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First post, by andreja6

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So my friend took his old PC out of storage to install windows 98 on it. Needless to say there were a myriad of issues, especially the fact that windows 98 cant detect the CD drive that it was installed on. (genius) We can't find any drivers, manuals, or anything for it. Does anyone know anything about this particular machine?

Reply 1 of 11, by cyclone3d

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Well, if it has the stock motherboard and CPU, it is an Intel (440BX based - edit: may be newer. Was unable to find a picture that shows a closeup of the board) Slot 1 motherboard with a Pentium III 650Mhz CPU.

Here is a magazine post that lists it.
https://books.google.com/books?id=oUEVDwGvQ-8 … gp7-650&f=false

You may need to open it up to see if the CD-ROM drive is hooked up to a sound card.

Pics of the inside would help a lot.

Last edited by cyclone3d on 2017-11-09, 23:54. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 2 of 11, by AlaricD

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That has an Intel chipset, like an 810 or 815 I think; Intel still has drivers for chipsets from that era for Win98. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/817 … at?product=1145
Be sure to REM the CD-ROM driver in CONFIG.SYS and the network redirector (typically MSCDEX.EXE) in AUTOEXEC.BAT, else it may use MS-DOS compatibility mode.

Depending on the IRQ/IO ranges specified on the CD-ROM driver, it may be connected to an audio card-- but Win9x should recognize IDE controllers on audio cards by itself, typically.

By "Win98 can't detect the CD drive it was installed on", what do you mean? Installed FROM? Booted from?

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Reply 3 of 11, by andreja6

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AlaricD wrote:
That has an Intel chipset, like an 810 or 815 I think; Intel still has drivers for chipsets from that era for Win98. https://do […]
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That has an Intel chipset, like an 810 or 815 I think; Intel still has drivers for chipsets from that era for Win98. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/817 … at?product=1145
Be sure to REM the CD-ROM driver in CONFIG.SYS and the network redirector (typically MSCDEX.EXE) in AUTOEXEC.BAT, else it may use MS-DOS compatibility mode.

Depending on the IRQ/IO ranges specified on the CD-ROM driver, it may be connected to an audio card-- but Win9x should recognize IDE controllers on audio cards by itself, typically.

By "Win98 can't detect the CD drive it was installed on", what do you mean? Installed FROM? Booted from?

It doesn't detect the CD drive it was installed from* The motherboard is the stock board that came with it. I will post some pictures, and check to see. DOes it matter if it is on primary or secondary IDE? Master or slave?

Reply 4 of 11, by andreja6

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cyclone3d wrote:
Well, if it has the stock motherboard and CPU, it is an Intel 440BX based Slot 1 motherboard with a Pentium III 650Mhz CPU. […]
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Well, if it has the stock motherboard and CPU, it is an Intel 440BX based Slot 1 motherboard with a Pentium III 650Mhz CPU.

Here is a magazine post that lists it.
https://books.google.com/books?id=oUEVDwGvQ-8 … gp7-650&f=false

You may need to open it up to see if the CD-ROM drive is hooked up to a sound card.

Pics of the inside would help a lot.

The only pic I have that could be helpful is https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/356234 … _194320_hdr.jpg
The CD rom is connected to secondary IDE on the motherboard while the HDD is on primary. I'm not sure how much o f a difference it would make

Reply 5 of 11, by yawetaG

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Step 1: Remove all hardware (add-in cards) that isn't required for a clean installation of Windows 98. Try again.

Step 2: Take better pictures.

Unfortunately Gateway screwed up their site some time ago, so searching for models not listed on the support pages doesn't work anymore because the search doesn't work. If you can somehow access the right page via Google, it's likely you can still download drivers and manuals.

Reply 7 of 11, by AlaricD

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andreja6 wrote:

The CD rom is connected to secondary IDE on the motherboard while the HDD is on primary. I'm not sure how much o f a difference it would make

Definitely the CD-ROM should still be detected if you used it to install Win9x, since it's on the secondary (even on tertiary and quaternary controllers, so long as they're on the right port and interrupts). It won't, however, if you've got the (!) on your hard disk controllers or often if they're just showing up as a "standard" IDE controller.

Renaming the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT (I reverse extensions for non-palindromes, and invert the palindrome extensions, so .BAT becomes .TAB, .COM becomes .MOC; .INI becomes .NIN, .SYS becomes .YSY and so on) will eliminate DOS drivers as being the problem.

I'm also loath to use "cable select", rather I jumper the drives to match their intended status and make sure I put them on their correct spot on the cable, but probably that's not too huge a concern if a DOS driver detects the drive.

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"Solar Driftwood"

Reply 8 of 11, by candle_86

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is a standard 440bx board, same one in the GP-400 I had for awhile, nothing overly special about these things, mine had a Rage 128 All In Wonder and 128mb of ram

Reply 9 of 11, by cj_reha

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I've got two of these Gateway systems, both P3 Katmais, one 450 and the other 500 mhz. I was fortunate enough to be able to identify the parts myself and was able to get non OEM drivers that worked just fine.

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Reply 10 of 11, by chinny22

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Could simply be the drive is dead.
If you have another IDE drive (CD/HDD/whatever) try that.
You can also try setting the jumper on the back of the CD drive to slave and adding it to the other connector on the same cable as the HDD as we know that works fine.
Windows should simply find the drive, no drivers needed.

Reply 11 of 11, by AlaricD

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chinny22 wrote:

Could simply be the drive is dead.

If the drive was *just used* to install Win98, then surely there's a boot disk that was used to access the drive for the installation.

Boot from that diskette and see if it's found in DOS. If it's dead, it'll be dead in both environments, not just one environment.

"The Big Bang. The ultimate hero of low frequency. The divine intergalactical bass drum connecting the tribes of our solar system."
Yello
"Solar Driftwood"