You totally want to install the rloew memory patch. And then slap in 4 GB of RAM and it'll happily work.
Crashes every now and then could also be related to drivers, don't install more than you need and don't change the hardware after installing drivers. 98 is very picky about this and i've had to reinstall multiple times because of old, lingering drivers that didn't want to be fixed.

Are your other drives also FAT32-formatted?
In my experience you better format the drive on the win98-machine because more modern formatting tools don't always work for some reason. win98 formatting also checks that the bios can access each sector properly and will pop a warning if it can't. That's happened to me a few times and caught possible problems early (but that was on a 2001-ish P3-mobo, not a more modern one like yours). Also run a full scandisk, that also checks for bios/sector access.

Is it possible for me to install a bigger drive than 127GB and partition it

I'm also interested in an answer. My 98 box doesn't have any larger HDDs for exactly that reason...

Have "FUN" with the unofficial service pack. I won't use it anymore because it seems to just cause issues.

Last time I used it successfully was way back when it only included the official Microsoft updates.

Now I just use the 2004 Microsoft update CD which is available on vogonsdrivers.com, NUSB, and any rloew patches I need which are available on archive.org
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=8 … &menustate=56,0
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator% … olph+R.+Loew%22

fgenesis wrote on 2021-05-26, 15:30:

You totally want to install the rloew memory patch. And then slap in 4 GB of RAM and it'll happily work.
Crashes every now and then could also be related to drivers, don't install more than you need and don't change the hardware after installing drivers. 98 is very picky about this and i've had to reinstall multiple times because of old, lingering drivers that didn't want to be fixed.

Gonna try that and hope 98 stays stable. Can I install this even after all those modified patches I installed (unofficial SP + 98se2me)?

fgenesis wrote on 2021-05-26, 15:30:

Are your other drives also FAT32-formatted?
In my experience you better format the drive on the win98-machine because more modern formatting tools don't always work for some reason. win98 formatting also checks that the bios can access each sector properly and will pop a warning if it can't. That's happened to me a few times and caught possible problems early (but that was on a 2001-ish P3-mobo, not a more modern one like yours). Also run a full scandisk, that also checks for bios/sector access.

Absolutely fat32-formatted.
Doesn't a windows formatting take ages?
I tried formatting that "faulty" drive I am talking about, and even that failed. So no way my windows System was able to work on that drive at all - that's why I suspect that something else might be problematic here.

fgenesis wrote on 2021-05-26, 15:30:

I'm also interested in an answer. My 98 box doesn't have any larger HDDs for exactly that reason...

I guess I'll try my luck with this package: https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2020 … hes-bundle.html.
Maybe this fixes something.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-05-26, 17:19:

Have "FUN" with the unofficial service pack. I won't use it anymore because it seems to just cause issues. […]
Show full quote

Have "FUN" with the unofficial service pack. I won't use it anymore because it seems to just cause issues.

Last time I used it successfully was way back when it only included the official Microsoft updates.

Now I just use the 2004 Microsoft update CD which is available on vogonsdrivers.com, NUSB, and any rloew patches I need which are available on archive.org
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=8 … &menustate=56,0
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator% … olph+R.+Loew%22

Thanks for your input. - Will any of these patches fix the 137GB limit? If yes - awesome 😀
I'll try these thingies out and report back about my findings regarding this.
Thank you!

For troubleshooting I'd keep things as simple as possible and just the 120GB SATA drive to start with.
Use standard windows fdisk and format, they are more basic then alternatives but this means they wont do anything "fancy" that Win98 doesn't understand.
Fdisk takes a while, if you run format d: /q that'll be quick (Replace D with the drive letter of the new drive)

You'll want the updated fdisk program, (no idea if the unofficial service pack includes this)
http://ftp.twaren.net/cpatch/msupdate/win98se … /backup/q263044

However your really pushing 98 to its limits here (which I expect is the aim of the build in part).
My overkill 98 build wasn't quite so ambitious, P4p800 S478, 4GB ram, GF6800 Ultra AGP

What I did was install Win98 on a 4GB partition, then data, then XP. Maybe having Win98 access end of the drive is causing problems?
I had no end of problems till installing the Rlowe memory patch, that improved things but it was never as stable as I would have liked.
I never liked the unofficial patches so didn't install them

That was a learning experience for me so installed 98 on a 4GB partition a 60GB IDE drive although was surprised how well setting bios to SATA Compatibility mode worked and probably would have just used a smaller SATA drive next time round if I kept that build. I always install Win98 on a partition at 4GB to speed up scandisk runs.

What I can tell you though is 98 was very happy accessing a ~640GB RAID drive made up of a pair of 320 drives using the onboard raid controller. Keep in mind I wasn't booting off this and it was partitioned (I cant remember the actual size of the partitions)

Yep, this build is really to push the limits and see how far I can go. But at the end of the day, the stability is a killer.

Quick update on my findings:
I kept things simple and did as suggested: windows98SE + NUSB, and the updates from the CD + the RAM and the large Drive Patch from rloew.
This didn’t really solve my problem - probably because the onboard SATA controller makes problems as soon as I connect another HDD to it. But it does allow me to have a 199GB data partition and fill it up above the 127 GB without any flaws.
Sidenote: you totally want to install the „DMA for all (E)IDE/(P)ATA Hard Disks“ from the U98ESP3 as it increases the Game loading times and overall HDD operations drastically. Even for SATA Bus drives (like I am using).

What I did experience was that even tho the system boots up with 1GB of Ram, it hangs a lot and causes a lot of problems. Using only 512MB makes the system way more stable and makes it enjoyable.
Is anyone also experiencing huge instabilities with the RAM patch and with more than 512 MB ram?

I had the complete opposite experience.
I remember I had loads of trouble with drivers. From memory installing the Audigy 2 ZS drivers always caused a bluescreen and and GF6 drivers couldn't detect the card and also maybe bluescreened.
This all went away after installing the rlowe mem patch.
I also used the patch on 2 identical Compaq D510's with 2GB trouble free.

You could try this, It was written before rlowe patches became free but it wouldn't hurt to apply the patch AND modify the system ini file
How to install Windows 98SE on a modern PC

Ok, I‘m going to give that a try and report back about my findings.

Regarding Graphics drivers - no problem whatsoever. The Nvidia installer did all the work for me and there was no need to do anything afterwards.

I've had a little trouble once because the BIOS of computer one detected the drive the one way and the second compete the other way. In size the same but CSH differed.

Results were I was able to boot and use the first 12% of the drive, but above that everything have the same error.

Repartitioning on compete 2 solved the problem on compete 2 but raiders the same on computer 1.

Doing a manual CSH override solved the issue entirely eventually and the disk workers for another three years (and then the motor gave up)

What a mistery! I‘m going to get myself a sata PCI card and go from there. But only for research purposes.
Since I was able to use a partition over 128Gb, I can stick to 1 drive.
Now I just need to fix the stability of the system when having more than 512mb ram. But I guess that I will open a separate thread for this.