Guys, I have a problem with 775Dual VSTA and sata controller in any legay (<NT) system. Whenever I put together PATA and SATA devices in, I get a really slow boot into, say DOS 7 (from Win98 setup cd). After initial "Boot from CDROM" option I get stuck on blinking cursor. If I wait forever (i.e. 5 minutes, heheh), then the boot process continues. I'm getting "Start win98 setup, boot with cdrom, boot without cdrom" screen. Any option does not let me access my sata hdd. Dos does not see any partitions, windows setup can not start install (of course). It does not matter in what state HDD is in. Whether I've partitioned it or wiped clean. The result is the same. FDISK also could not access it (Error reading physical disk or something like that). While any NT-based system boots, detects and works fine.
I've tried several different SATA HDDs ranging from 40gb. No change. The only way to avoid this long freeze in the beginning is to disconnect any SATA drives and leave IDE devices only. Then everything works alright.
Usually when I'm tinkering with modern systems and legacy OSes, I put SATA controller into "IDE mode emulation" or the like. This leads to one (or both) IDE channels substituted by SATA devices while legacy OS (e.g. Win98) sees them as a usual IDE drivers (primary type47 disks on IDE controller).
Reading about people successfully installing Win98 OS here I've actually expected something along those lines, but this motherboard does not have such a thing. I can only enable or disable IDE controller in bios (there's even no option to disable sata controller).
Now I would really like to leave at least one SATA HDD connected since I would like to build a dualboot XP system.
So those with WIN98 builds on that motherboard - what are your bios settings and bios version? I'm using latest unofficial bios mentioned here. I've read on Internets, that there's somebody who was able to even boot legacy OS from a SATA drive. I don't understand how that's possible without IDE mode emulation.
The least I'm trying to achieve is to boot win98 from IDE drive while at least one SATA drive connected to SATA controller. It looks like I'm missing something important.
Thanks for reading this massive wall of text.
EDIT: Oh, I'm running SATA controller in Non-Raid mode. Maybe that's it? Shall I assemble a RAID?
MB: Asus P3B-F 1.03 (2x ISA)
CPU: PIII-S 1.4GHz/VIA C3 800MHz
RAM: 256MB PC133
Video: GeForce 4600Ti/Voodoo 5 5500/Voodoo 3 3500 for DOS Glide
Audio: SB16 OPL3 + Audigy Platinum Ex
OS: Windows 98