VOGONS


First post, by Holering

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Windows 98SE seems to be the best supported legacy OS for 9X games and DOS IMO. It has strong third party support and you can boot into DOS no problem. It's also flexible with drivers and supports USB just fine. If you bought a shiny new AM3+ system (this guide was tested with AM3+) or similar for Windows 98SE, then proceed to install 98SE 😀. Just don't blame me if you erase your 4 terabyte HDD with all your precious stuff, along with blowing up your PC, catching your house on fire and killing people around you; okay?

Prerequisites:
Windows 98SE with a legal product key
UMBPCI_E http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/umbpci_e.zip
HIRAM.EXE http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/hiram.zip
HIMEMX.EXE http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/fre … official-rp.zip
FAT32 Partition with 137GB or less HDD space
Blank CDRW
BIOS that can boot from cd-rom drive.
IDE emulation via bios (for HDD controller and CD-ROM drive controller)
Legacy USB support for keyboard and mouse

Extract umbpci_e.zip, hiram.zip and himem334-unofficial-rp.zip to a temporary folder (can name it DOS or something like that). Burn the temporary folder to a writable cdrw. You can do this in your favorite OS.

After fat32 partition is ready, and you know what you're doing, copy the Win98 folder from the Windows 98SE CD to the C drive (your fat32 partition). This is needed when 98SE prompts to insert 98 cd during driver installs and you have 32-bit HDD drivers disabled (because 98SE doesn't like modern HDD controllers usually, and Cdrom drives aren't available after setup this way).

Insert your Windows 98SE CD. Reboot PC and boot from CD. Select to "Boot From CD-Rom" choice at startup menu. Select to "Start computer with CD-ROM support" choice at next startup menu. Assuming cd driver letter is D (default), start setup without acpi: [code]D:\win98\setup /pi[/code] When setup initializes it prompts to perform a routine check, hit enter to continue. When scandisk finishes without errors, setup will continue as normal. Proceed with setup until prompted to reboot (when prompted to create startup disk during setup, click next and click cancel to avoid making floppy; and click ok to proceed setup).

This is the hard part... Upon reboot, boot from Windows 98SE cd again: select to "Boot From CD-Rom" choice at startup menu, and select to "Start computer with CD-ROM support" choice at next startup menu. Assuming C is your fat32 drive (which Windows 98SE has just used), go to the windows\command folder and do the following like this: [code]cd C:\windows\command
edit ..\system.ini[/code] Go to [386Enh] section and add some lines so it looks like this: [code][386Enh]
LocalLoadHigh=0
MaxPhysPage=40000[/code] Go to [vcache] section and add some lines so it looks like this: [code][vcache]
MaxFileCache=65536[/code] Do ctrl+S to save system.ini (or save via menu). Open system.cb while you're still in edit (same folder as system.ini), and add the same lines and the missing section headings for those lines so it looks like this: [code]
[386Enh]
LocalLoadHigh=0
MaxPhysPage=40000

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=65536

[/code] Save this file too. Close edit. Swap Windows 98SE CD for the cdrw you burned with the temporary folder. Copy the files from temporary folder in CDRW to your C drive like this (assuming you named temporary folder "DOS"): [code]mkdir C:\DOS
copy D:\DOS\*.* C:\DOS[/code] Change attributes of config.sys in C:\ and open config.sys with edit: [code]attrib -R -H -S C:\config.sys
edit C:\config.sys[/code] Comment out lines containing himem.sys and emm386.exe so they look like this (assuming you installed Windows to default folder): [code];DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
;DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM[/code] Add the following lines under DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO so it looks like this: [code]DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO
DEVICE=C:\DOS\UMBPCI.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIRAM.EXE
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\HIMEMX.EXE /MAX=2097152[/code] Restore attributes to config.sys: [code]attrib +R +S +H C:\config.sys[/code]

Reboot PC, and boot Windows 98SE in safe mode (can hold right-shift key, or hold f8 during boot). Right-click "My Computer", click properties, go to "Performance" tab in "System Properties" window, and click "File System..." button. Click "Troubleshooting" tab, and click box "Disable all 32-bit protected-mode disk drivers"; click "OK" button and reboot. Proceed with Windows 98SE setup as normal.

Congratulations! You're now in your fresh new Windows 98SE install 😎 .

NOTES:
Install unofficial 48-bit LBA patch from mdgx's site http://www.mdgx.com/files/ATADRV98.EXE. After installing you can now re-enable 32-bit protected-mode disk drivers (clear the checkbox which you previously selected in last step), have DMA for HDD, and access your CD-rom drive.

