PoulpSquad wrote:

-adding a second hard disk, but because of the way DOS works, it automatically becomes disk D:, and breaks audio on many games that expect the optical drive to be D:.

I am very confident that there are few games that will insist on the optical drive being drive D. There are games that break on systems with more than one optical drive, but that is a different matter.

In any case, there are utilities that let you re-assign drive letters, so that shouldn't stop you.

-adding on of those VIA USB 2.0 PCI adapters. So far this has not worked at all. I ordered a different model just for kicks, but I'm not very optimistic...

In theory, NEC-based cards work better than VIA cards.
Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

I wonder if Firewire is worth considering? I've never had a Firewire drive.

PoulpSquad wrote:

-connecting to my main Windows computer (Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB without domain). Both computers are in the same Workgroup. I couldn't manage to access a shared folder so far.

There's been enough discussion of this out there. Frequent advice is to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP, install the appropriate networking update in Windows 98, and enable NTLM compatibility.

If all else fails, you might have better luck running Linux in VMware and setting up a networking share there.

I have about 140 GB worth of CD images in BIN/CUE format I'd like to mount with DAEMON Tools 3.47.

Of course you know that as the years go by you're probably only ever going to touch a fraction of that.

Thank you Jorpho,

I am very confident that there are few games that will insist on the optical drive being drive D. There are games that break on systems with more than one optical drive, but that is a different matter.
In any case, there are utilities that let you re-assign drive letters, so that shouldn't stop you.

Very few will indeed fail running, but a few won't output any CD audio.
It just realized that games with CD audio tracks are rare, I'll probably copy the ones that have audio tracks on the hard disk and leave the rest on SD card.

Could you please tell me of one such utility? I know something like that was possible when using compression software like Stacker or DoubleSpace.

In theory, NEC-based cards work better than VIA cards.
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=39172

Thanks for the link, I'm going to check it out.

*Update*

I just got myself this thing: https://adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/usb_ad … ers/aua-3100lp/.

Hopefully it will work better than the VIA card I had.

There's been enough discussion of this out there. Frequent advice is to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP, install the appropriate networking update in Windows 98, and enable NTLM compatibility.
If all else fails, you might have better luck running Linux in VMware and setting up a networking share there.

I agree, there has. Every time I tried to connect Windows 98 with anything "modern" I ended giving it up.
I wonder how would those external Ethernet hard disks fare? I have seen cheap ones but I'm not sure it would work.

Of course you know that as the years go by you're probably only ever going to touch a fraction of that.

To be honest, the older I get, the less games I play... I'm probably enjoying solving silly riddles like these more than playing actual games!

Nevertheless, I still love to play the occasional Windows Commander 3 or Civilization 2 game, so I still have some tinkering to do!

Thanks for your tips, I appreciate it.

I hope others can chime in with more ideas!

How about writing a Batsch file with menu where you can choose the image you need. And that image is then copied to your fast HDD.

BTW: if you use an SD adapter can you enable DMA for it?

Have you thinked about a CompactFlash adapter?

If you connect your HDD to your Router and Share it via FTP it should be possible to download the Image via a script (like the batch-file above)

Or just put the images on a USB stick and copy the one you need to the HDD... there should be store for 5 to 10 Images on the fast HDD, i don't think that you play more then 10 games at the same time.

Hello Sammy

How about writing a Batsch file with menu where you can choose the image you need. And that image is then copied to your fast HDD.

Yes, I thought of that, and it is insanely slow. My "fast" hard disk is capable of transfering about 10 MB/s of data. The point is moot anyway, since USB 1.1 is only capable of about 1.5 MB/s.

BTW: if you use an SD adapter can you enable DMA for it?

Yes, but it didn't change anything at all.

Have you thinked about a CompactFlash adapter?

I did, but not for this use. I tried a couple back when I wanted to use them as hard disk replacements, but that didn't work, and speed was about the same as the USB interface, maybe a bit faster (about 2 MB/s).

If you connect your HDD to your Router and Share it via FTP it should be possible to download the Image via a script (like the batch-file above)

I tried that to circumvent the limitations of Windows' networking client when dealing with Windows 9x.

