I havent looked at the zip file in question, but I would surmise they are different versions for different cards. I would probably pick the latest version and roll with it.

Drivers are not required for DOS. But you're going to want to disable both onboard IDE channels for your sanity. There are Win9X drivers, and you can install them after Windows is installed.

rwGast wrote on 2026-07-09, 01:28:

I ordered two sil3112 boards to use with my 440bx p3 system. Im having a hard time getting a hold of non sata CD drives and I want to use an SSD, so I figured this would be the best bet. Of course I got the cards that you can not flash from the command line, but that is not an issue I have a TL866 programmer, I have already removed the chips and tested them in the programmer, The issue is I do not know what file I am suppose to flash to the card to get non raid win98 compatibility. phils retro has a link to the bin file for 3114, but the 3112 section just has a zip file with tons of different bin files in it. So anyone flash a 3112 for 98 and know what file to use?

Also once I get it all sorted out and flashed, if I am using a sata cd rom through the sil3112, how do I install DOS drivers for that?

You'll want the base BIOS file b####.BIN rather than the RAID one, r####.BIN (plain ####.BIN is for embedded motherboard controllers only). Latest is v4.4.02... https://theretroweb.com/chip/bios/sii3112-440 … 98148631544.zip

Latest non-RAID drivers are here... https://theretroweb.com/uploads/drivers/3112a … 42524232440.zip

Latest BIOS update util for DOS is here (Win / DOS update guide is attached below for reference)... https://theretroweb.com/uploads/drivers/updfl … 1f062480550.zip

Awesome thank you guys!

For the DOS CD-ROM driver you can use one of the drivers bundled with FreeDOS like xcdrom or xgcdrom. https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/fr … s/cdrom/xcdrom/
If you go up a dir there are other choices if you have trouble.

Once you get Win98 installed, it's the exact same experience someone with SCSI had back then. Out of the box Win98 will fall back to calling the BIOS on the card to access the disk, but then you'll install a protected mode driver to get out of compatibility mode and unlock the card's extra features.

Ok so i flashed the controller with the non raid bios then soldered the card back togather. When i boot now it detects the sil3112 and does not display raid options, the card detects the 64gb ssd pluged in. I have disabled IDE in the bios.

When i boot up using a dos 6.22 boot disk it tells me there is no C:, when i run fdisk it just show 1 hpfs partion with negative space(im guessing this is the floppy or something). Any ideas whats going on?

HPFS and NTFS share the same partition ID. So that suggests the SSD was previously used with Windows NT/2000/XP or later.
64GB is much too big for MS-DOS 6.22 to make any sense of it. Use a Windows 98SE boot disk. Note that MS, in KB263044, released a replacement fdisk for >64GB hard drives. Also, you'll still need xcdrom.sys or similar (from FreeDOS site) like I said above, oakcdrom won't detect your CD-ROM.

If fdisk refuses to delete the HPFS/NTFS partition, you'll need an "MBR clearing" utility to do get a clean slate. Speedsys, with the pretty memory speed graphs often posted here, can do that with a command line flag.

Fdisk should be able to delete the partition no problem. Will probably just see it as a non-DOS partition.

Good to know that the PCI SATA controller can be used for optical drives. I never tried it back in the day

The partion is not the ssd, it shows up with no hdd pluged in. It shows up as 80245 bytes or something weird with negative space.

I dont have a working optical drive, i do have a boot disk that can see usb mass storage though. Im trying to boot up mount a 4gb usb key containing windows and install to the ssd on sata controller.

I guess i need a win98 boot floppy with usb mass storage support, instead of dos 6.22? I have no idea what fdisk is showing me, this dell has some weird network boot built in and if i pull the nic and boot the mobo starts beeping at me, so im guessing the weird partion has something to do with the floppy or pxe..

rwGast wrote on Yesterday, 03:40:

I dont have a working optical drive, i do have a boot disk that can see usb mass storage though. Im trying to boot up mount a 4gb usb key containing windows and install to the ssd on sata controller.