Personally couldn't use DMA for CD-rom drive. Had to use cd-rom drive via usb to avoid that problem. But it works fine without DMA.


COOL THINGS:
XMSDSK is a great ram drive. You'll probably be limited to 600 megabytes however, because of the system arena problem with 98SE (VMM of 98SE can really only deal with 2GB of ram max). XMSDSK can be found here: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/xmsdsk.zip

Rloew has lots of cool things. It cost a very small amount of money. His website is here: http://rloew.x10host.com/. Most interesting is the ram patch (actually all his stuff is interesting 🤣). It fixes the system arena problem with 9x and lets you max out your ram for a ram drive according to him.

Uwe Sieber's homepage is really cool as well! Lots of tools and useful things that you sometimes can't do without. http://www.uwe-sieber.de/util_e.html

VBE driver for almost any video card (even current ones). Allows high color and high resolution. They work great in VirtualBox too. http://www.navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbe9x.htm

MDGX's website. Tons of patches, tips, and DOS-9x stuff that sometimes you can't be without. http://www.mdgx.com/web.htm


Audio/Video:
There's many options. Most likely you only have pci slots, so you can buy a pci soundcard for DOS games and a video card with 98SE drivers, but you'll find the soundcard may not work whatsoever in DOS (lack of NMI-DDMA). The only cure to DOS sound is buying a soundcard with Sound Blaster Pro emulation via WDM drivers, and running your DOS games inside 98SE. Many pci soundcards have WDM drivers with Sound Blaster Pro emulation fortunately. Running DOS games inside Windows 98SE with such a card allows you to have sound, and good midi with Microsoft's software midi synthesizer (even if the card doesn't normally have hardware synthesis). Some cards like the Live! offer additional soundfont support for midi, or FM synthesis for others. Some cards like the au8830 (Vortex 2) don't have WDM drivers, but they have high mobo compatibility and functional sound/midi for DOS games inside 98SE via VXD drivers. Most soundcards have problems with VXD drivers for DOS sound/midi in 98SE and don't usually work however, and even when they work there is usually issues due to the low level nature of VXD drivers.

EDIT:
Might change from time to time.

Last edited by Holering on 2014-10-15, 17:01. Edited 7 times in total.

Reply 2 of 42, by Gamecollector

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1) MaxPhysPage=20000. So you will have 512 MB RAM.
2) Win9x not works correctly with Hyperthreading, you must disable it. Reboot when loading Win9x mouse driver as the example...

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
Voodoo2 12 MB SLI, Win2k drivers 1.02.00 (XpProSp3).

Reply 5 of 42, by ElectricMonk

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Have you tried installing Win9x in Virtualbox? I use it for a ton of various Operating Systems in my GNS3 topologies, but I've not tried to use it to play games with.

VBox is free, so it could be worth a shot. If you get it to work, please list the steps you took to get it work.

*disclaimer* I've been able to run Linux Mint Cinnamon, XP PRo, Netware 5, NT4SP6a, Haiku, Plan 9, Win2008R2 (for PRTG and Radius), Ubuntu, OSX Mountain Lion, OSX Mavericks, and OpenSolaris 12 with Vbox, and have been able to get them to communicate with each other across my Topologies.

Reply 6 of 42, by erpster-xg4

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Holering wrote:

Personally couldn't use DMA for CD-rom drive. Had to use cd-rom drive via usb to avoid that problem. But it works fine without DMA.[/color]

Though using a CD drive w/out DMA may be fine, it's NOT ok to do this with a DVD drive. Many modern PCs use DVD drives instead of CD drives and DMA is required on DVD drives when playing DVD discs.

Reply 7 of 42, by RayeR

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I think that DMA is also needed for CD/DVD writers to successfull burn of CD
BTW there's usefull thread on MSFN about modern motherboards and components that are compatible with Win98 and users decribes how they solved some issues during install, if it was sucessfull or not
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern- … ith-windows-98/

I install Win98 usually from HDD. I start with partitioning HDD and installing some basic DOS on FAT16/32 partition. Also I use himemx.exe to limit max of XMS - this is essential for installation on 1GB+ systems. I simply copy win98 Setup files on prepared partition and run setup.exe from HDD. I don't need to modify system.ini maxphyspage while it's limited by himemx. You can first try intalling with /p j that enables ACPI and if it fails or you have conflicts in devmgr then you can try /p i without ACPI. On my new system with GA-P67-DS3-B3 the /p i seems to be better way (no conflicting devices in system resources) but it installed and booted in both cases... I made it quite working except USB - this new chipses missing UHCI (have only EHCI and USB 2.0 hubs) have problems with nUSB...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 8 of 42, by Gamecollector

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RayeR wrote:

this new chipses missing UHCI (have only EHCI and USB 2.0 hubs) have problems with nUSB...

