I have a Asus P5ab 1.04 motherboard and I am trying to install a crucial MX300 120gb SSD with a PROMISE SATA150 TX2plus pci controller. There is no previous HDD or operating system installed. The bios finds the SATA150 but I dont see any drives. Will i need to install the SATA150 drivers before I install the OS on the SSD.
When installing Windows 98 on one of these you don't need to do anything other than run setup (best done by saving the .CAB files to the hard drive). You can install the Promise driver after installation finishes. Windows 2000 on, you have to install the driver during setup.
"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey
Will I need to format the SSD or can I install 98 directly from the CD?
I've gotten into the habit of using Super Fdisk to save time. It allows a very quick partition and format, then I copy the .cabs to the hard drive, then navigate to that folder and run the installation. Here's is Phil's video on Super Fdisk:
"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey
These cards have their own option ROM that scans for attached drives just like a SCSI card. The main system BIOS will still not show any HDD detected.
I got it to recognize the 120gb SSD. The Ctrl+A command wouldn't work after it loaded the Fasttrack bios untill I enabled USB function in the motherboard bios. I also set it to boot from SCSI instead of IDE. I set the drive array and even formatted it from the fasttrack menu at boot up. Now it wont recognize my usb keyboard when I boot from the win98 cd. My p5ab doesn't have any legacy support in the bios but i have ver 1007 instead of 1011. I am going to use a ps/2 keyboard with an AT/IBM adapter to get windows installed and will update the bios later.
IMO PS/2 mice and keyboards are your best bet with Win98.
"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey
