Win98 SE is working with 127 Gb FAT32 volumes. This limitation is Scandisk related, because the included version don't work with the allocation tables > 15.99 Mb. Look here.
RAM - use 512 Mb. Because Win9x memory manager is bugged.

I was using the machine with 640mb of ram and it ran just fine, mind you I only own 640mb right now. 256+256+128 the maximum it supports is 256+256+256

Up to 1GB ram is fine, I use that, over that and you need to patch it with a program which costs money. There's a huge thread on msfn on how to run win98 with lots of ram, among other things there by plenty of win98 users.

Gamecollector wrote:

Win98 SE is working with 127 Gb FAT32 volumes. This limitation is Scandisk related, because the included version don't work with the allocation tables > 15.99 Mb. Look here.
RAM - use 512 Mb. Because Win9x memory manager is bugged.

I didnt had problems for using an 320GB SATA drive on it on ONE partition!

My mother board dosn't support over a 256mb sdram card. which sucks cause i bought a 512 and had to take it back for 2 256mb cards, I'm gonna put in three for the maximum 768mb's of ram the system will support. this machiene dosn't have sata it's only got IDE as it should from the time period. One of my main questions will be can i use my saphire radeon 9000 atlantis pro 128mb video card with my voodoo 2 or will i need to use the rageIIC?

With the exception of the S3 Vision 968/868 video card you shouldn't have problems with the Voodoo 2 (and it comes with a tsr util. that corrects it).

RoyBatty wrote:

Up to 1GB ram is fine, I use that, over that and you need to patch it with a program which costs money. There's a huge thread on msfn on how to run win98 with lots of ram, among other things there by plenty of win98 users.

Which program is that? Something new?

It seems every time the subject of Win98 and the 512 MB limit comes up, something different is said.

pinkdonut666 wrote:

My mother board dosn't support over a 256mb sdram card. which sucks cause i bought a 512 and had to take it back for 2 256mb cards, I'm gonna put in three for the maximum 768mb's of ram the system will support.

Are you sure it supports that much RAM? Most PIII chipsets max out at 512 MB (and, as you say, cannot take 512 MB modules).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_ch … .2FIII_chipsets

There are basically two methods for patching

look here for the LLXX / Xrayer solution, safely up to 1.15 GiB:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/95815-importa … 98-seme-topics/

or Rloew's patch (commercial, incompatible with the above mentioned)

http://rloew.x10hosting.com/

I can wholeheartedly recommend the latter, especially the Terabyte Plus package, if you need a professional solution for w9x plagues and can afford it.

Astonishing. I thought only LitePC was still trying to make money off of Win9x. (I mean, if you're still running Win9x these days, what would you be doing that would need more than 512 MB of RAM?)

Anyway, if you were trying to link to http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/118097-day-to … than-1-gib-ram/ , I'm not sure what you mean by LLXX.

The main reason I'm building this machine is just to run old games. Before that hard-drive went berserk I could run anything from duke nukem 2 to half life and even more new stuff than that. Win98 SE has great dos backward compatibility (as well as SB live's SB 16 emulation) which makes it a great OS for a retro PC build. But fuck me did i pick a bad time to start a PC build. 1. It's been christmas holiday and I'v been with family out in the middle of nowhere for the past week, 2. The retro computer parts place is only open on week-ends (though I'm damn lucky to have a retro computer parts store in the first place.) 3. being the autistic OCD nerd I am I'm dying to build this machine. Take my advice, don't start a pc build when you have to wait a while in the middle of the process.

Jorpho,

She (LLXX) did not write a RAM patch as such, just explained the knowhow.
She wrote the first "big HDD patch", however:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/78592-enable4 … -137gb-barrier/

RLoew is the most skillful programmer I have come across so far. He admittedly does not make a living solely by patching Amiga and old PC software. He offers SUPPORT and development for his proggies, that is why they are commercial stuff. I have received at least 4 updates for the TBPLUS package. The quality of his work, indepth FAQ and support justifies the price. IF one needs to stick to WIN9X, of course...

You do not usually USE the extra RAM (unless for a RAM disk) with WIN9X. But you would not want to REMOVE the module(s) either when using WIN9X 😉 So most people using the patch have dual or multiple OS installed on the same system.

By the way, why use more then 512 Mb RAM in the "win9x games only" PC without Xp dualboot? So - Rloew patch is completely not needed...

You are right, pinkdonut666 will not need the RAM limitation patch. My answer was for Jorpho. A little off-topic.

The only reason for me to put more than 512mb's of ram in the machine is cause thats what i have laying around. If I'll run into some sort of issue it's not a problem for me to install only 512mb's.

Jolaes76 wrote:

You do not usually USE the extra RAM (unless for a RAM disk) with WIN9X. But you would not want to REMOVE the module(s) either when using WIN9X 😉

I thought that with just the system.ini fix, anything beyond 512 MB was completely ignored. Is that not the case?

(It seems to me that even with the system.ini fix, Win9x becomes unstable even with 512 MB of RAM, but like I said, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about the issue.)

Unfortunately, the situation is worse than that. You might not even be able to install win98 on a system with greater amounts of RAM, and instability / lock-ups are common. That is why patching is a necessity. But together with the Big HDD patches, you can run win98 on fairly modern systems. Reliably 😀

I was able to successfully install win98 on a P4 3.4 with 1GB ram, but I ended up switching to XP because there were no video drivers available at the time (nvidia made them later for the geforce 6xxx, I had a 6800).

I finally got the bastard almost done. It's now got a P3 1000, 512mb's of RDram, 80gb+40gb HD, SB live, dvd rom, dvd/cdrw, usb 2.0, ethernet, radeon 9000pro128, and a new case i plan to paint up. I still need a voodoo though, my friend couldn't find his extra but he might sell me his good one for the time being.