Look at this thread .
Re: Booting from SSD with sata2ide adapter on Asus P3V4X / Apollo Pro 133

and the thread linked within it .

The info about disk sizes applies to IDE, SATA, IDE TO SD and IDE TO CF .

The real size is 127GB max per ONE drive for win98. Anything larger leads to corruptions and crashes. I use 120GB or less drives for 98SE.

Pentium/MMX class motherboards can be anywhere from 4 to 8GB max per drive, that's bios limitation.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-16, 23:04:

The real size is 127GB max per ONE drive for win98. Anything larger leads to corruptions and crashes. I use 120GB or less drives for 98SE.

There are patches for that (see my previous post) though, to be honest 127GB is a lot of space for Windows 98 .

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-16, 23:04:

Pentium/MMX class motherboards can be anywhere from 4 to 8GB max per drive, that's bios limitation.

For some boards, there are patched BIOSes that bring that up to 127GB, but I would not suggest experimenting with those if you do not have the means to recover from a bad flash . A safer alternative to that is a DDO (Dynamic Disk Overlay) . Hard driver manufacturers used to provide those . Another, IMHO simpler, alternative is a PCI IDE or SATA controller that handles larger drives .

EDIT : Do not trust the BIOS detected size of 65GB on an older board, you will likely end up with disk corruption .

EDIT2 : It is unclear to me whether Easy2Boot would help at all for that BIOS limitation . You would need to ask whoever put it together .

So with all of phils computer lab videos

I should just install windows either on a hard drive or sd card reader with a very low capacity , lets say 8gb and then put all my games on CD? and or run them off CD or copy to the hard drive?

What is the best way to play my respository of games from 1987 to 1998 about 250gb?

Unrealcpu wrote on 2020-05-16, 23:45:

So with all of phils computer lab videos

I should just install windows either on a hard drive or sd card reader with a very low capacity , lets say 8gb and then put all my games on CD? and or run them off CD or copy to the hard drive?

What is the best way to play my respository of games from 1987 to 1998 about 250gb?

That's for you to decide .
I chose the patching + PCI controller route with a 500GB SSD split into 120GB partitions . You could do that .
I also have a multi-terabyte NAS that is accessible from Windows 98 SE without issues . You could use a NAS or a network share on a modern PC .
You could use CDs (for some games you will probably will have to anyway) .
You could use multiple 8GB SD cards .

It all depends on how much effort (and potentially money) you want to put into it up front versus during use .

I am thinking just have two IDE to SD Card readers one on primary and the second just be 128gb sd cards for games of different genre . I would have to swap the micro sd cards depending what I would want to look for in the genre

Since CD rom and games , from the past 90-to about 2000 is about 350gb I would think including cd rom games

Unrealcpu wrote on 2020-05-17, 01:17:

I am thinking just have two IDE to SD Card readers one on primary and the second just be 128gb sd cards for games of different genre . I would have to swap the micro sd cards depending what I would want to look for in the genre

Since CD rom and games , from the past 90-to about 2000 is about 350gb I would think including cd rom games

Since your motherboard BIOS does not support large drives, you will need either a PCI
disk controller with a BIOS that does, DDO software or a patch for motherboard's BIOS . There is no way around that .

EDIT: Otherwise, you will either be unable to access the full128GB capacity, have data corruption or both .

Never mind, Phils wrote this:

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/windows-98-m … e-capacity.html

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:51:

Not 128GB, Real issue is 127GB max. The 1GB extra will get you in trouble even.

Cheers,

It's a 430TX board , I doubt that BIOS even does more than 32GB correctly .
EDIT: The exact 28-BIT LBA limit is 137,438,952,960 bytes . See attached DOC . Again, the actual BIOS limite here is likely much smaller .

darry wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:54:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:51:

Not 128GB, Real issue is 127GB max. The 1GB extra will get you in trouble even.

Cheers,

It's a 430TX board , I doubt that BIOS even does more than 32GB correctly .

🤣, you got my old text but I checked online before posted and had to correct myself.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:57:

darry wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:54:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:51:

Not 128GB, Real issue is 127GB max. The 1GB extra will get you in trouble even.

Cheers,

It's a 430TX board , I doubt that BIOS even does more than 32GB correctly .

🤣, you got my old text but I checked online before posted and had to correct myself.

Cheers,

No problem, that said , I still think the cheapest and most reliable solution is still a PCI controller.

Questio for the OP, what are the exact brand and model of this board ?

The likely limit is probably 8.4GB for a board that age .
See this link for overview of potential issues
https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

Another option is using an XTIDE BIOS .

See https://code.google.com/archive/p/xtideuniver … kis/Manual.wiki

But on a relatively modern PCI board, using a PCI controller is probably simpler, more reliable and cheaper .

I made a 64gb micro sd no problem with win 98

I will try 128gb here soon if i have a spare somewhere.

What corruption would I get? I do not think I did my win 98se install correctly , it did install but now it asked me for win 98 se files after the 2nd or 3rd reboot because my vid driver.

I am sure I just installed it wrong and removed the cd when I was not supposed too?

Maybe someone can recommend a good win 98 se link?

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RtIAAOSwi5VeF18n/s-l1600.jpg

mobo pic

I do have a k6 III + 450mhz at 2.0 v

I thought the p233 was the best for set mul and retro gamming since you would get more of a accurate 386 vs the k6III?

and that the p233mhz is better overall as a retro machine?

This IDE controller seems to work

https://www.amazon.com/2-Port-Controller-Sili … B000BU7XNG?th=1

however if I put a 1TB hard drive on this thing , can I partition it to multiple 64gb or 128gb partitions during the win98se setup? This would be a better route vs having to swap microsd cards...

Unrealcpu wrote on 2020-05-17, 05:40:

What corruption would I get? I do not think I did my win 98se install correctly , it did install but now it asked me for win 98 se files after the 2nd or 3rd reboot because my vid driver.

I am sure I just installed it wrong and removed the cd when I was not supposed too?

Maybe someone can recommend a good win 98 se link?

The typical corruption scenario when using a disk size greater than what the BIOS supports occurs when writing data past the supported limit (8.4GB, for example) and having that DATA end up at the beginning of the drive, rendering the drive unbootable and its files inaccessible .