My guess is you need to recap that Abit board. Abit boards usually had very poor quality capacitors back then. Can you post some photos?

Windows 98 cannot handle more than 512 MB RAM without third party patches.

Remove the extra RAM and try re-installing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-20, 22:35:

Windows 98 cannot handle more than 512 MB RAM without third party patches.

Remove the extra RAM and try re-installing.

Hmm, that's odd. I've been running the same amount of ram (recognized at ~933mb) with my PII (Slot 1) and Celeron (Socket 370 with adapter) at 66/75mhz with no issues. It's properly recognized in 'dxdiag', etc. in Windows 98.

It should boot and seem to work fine with 1GB, but there are parts of 98SE that misbehave. Such as the vcache. So usually you should just go with <= 512MB.

swaaye wrote on 2020-07-20, 22:33:

My guess is you need to recap that Abit board. Abit boards usually had very poor quality capacitors back then. Can you post some photos?

Caps all look good, no leaks or bulges. I'll try to take a bare picture of the board later, but here's pictures from the eBay sale that I purchased it from:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/ABIT-AB-BX6-Slot-1-I … 872.m2749.l2649

I've recapped a lot of things, including a Game Gear so I think I would have spotted a bad capacitor, but who knows. 😀

swaaye wrote on 2020-07-20, 22:41:

It should boot and seem to work fine with 1GB, but there are parts of 98SE that misbehave. Such as the vcache. So usually you should just go with <= 512MB.

Awesome, thanks for the info. I'll give that a try and report back. What about Windows XP? Does it have a RAM cap that I'm not aware of? From what I've been reading it seems some folks are saying that you need to run 133mhz SDRAM with a 133mhz CPU for the 440BX/Slot 1.

nwsw wrote on 2020-07-20, 22:44:

Awesome, thanks for the info. I'll give that a try and report back. What about Windows XP? Does it have a RAM cap that I'm not aware of? From what I've been reading it seems some folks are saying that you need to run 133mhz SDRAM with a 133mhz CPU for the 440BX/Slot 1.

XP is fine all the way up to 4GB.

Running PC100 at PC133 is certainly not a guaranteed thing, and having 4 sticks reduces your chances. Try 1 stick at a time. 256MB is more than enough for Win9x gaming anyway. Keep the RAM latencies at 3-3-3. Bumping the RAM voltage might help too.

Of course the other problem with 440BX @ 133 MHz is that AGP unavoidably runs 89 MHz. Many cards don't like this.

You could make yourself a Memtest86/Memtest86+ bootable CD and see if tests pass alright. Also, Prime95 works with Win9x.

swaaye wrote on 2020-07-20, 22:53:

XP is fine all the way up to 4GB. […]
Show full quote

nwsw wrote on 2020-07-20, 22:44:

Awesome, thanks for the info. I'll give that a try and report back. What about Windows XP? Does it have a RAM cap that I'm not aware of? From what I've been reading it seems some folks are saying that you need to run 133mhz SDRAM with a 133mhz CPU for the 440BX/Slot 1.

XP is fine all the way up to 4GB.

Running PC100 at PC133 is certainly not a guaranteed thing, and having 4 sticks reduces your chances. Try 1 stick at a time. 256MB is more than enough for Win9x gaming anyway. Keep the RAM latencies at 3-3-3. Bumping the RAM voltage might help too.

Of course the other problem with 440BX @ 133 MHz is that AGP unavoidably runs 89 MHz. Many cards don't like this.

You could make yourself a Memtest86/Memtest86+ bootable CD and see if tests pass alright. Also, Prime95 works with Win9x.

Thanks so much for the advice! I'll be busy this evening. 😀

Thanks for the help everyone. I was able to get Windows 98 to boot stable with 1 stick and Windows XP/Vista to boot with 2 sticks, both at 933mhz. 😀