I don’t know of a single BIOS for the 440BX that can recognise a USB drive.
You could try flashing a PLOP instead of a PXE.
Or find a network card that supports a flash chip.
But I really don’t like the way it works.
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html

Here’s how I set up a SIL on a BX with an SSD.
IDE-CDROM (alas, it’s no good without it), an IDE-SATA bridge with the SSD connected.
Install Windows, then install the Silicon Image driver.
Switch the SSD from the bridge to the SIL.
I haven’t come up with anything clearer than that. 🙁

Alternatively, you could try downloading over PXE the network.
If you have a router with a USB port and OPENWRT support, it will take a long time, but it is, in principle, entirely possible.

No no im not trying to use pxe or usb boot, im sorry if i was confusing. The pxe stuff was just me guessing about what fdisk may be showing me.

What i want to do is use a boot disk, that has usb mass storage drivers (the dos 6.22 disk im using does this) once the system is booted and usb mass storage is loaded i want to start the windows install by switching to the usb drive and running setup.exe or whatever. The issue im having is that my boot disk can not see the ssd, so i somehow need to get a win98 boot disk that can load usb mass storage drivers like my dos disk does.

Does that sound workable? A win98 boot disk should show my 64gb ssd pluged in to the sil correct?

I have a card with the SIL3112 chip (and one with a SIL3114). I find that these cards address drives a bit oddly. I almost always have to repartition and reformat drives connected to this type of controller. You could try to repair the current DOS partition while connected to the SIL3112 with the command "FDISK /MBR" from another boot disk, but it might not work.

rwGast wrote on Yesterday, 14:51:

No no im not trying to use pxe or usb boot, im sorry if i was confusing. The pxe stuff was just me guessing about what fdisk may be showing me.

What i want to do is use a boot disk, that has usb mass storage drivers (the dos 6.22 disk im using does this) once the system is booted and usb mass storage is loaded i want to start the windows install by switching to the usb drive and running setup.exe or whatever. The issue im having is that my boot disk can not see the ssd, so i somehow need to get a win98 boot disk that can load usb mass storage drivers like my dos disk does.

Does that sound workable? A win98 boot disk should show my 64gb ssd pluged in to the sil correct?

It sounds needlessly frustrating compared to the more straightforward method of: put the SSD in the vintage machine, wipe the MBR, fdisk /mbr and fdisk it and format /s it using a Win98SE boot disk, then take it out and put it into a modern machine and copy the \WIN98 directory from the CD-ROM to the SSD, then put it back in the vintage machine, boot, cd to win98 and run setup.

If the Win98SE fdisk (may as well get MS-DOS 6.22 out of the picture) can't see and partition the SSD, nothing you do involving USB drives is going to help, and might even make it more confusing by making another hard drive visible to fdisk.

fosterwj03 wrote on Yesterday, 15:41:

I have a card with the SIL3112 chip (and one with a SIL3114). I find that these cards address drives a bit oddly. I almost always have to repartition and reformat drives connected to this type of controller. You could try to repair the current DOS partition while connected to the SIL3112 with the command "FDISK /MBR" from another boot disk, but it might not work.

Particularly if it's a SATA drive you're bringing over from a modern machine, partitioning it on the modern machine will try and 4K or megabyte-align the partition (that's optimal for SSDs and 4K sector hard drives), while Win9x needs it cylinder-aligned.

Ok guys thsnks im going to try it the way you have recomended, it does sound easier. I thought formating with gparted fat16 would be fine i didnt know about these sector alignment issues.

Now im dealing with either the retro computer or my usb floppy, screwing up floppy disks, so im trying to figure how to take these things apart and clean them up. I use to have a special disk to clean the heads but apparently i lost it.

Ok making progress!! Cleaned up floppy drives and there working much better! Next made a win98se boot disk and was able to see the ssd, so i deleted the partion table and made a new one using the fdisk on the boot disk.

Thats where good fortune ended, i could not format /mbr, format c: /s, becuase the 98se disk does not include format.com. So i guess i need to extract my 98se.iso and then dig through the cab files to find the 98 version of format.com.

Should i just copy the 98 install folder to my sata drive using my main laptop and install it? I keep hearing about a quick install version of 98 and other stuff. I guess what im asking is, is there better more updated win98 I should use?

Uh oh format c: /s hangs on writing fat table, any ideas?