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Win98 on AsRock 4coredual-sata2 - Should work, but doesnt!

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First post, by Tmp2k

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I have a complex multi-boot system, in the past, I've had Win98SE working fine on this setup. I've been messing around and it's time to reinstall but I just can't get it to work this time around.

Here's the system, I've changed the spec for now to eliminate other issues, but I've had this working in the past with 2x GPUs and 2GB ram and SSDs

  • 512mb DDR1
  • TNT2 M64 AGP (default adapter)
  • 960GSO PCI-E (I've removed this for testing, make no difference)
  • IDE HDD containing Win9x OS
  • SATA HDD not used
  • SATA SSD not used

Here's some stuff I know...

  • With any SATA drives connected it won't boot. This was the case before until you installed the drivers and then it was OK. There are no Win98 SATA2 drivers, but Win98 is booting off IDE anyway (but there are unused SATA hdds connected)
  • I've tried a few different version of via drivers, but I still end up with the same issues.
  • There's a few resource conflicts and an odd error about there being two PCI bus types. and no matter what I do, it won't start windows with a SATA drive connected, it just hangs after the Win98 boot logo goes away so I@m left with a black screen.
  • If I install gfx drivers then it also hangs in the same place

So, has anyone on here got this working? Which drivers did you use? Did you get SATA working too? What am I missing?

Reply 1 of 4, by agent_x007

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1) Switch off all ports/devices not used (LPT, COM, and switch off USB 2.0 or make v1.1 only).
2) Did you manipulate AGP Aperture Size (which GPU driver you tried) ?
3) "RAID mode", does anything ?
4) Windows that was installed on IDE :
a) In IDE Compatible or IDE Enhanced mode ?
b) With SATA drives connected ?
5) Any updates for Win 98 were installed ?
6) Any tweaks in system.ini/msconfig/config.sys ?

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Reply 2 of 4, by Tmp2k

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1) It's setup however it was when it worked, some things are off that I don't need but others like USB2 are on. I'll disable everything and try it.
2) It's set to 64MB which is what I always set it to, again has worked with this setting, but I can change it.
3) I've just left this off as I don't want to use RAID and it will stop the other OSes from working with native drivers.
4a) Not sure I'll check, but I'd guess Enhanced mode as I would have set it to that for the newer OSes
4b) Drives were connected when installed, once install had finished it wouldn't boot windows until I unplugged them.
5) No just Win98SE (I get the exact same behavior with Win95 (+FASTCPUFIX) and WinME)
6) No (but once I get it running with 512MB RAM I'll be tweaking things to run 2GB)

Reply 3 of 4, by agent_x007

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I would switch off SATA Controller in BIOS to see if it's at fault (with HDDs connected).
If so, delete it's driver, or switch it off in safe mode (which should work, if drivers are the problem).

SATA drives use partitions with "NTFS" file system ?

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Reply 4 of 4, by kaputnik

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Couldn't get my 4Coredual-SATA2 rig working consistently either, until I put the SATA controller in RAID mode. As long as you don't build any arrays, the drives seems to still work in regular SATA mode.

Got a similar setup, booting XP from a SATA drive, and W98 from an IDE one.

The only thing left to do with it is to figure out why I get so low 3DMark scores, otherwise it works perfectly in both W98 and XP.

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