Alas, Windows 98 is not able to see the router on the network. Other computers (all with Windows 10) are able to access the shares on the hard disk.

Or just put the images on a USB stick and copy the one you need to the HDD... there should be store for 5 to 10 Images on the fast HDD, i don't think that you play more then 10 games at the same time.

You are right, and it sounds reasonable. Maybe I should just weed down all those images and keep 10 or so games. But come on, it's 2017, I'm sure I can do better than that!

I am quite intrigued by this bit of information Jorpho was kind enough to share:

In any case, there are utilities that let you re-assign drive letters, so that shouldn't stop you.

What are those mysterious (to me, at least) utilities he speaks of? I've been looking for them but I haven't found anything yet.

Changing a fixed disk drive assignation would be awesome and solve all my issues, as it would allow me to use 2 hard drives and have a CD-ROM as D:.

I just got myself an USB 2.0 card with NEC chipset off eBay. I think it's my best bet, because I can have an SD card to USB adapter and change the drive letter.

On a positive note, I'm impressed how stable Windows 98 SE with Unofficial SP3 is. It didn't crash for a good 15 minutes straight!

Thank you for your suggestions Sammy, I sure appreciate it.

98SE doesn't see your router ? That's strange.

To avoid the compatibility issue between shares found on windows vista or beyond and shares on win9x, dos, etc machines, I took a raspberry pi (even the old B model with the 700MHz can work) and I created a samba share on it. This works flawlessly except for one little thing : under dos, long files names are displayed completely wrong (instead of having "yourfil~1.exe", you get "yfdhjie~g.exe" but everything still works so that's not a big deal, especially if you use win 98, then you won't have this problem). Then you add a wifi dongle on the rpi to access to your router. You can either choose to put your files directly on the pi's share if you have an SD card big enough or an external disk drive or you can also just mount the share of your windows 10 machine ... on the pi's share I did this because I didn't have enough room on my 32GB sd card and I can tell that this works great too ^^

One thing that you can do too is to configure your pi to route packets so it would still be connected to the internet (it depends if you put your retro pc on the same network as your modern one or if you're okay with plugging the pi directly on the ethernet port of your retro pc. If you just connect it to the same network as your modern pc, then your pi won't need any wifi dongle (mine does because my retro pcs aren't in the same room as my router)

But the fact that your 98 box doesn't see your router is really odd, are you really sure that the network card or the drivers are working properly ?

Hey Deksor,

To avoid the compatibility issue between shares found on windows vista or beyond and shares on win9x, dos, etc machines, I took a raspberry pi (even the old B model with the 700MHz can work) and I created a samba share on it. This works flawlessly except for one little thing : under dos, long files names are displayed completely wrong (instead of having "yourfil~1.exe", you get "yfdhjie~g.exe" but everything still works so that's not a big deal, especially if you use win 98, then you won't have this problem). Then you add a wifi dongle on the rpi to access to your router. You can either choose to put your files directly on the pi's share if you have an SD card big enough or an external disk drive or you can also just mount the share of your windows 10 machine ... on the pi's share I did this because I didn't have enough room on my 32GB sd card and I can tell that this works great too ^^

Sounds very interesting... I'll look into it with more detail if the USB 2.0 card doesn't work.

But the fact that your 98 box doesn't see your router is really odd, are you really sure that the network card or the drivers are working properly ?

I think it is... It appears in the device manager, it's got a fixed IP, Microsoft client is installed, computer is in the same workgroup as the other computers in the house.

What is odd is that all the other computers see the router but don't see my retro box, but my retro box sees all other computers but not the router!

The more I think about it, the more I like your setup with Raspberry Pi.

Thanks a lot Deksor for a cool idea!

There are plenty of new/sealed 400GB IDE drives on ebay (at least US ebay) for ~30USD. That mobo should prolly recognize them without problems.

Just try to ping the ip adress of the router and with your win 10 machine to ping your 98 box and normally they will respond

Sounds like you are not having much luck. So much so I may wonder if you have another issue with your system possibly or I may just be over thinking things.

A good quality SATA card should work just fine. What SATA cards did you try?

I always had good results from CF cards for read intensive applications. I was always getting 30+ sequential read even with slow 233x cards. Random read was not to bad too. However CF cards fall flat on there face in random write operations as they have no cache unlike dedicated SSDs. Devices that use CF have cache built in to them rather than the media. It mades CF cards relatively affordable as fast cache was very expensive. For simply loading ISOs from I would say a moderately fast CF card would be perfect. I would be tempted to give one a try again. It's important to get them from reputable retailers as memory cards are by far in the way one of the most counterfeited electronic items and copies after often painfully slow.

If you do require more write oriented hardware perhaps another go with a IDE to SATA bridge is worth a go. Loads of people appear to be using them with no issues. You even get big reputable brands doing bridge chips like Marvell for this application. I would be surprised if a good quality bridge and SATA drive would not give you good enough performance for loading ISOs from.

@Snayperskaya:

There are plenty of new/sealed 400GB IDE drives on ebay (at least US ebay) for ~30USD. That mobo should prolly recognize them without problems.

I couldn't find any here in Europe. I wouldn't have any problem purchasing stuff from the US, but customs are pretty slow (most of the time stuff gets here in about a week from the US, and then rots for up to 2 months in customs). That's before computing importation taxes, which can be hefty.

@Deksor:

Just try to ping the ip adress of the router and with your win 10 machine to ping your 98 box and normally they will respond

It does, both ways. No lost packets. I suck balls at this...

@ Bobolaf:

A good quality SATA card should work just fine. What SATA cards did you try?

I tried an Adaptec AAR-1210SA. It works for the most part, but causes random read/write errors (e.g. Scandisk running a surface test will detect bad clusters).
Also the card's BIOS takes 32 KB of upper memory, and the card does not support CD-ROMs.

I always had good results from CF cards for read intensive applications. I was always getting 30+ sequential read even with slow 233x cards. Random read was not to bad too. However CF cards fall flat on there face in random write operations as they have no cache unlike dedicated SSDs. Devices that use CF have cache built in to them rather than the media. It mades CF cards relatively affordable as fast cache was very expensive. For simply loading ISOs from I would say a moderately fast CF card would be perfect. I would be tempted to give one a try again. It's important to get them from reputable retailers as memory cards are by far in the way one of the most counterfeited electronic items and copies after often painfully slow.

I tried a Lexar Professional 128 GB rated at 800x and a Kingston Ultimate 32 GB rated at 600x.

I tried also putting a microSD card in a microSD to SD adapter, which I inserted in a SD to CF adapter, which I inserted in a CF to IDE adapter. That works, but is no faster...

They both work great on my main computer, but on my retro box they are limited by interfaces, either about 10 MB/s when using ATA ports or roughly 1.5 MB/s using USB ports.

As to boot from a CF, I never managed that stunt. I understand memory manufactures sell special "industrial" memories that can boot. The only difference, I was told, is that industrial CFs are fixed disks, and normal CFs are removable. Oh, and also industrial CFs are a couple of times more expensive.

If you do require more write oriented hardware perhaps another go with a IDE to SATA bridge is worth a go. Loads of people appear to be using them with no issues. You even get big reputable brands doing bridge chips like Marvell for this application. I would be surprised if a good quality bridge and SATA drive would not give you good enough performance for loading ISOs from.

I'm not thrilled by this idea, as I purchased half a dozen different types, and I could never format a drive completely in DOS with them.

I've heard from some reputable ones but they are either extremely expensive or hard to find. I'll keep looking for them.

Thank you guys for your help!

Allright so the network is working great, just that there are incompatibilities in how new and old computers communicate between each other I guess. But the basic stuff still works apparently (normally you can even connect to the internet. Try to ping google.com and it should respond too ^^). All you need is a "compatible" share which Samba can do

Here's my config file (it might have some security flaws though as it can let you access to files that are root's property)

Snayperskaya wrote:

There are plenty of new/sealed 400GB IDE drives on ebay (at least US ebay) for ~30USD. That mobo should prolly recognize them without problems.

I wouldn't do that with 98SE, unless it's the last resort. Using the first ~128 GiB of an IDE device or even multiple devices is fine, but going past that on any one drive presents issues for the IDE driver and disk utilities (besides the controller needing to support higher than 28-bit addressing).

@ Deksor:

If I recall correctly Microsoft sabotaged any connection attempts to anything newer than Windows XP. Even Windows Server 2003 requires tampering to allow Windows 9x connections to a domain (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/555038).

I'll try Samba, as it could be an option. Thank you for the the config file, I'm sure it's going to be pretty useful!

@ Snayperskaya:

This problem shouldn't happen on network shares I think?

Very few will indeed fail running, but a few won't output any CD audio.
It just realized that games with CD audio tracks are rare, I'll probably copy the ones that have audio tracks on the hard disk and leave the rest on SD card.

There should be really few games which needs the D: Letter as CD-Rom Drive Letter AND output CD-Audio...
There probably is just a problem with the driver or the connector cable from CD to the Soundcard.
Have a Dos/Win95 System with A LOT of letters and I think my CD ROM is K or so...
Everything worked fine with eg. GTA, Tomb Raider, Settler 2...
If you could name a Game which needs CD Audio AND D: as letter, please tell me so I will check it, if I have it.
(and if it is just one game, maybe there is a ini file you can change, or try to use
subst / assign)

PoulpSquad wrote:

Very few will indeed fail running, but a few won't output any CD audio.

That's what I meant. Can you give an example of a game that will only produce CD audio if the CD-ROM drive letter is D: ?

Could you please tell me of one such utility?

The last time I had to poke at it, I was using something included with the Iomega Zip drivers, but I'm certain I've come across something similar before – even DOS utilities.

A quick Google suggests you can do it in Device Manager.
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000038.htm

EDIT: Acht, that applies only to disc drives. I'll Google a little more.

EDIT2: Here we go: DRVEXCH. If you use it in your CONFIG.SYS, then it shouldn't interfere with Windows. Worth a shot, anyway.
http://freesoft.cyberside.net.ee/FreeSoft/disk2.htm#drvexch

Also Letter Assigner, which is a Windows program.
http://smallvoid.com/article/win9x-letter-assigner.html

@ Karm & Jorpho:

I remember having problems with Quake and Hexen, and some Windows 3.x games, like Civilization 2.

Also some Microprose budget re-releases had a tendency crap out, maybe because of shody batch installers that assumed a CD-ROM drive as D:?

I'll have to install a couple of games and make sure I'm not having an Alzheimer's fit, and stop talking crap for a change...

@Jorpho:

EDIT2: Here we go: DRVEXCH. If you use it in your CONFIG.SYS, then it shouldn't interfere with Windows. Worth a shot, anyway. ht […]
Show full quote

EDIT2: Here we go: DRVEXCH. If you use it in your CONFIG.SYS, then it shouldn't interfere with Windows. Worth a shot, anyway.
http://freesoft.cyberside.net.ee/FreeSo ... tm#drvexch

Also Letter Assigner, which is a Windows program.
http://smallvoid.com/article/win9x-letter-assigner.html

Awesome! Thanks a lot, I'll give those 2 a thorough look!

I spent all afternoon looking for any hints, but all references were about how to change unit letters in NT's Disk Management, or tutorials about how fdisk works...

Thank you both for your help!

**EDIT**

Apparently that utility only swaps existing drives at boot up time, and doesn't work with optical drives.

I guess it's all we can hope with such an old operating system, thanks anyway for your time looking it up!

I just tried to understand this problem I was having with games not playing audio tracks.

It appears you guys were right, it's got nothing to do with running them in a drive that is not D:. All those I tried so far work great on any drive letter!

It seems I was mystified by DEAMON Tools, as discussed here Re: Windows 98SE + Virtual CD Software + CD Audio.

I was having the exact same problem as Great Hierophant, but instead of Windows games not playing audio, it was DOS games!

I just sorted this by adding a Sound Blaster Live! (CT4830) and setting DAEMON Tools to output analog audio to it, and plugging the AWE32 output to the Live!'s line in.

Now I have both digital FX and CD audio, both in Windows and DOS games, no matter what drive letter games are running from.