pentotark wrote on 2022-01-27, 20:25:

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-27, 12:42:

Finally, go to the IDE config section and manually set the drive to whatever is listed for your CF model. I think you’ll be able to set the drive size, also.

I followed your steps and now I need to enter the parameters here. As Primary IDE Master I need to select IDE Removable I guess? Then all the other parameters I don't know what they mean or relate to my CF model. Could you help me out with this?

Thank you!

Let me fire up my system and send you a screenshot. It will be a few minutes.

Please see the screenshot. I knew I missed a few steps, but it has been a while and I've only ever needed to do this once, haha!

Set to "User"
Drive size is then shown (8000MB or something close in your case)
Disable LBA

You should be all set.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-27, 20:41:

Please see the screenshot. I knew I missed a few steps, but it has been a while and I've only ever needed to do this once, haha […]
Show full quote

Please see the screenshot. I knew I missed a few steps, but it has been a while and I've only ever needed to do this once, haha!

Set to "User"
Drive size is then shown (8000MB or something close in your case)
Disable LBA

You should be all set.

Thanks so much for helping out, it's much appreciated!

I did set everything as you indicated. Strangely, when booting, the compact flash doesn't show up during bios post, but if I run Win98 installation from cd, the installer can see the drive.
I get the usual error messages when the setup checks for C: (see attached images).
Then Windows supposedly starts copying files on the drive. I can see the yellow light on the adapter card flashing for a minute then there is no activity. In the past I left the pc on for hours but nothing happens, it seems that from here the installation cannot pick up. I did try swapping to another CF or burn a different windows 98 SE installation cd, but I always end up in this situation and cannot progress with the installation. Do you have an idea of what is happening?

It's normal not to see the drive during POST for this board when setting manually. It only lists what it automatically detects during POST. My board behaves the same. We both have P17 BIOS (just FYI).

Did you reformat the drive? Don't use any special switches. A basic format: FORMAT C: /Q /V:<label> With LBA disabled, you need a fresh format since the structure of the drive calculation has changed. It makes sense Windows would flag a Scandisk.

Also, are you copying the CABS locally? I create a C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory after format, and then copy all files from the WIN98 directory into the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory. This makes for a faster, smoother install and will never need the CD again. This shouldn't be related to the CF, but I am wondering how you perform an install.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-27, 21:20:

It's normal not to see the drive during POST for this board when setting manually. It only lists what it automatically detects during POST. My board behaves the same. We both have P17 BIOS (just FYI).

Did you reformat the drive? Don't use any special switches. A basic format: FORMAT C: /Q /V:<label> With LBA disabled, you need a fresh format since the structure of the drive calculation has changed. It makes sense Windows would flag a Scandisk.

Also, are you copying the CABS locally? I create a C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory after format, and then copy all files from the WIN98 directory into the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory. This makes for a faster, smoother install and will never need the CD again. This shouldn't be related to the CF, but I am wondering how you perform an install.

Right now I am stuck with this error. It happens every time I try to boot a floppy or a CD (see attached picture). I did a quick search online and it seems it could be Ram or, even worse, a faulty cpu. I have a couple banks of ram, swapped them and the pc wont boot. As for the processor, I have a Pentium III 500MHz laying around but I don't know if it is compatible with his board as is.

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-27, 22:19:

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-27, 21:20:

It's normal not to see the drive during POST for this board when setting manually. It only lists what it automatically detects during POST. My board behaves the same. We both have P17 BIOS (just FYI).

Did you reformat the drive? Don't use any special switches. A basic format: FORMAT C: /Q /V:<label> With LBA disabled, you need a fresh format since the structure of the drive calculation has changed. It makes sense Windows would flag a Scandisk.

Also, are you copying the CABS locally? I create a C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory after format, and then copy all files from the WIN98 directory into the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory. This makes for a faster, smoother install and will never need the CD again. This shouldn't be related to the CF, but I am wondering how you perform an install.

Right now I am stuck with this error. It happens every time I try to boot a floppy or a CD (see attached picture). I did a quick search online and it seems it could be Ram or, even worse, a faulty cpu. I have a couple banks of ram, swapped them and the pc wont boot. As for the processor, I have a Pentium III 500MHz laying around but I don't know if it is compatible with his board as is.

The SE440BX2 will support any 66/100mhz FSB Pentium II/III up to 1GHz with the BIOS you have (P17), which is the latest.

Try booting with 1 stick of RAM 64, 128MB, 0r 256MB in the DIMM slot closest to the CPU (Bank 0). The maximum RAM this board can support (reliably) is 384MB.

As an FYI, I booted with two different CF adapters without any problems: Differences between my system and yours:

256MB PC100 double-sided CL2 module in DIMM Bank 0 (...not relevant to the CF drive.)
800MHz/100 FSB Pentium III (...not relevant to the CF drive.)
Voodoo3 3500 AGP (...not relevant to the CF drive.)
Sound Blaster Live! PCI (...not relevant to the CF drive.)
Adaptec [NEC] USB 2.0 PCI (...not relevant to the CF drive.)
IDE Secondary Master for the CF drive (...this is because it is more convenient for cable management as shown and does not affect the performance of the CF drive)
CF drive is a Sandisk 16GB (...but I have used 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB from Transcend and EP Memory without any problems.)

