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IBM Aptiva + Windows 98 + CD drive = slow down

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First post, by red_avatar

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I recently acquired an IBM Aptiva 2134-351 with a Pentium 120Mhz CPU in pretty good condition. It performs flawlessly in DOS but since this was originally a Windows 95 system I figured it would make a great early Windows 9X system. I did update the hardware a little:

- I swapped out the Crystal 4236 card for a Soundblaster 32
- the original CD drive was replaced by a noisy modern one so I replaced it with a Mitsumi Quad speed (FX400E) which is period correct & very quiet
- the on-board graphics chip was slow so I added a S3 Trio 64V+ card

However, when I installed Windows 98 it would suddenly become EXTREMELY slow. What happens is that the system freezes for 10 seconds, will respond for 1 second, then freeze again, over and over.

It took me a LOT of trial & error (removed everything first & added one item at a time) to realise the slow down happens only when the CD drive is attached. So ... I added a different modern drive and the stutters have decreased but you can still see hiccups in the mouse movement and still the drive, while recognised, won't read CDs. In DOS it works fine.

I figure it may be the SIS IDE controller but it's auto-detected by Windows 98 and I can't exactly find more up to date drivers for it.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I could try next? I already replaced the IDE cable just in case but it made no difference.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 1 of 4, by VivienM

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How do you have the drives connected?

Reply 2 of 4, by leonardo

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SiS chipset + new OS without original chipset and/or IDE busmaster drivers probably is what's causing the weird symptoms.

If you have the recovery disc for that specific system, you may be able to use the included patches on Win98 as well.

How are the devices configured? If one is in Cable-Select and the other is configured for Master/Slave, you might also see funny stuff.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 3 of 4, by Horun

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Is your CDROM on the secondary channel on it's own cable ?

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 4, by red_avatar

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The motherboard has two IDE connectors - the hard drive (a compact flash) is on one cable, the CD drive is on the second. It's a single cable so no two connectors at the end but I tried it with a different cable and it made no difference.

I also found the original drivers online for this chipset - the drivers were 1996 and the ones Windows had in its library were 1999 - and Windows did detect them & replace them but it shifted the problem. Now instead of being extremely slow, it just locks up the system. Funny thing is, with a very few CD drives it doesn't do it but you can tell something iffy is still going on. With the original drivers it would also try to read the CD every few seconds.

I did find the recovery CD very late last night but it's Windows 95. I might just use that instead if it works - I mean, a Pentium 120 won't be playing many Windows 98 games and it should have the correct drivers.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

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