Well, both UHCI and OHCI not support 64-bit directly so this result was expected. My WinME installation not supports even the ICH5R USB2.0 controller (device_id 24DD).

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
Voodoo2 12 MB SLI, Win2k drivers 1.02.00 (XpProSp3).

Reply 9 of 42, by RayeR

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No, I meant that P6x chipset is missing UHCI hardware inside, not a driver. So the driver stack must handle EHCI with USB 2.0 hub (that also contains speed translator to handle old 1.x devices). WinXP can handle this, probably 2k too. It seems not problem to install nUSB + updated intel INFs on up to ICH10 and reach USB2.0 speeds...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 10 of 42, by Stretch

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Gamecollector wrote:
RayeR wrote:

this new chipses missing UHCI (have only EHCI and USB 2.0 hubs) have problems with nUSB...

Well, both UHCI and OHCI not support 64-bit directly so this result was expected. My WinME installation not supports even the ICH5R USB2.0 controller (device_id 24DD).

Download the Orangeware USB2.0 driver.

I got the driver for my motherboard at the following link, labelled as 'Intel USB 2.0 driver ver:1.1.0.2'.

ASRock 775i65G R3.0 Drivers

Win 11 - Intel i7-1360p - 32 GB - Intel Iris Xe - Sound BlasterX G5

Reply 11 of 42, by RayeR

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Yes, this can work well on older chipsets (ICHx)

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 12 of 42, by collector

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This forum is for Windows games. This thread should go in Milliways or possibly Marvin.

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 14 of 42, by vishalkalra

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Hi Holering, I followed your instructions to the hilt and managed to install windows98SE...YaY ! But, But, But...facing issues for the sound and vga drivers for Mercury Intel G33/G31 Express chipset board that I have. Also the DVD rom that I am using is a SATA one but managed to run it making it run on compatibility mode in BIOS....please can you suggest how to work around the sound drivers as there are none avaible for Win98SE..

Reply 15 of 42, by gdjacobs

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I've been working on a wacko Win98 SE build based around an Asrock AliveSATA2-GLAN. There are some quirks, but the only fundamental problem at present is a non functioning RTL8111B PCI-E gigabit LAN chip. To be clear, it works fine with Linux and, apparently, the DOS diagnostics as well. Something in the Win98 driver locks the card, though, as diagnostics don't work when I drop out of Win98 to DOS with no reboot.

Interesting little tidbit, I use HIMEMX to eat excess RAM.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 16 of 42, by Koltoroc

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vishalkalra wrote:

Hi Holering, I followed your instructions to the hilt and managed to install windows98SE...YaY ! But, But, But...facing issues for the sound and vga drivers for Mercury Intel G33/G31 Express chipset board that I have. Also the DVD rom that I am using is a SATA one but managed to run it making it run on compatibility mode in BIOS....please can you suggest how to work around the sound drivers as there are none avaible for Win98SE..

If you are talking about on board Graphics, there are no windows 98 drivers for this, too new. For sound it will depend on the audio chipset used on the board, but the likelyhood for drivers to exist is slim to none.

Reply 17 of 42, by oeuvre

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Not to be a debbie downer but really why would anyone waste time installing 9x on anything newer than Core 2 Duo (and even for that I find questionable). You have to use 10+ year old GPUs and sound cards to make it work, even if you have a board with enough PCI slots for that. Then you run across SATA and chipset issues, potential HT issues as mentioned before. Not to mention a modern machine would much better off running something it was designed for or newer than being limited in usability by a nearly 20 year old operating system. Don't get me wrong, I do love me some Windows 98 but stick with Pentium 4 or older for that. Or use a VM or 86box, etc.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 18 of 42, by RayeR

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oeuvre wrote:

but really why would anyone waste time installing 9x on anything newer than Core 2 Duo

Just because I CAN? A challenge? 😀 And I like to run Win98 on my main PC for some tasks (not often). I don't play new games so why to replace old 7900GT when it works. Still for newer VGAs one ca use VESA generic driver (VBEMP) but no 3D... SB Audigy is still good soundcard that doesn't suffer by noises picked up by many onboard soundcraps (and it support HW EAX). SATA can be operated in IDE comopatible mode (I didn't find significant speedup with AHCI anyway) and USB 2.0 still can be working with nUSB for limited ports. I don't have any experiences with running Win98 on newer UEFI based MBs, once I got one in my hands I could try it just for curiosity...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA