevermind that there is official IDE assignments for this setup, just not very supported) . Windows 2000/XP has no problem with this as its IDE driver supports non-standard resource assignments. Windows 98's driver only recongizes IDE devices at the traditional hardware addresses (1F0h/IRQ 14 and 170h/IRQ15). The BIOS legacy setting gives you the option to map in the SATA ports as either the primary or secondary IDE channel and disables the PATA channel normally used. You can't use all three channels in Windows 98 as a result.

It does work in DOS however, since the Int 13h routine in the BIOS supports the drive (so you can boot off of it in "Enhanced" mode). Thats why the Windows 98 install worked fine, but it locked up when starting Windows. Control was passed from Int 13h to Windows' protected mode driver and it chocked.

I thought Legacy would disable SATA entirely. What it does is give me another menu item.
Legacy IDE Channels [PATA Pri only] [PATA sec only] [PATA Pri and Sec] [SATA P0/P1 only] [SATA P0/P1, PATA Sec] [SATA P0/P1, PATA Pri]
I'm continuing with SATA P0/P1, PATA Sec. Hopefully this will also take the IDE setting into consideration.

And my intake fan isn't spinning.

There is always the option to use a PCI SATA controller!

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

I'm continuing with SATA P0/P1, PATA Sec. Hopefully this will also take the IDE setting into consideration.

And my intake fan isn't spinning.

With that option, the SATA connectors become the primary IDE controller, the primary PATA channel on the motherboard will be disabled. Your drives on the secondary PATA channel will continue to work as usual.

Basically you are limited to the original 4 device limit of W98se and 'IDE Mode' maps the sata drives to IDE addresses, correct? That's been my understanding.

I don't want to hijack this thread but since we're on a 'W98se on modern PC' kick - how about pci-e? Getting a pci-e video card running has been the big stumbling block for me: 7800GTX/256mb pci-e in my case. Is your board AGP or pci-e [or both]?

tincup wrote:

Basically you are limited to the original 4 device limit of W98se and 'IDE Mode' maps the sata drives to IDE addresses, correct? That's been my understanding.

That appears to be an accurate assessment of the situation.

tincup wrote:

I don't want to hijack this thread but since we're on a 'W98se on modern PC' kick - how about pci-e? Getting a pci-e video card running has been the big stumbling block for me: 7800GTX/256mb pci-e in my case. Is your board AGP or pci-e [or both]?

I wouldn't call the Intel D875PBZ modern. It's a Socket 478, Pentium 4. The two SATA connectors on it were a surprise. It's AGP with 5 PCI slots. Still quite an improvement from the board I was using before it.

IIRC there is no Win9x version of Intel Application Accelerator for ICH5/ICH5R. So - the last southbridge with a 48-bit LBA support for Win9x is ICH4.

Time to derail my own tread. So far that setting has the SATA and optical drives working together. I'm trying to fing the chipset drivers for the board. I thought this was it.
Click Here

Operating Systems: Windows 98 SE
This download is valid for the product(s) listed below.
Intel® Desktop Board D875PBZ

But attempting to run the file in Win98 results in this.
The INF_AllOS_8.3.1.1009_PV_Intel.exe file is linked to missing export SHELL32.DLL:SHCreateDirectoryExA.

Some searching revealed that there was an -A flag to extract the files it would install. Including a readme.txt which says:

2. One of the following operating systems must be fully installed and running on the system before installing this sof […]
Show full quote

2. One of the following operating systems must be
fully installed and running on the system
before installing this software:

Microsoft Windows* Server 2003
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition*
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition*
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft windows Vista

Also "* Target Chipset#: X38 & 3200/3210 Chipset" but according to a manual PDF the Intel D875PBZ uses 875P Chipset.

Device Manager shows 3 items with question marks.
PCI Ethernet Controller
PCI System Management Bus
Unknown Device

PCI System Management Bus appears to have found a driver by pointing it to the extracted files but complained about other files that could not be found.

er um... well that's sorta what I meant by 'W98 on a *modern* PC" 😀

I'm dueling it out with a similar pci-e setup right now. Yes the motherboard and other hardware are 10-15 years old, but even that's but quite a bit past W98's "serve by" date... On the bright side XP runs absolutely great on this rig so if I don't succeed in my quest for a W98se "monster" I'll have a pretty neat soon-to-be retro XP rig.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Time to derail my own tread. So far that setting has the SATA and optical drives working together. I'm trying to fing the chipse […]
Show full quote

Time to derail my own tread. So far that setting has the SATA and optical drives working together. I'm trying to fing the chipset drivers for the board. I thought this was it.
Click Here

Operating Systems: Windows 98 SE
This download is valid for the product(s) listed below.
Intel® Desktop Board D875PBZ

But attempting to run the file in Win98 results in this.
The INF_AllOS_8.3.1.1009_PV_Intel.exe file is linked to missing export SHELL32.DLL:SHCreateDirectoryExA.

I use this version for my ASUS P4P800 SE (Intel 865PE chipset). This is the last version for Win9x, according to Intel's site search system.

Gamecollector wrote:

I use this version for my ASUS P4P800 SE (Intel 865PE chipset). This is the last version for Win9x, according to Intel's site search system.

After running infinst_enu.exe there were 2 dozen or so New Hardware Found boxes and now the system has been stuck on the Windows is shutting down screen for the past hour. So I'm going to say that wasn't the right driver either.

With all the custom packs and other win9x update projects out there someone needs to fix some the driver issues so that sata and pci-e works out of the box. There are modded versions of xp out there that have native sata drivers (sp3) already included. It is annoying to have a 9x5 series board yet 9x doesn't support pci-e.