I also have Dell board based on SE440BX board and yes, you need to pick right CF card. I find that transcend industrial works well and I did try few other brands, WD works great too.

Cheers,

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-27, 21:20:

Also, are you copying the CABS locally? I create a C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory after format, and then copy all files from the WIN98 directory into the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory. This makes for a faster, smoother install and will never need the CD again. This shouldn't be related to the CF, but I am wondering how you perform an install.

I do install Windows letting the CD do everything. I never tried your way.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-27, 21:20:

Try booting with 1 stick of RAM 64, 128MB, 0r 256MB in the DIMM slot closest to the CPU (Bank 0). The maximum RAM this board can support (reliably) is 384MB.

I did find a stick of 128 MB of pc133 ram that does not generate any divide overflow error.

So I resumed everything and formatted as you recommended (format c: /q /v) but it seems to create a partition of 503 MB instead of 8GB.
Once rebooted, it looks like my pc cannot see the CF. If I start the pc with the windows cd or floppy, drive C: is not a valid path. I tired also other letters.

I decided to format the CF using my windows 10 pc (using a card reader). Formatted the whole 8GB n fat32, set the partition as Active and copied all files in the CD folder win98 to the CF under /windows/cabs but if I let the CF boot nothing happens. Started the pc once again using the cd or floppy but C: is not a valid path. Maybe I bricked/corrupted the CF do death or there is something very wrong I am doing while formatting.

Formatting a disk in windows 10 won’t work. The boot record is different, and it won’t set the partition as active. You need to format inside DOS based system like Windows 9x for possibility of bootable drive. (Or 3rd party partition manager.)

But before formatting, I forgot to tell you to run FDISK first.

Boot into Startup with CD support or use floppy as long as you have access to FDISK.
Run FDISK.
Enable large disk support when prompted.
Select option to display partitions. What do you see? You should see only 1 FAT32 partition it might only show 500MB.
Delete all partitions.
Select option to display all partitions. You should get a reply with nothing to display.
Create new partition.
When prompted, DO NOT allocate all space and set partition as active. You will do this manually.
When drive calculation is finished, it should default to maximum size of available disk space, 8GB in your case. What do you see?
*****There is no point going further if you don’t see 8GB. *****

After partition is created set it to ACTIVE.
Exit FDISK
Reboot
Boot into Startup with CD support or use floppy as long as you have access to FORMAT
FORMAT C: /Q /V:<label>

If you still have problems, I will do the steps myself on my system with a Transcend 4GB CF I recently bought. It was already used by previous owner. This experiment will mirror your situation except disk size. I’ll duplicate the steps and let you know the results.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:09:

But before formatting, I forgot to tell you to run FDISK first.

Right now my problem is that running fdisk I get an error telling me no hard drive is installed and cannot continue. I need to find a solution to that before following your steps.
I am amazed by your willing to help. Sunday I will be back and resume this adventure. Thanks so much!

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-27, 13:02:

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-01-27, 12:03:

Ditch the CF adapter and get a PATA flash module (ATA/IDE SSD for industrial computer systems) of the highest capacity that your board will allow. That will work better than a CF card. Today, only some industrial CF cards still properly implement ATA in their controllers and handle the role of a HDD stand-in, while the consumer ones simply won't work well most of the time, if they ever work at all.

I am not familiar with this. How does it work? You just plug into the ide slot in place of the hard disk cable and that's it? Thank you.

Search for "disk on module" (DOM). There are 40-pin PATA (for desktop motherboards; requires external power using 4-pin molex connector), 44-pin PATA (for laptop and embedded systems), and SATA models.

Advantage: Designed for industrial systems, DOMs are usually more reliable than consumer-grade CF or SD memory cards.

Disadvantage: They are meant to be plugged directly onto motherboards and stay there for years, not as removable media like memory cards, so transferring files can be problematic: you might need gender-changing adapters to connect one to a modern computer. It also prevents using a slave device on the same IDE channel (unless you connect it to a standard cable via a gender changer).

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:51:

Right now my problem is that running fdisk I get an error telling me no hard drive is installed and cannot continue. I need to find a solution to that before following your steps.

You can see the drive in BIOS but not with FDISK? Wait, I see your BIOS screencap; it should NOT be "Removable."

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:51:

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:09:

But before formatting, I forgot to tell you to run FDISK first.

Right now my problem is that running fdisk I get an error telling me no hard drive is installed and cannot continue. I need to find a solution to that before following your steps.
I am amazed by your willing to help. Sunday I will be back and resume this adventure. Thanks so much!

I glad to help!

When you ran FDISK, did it first ask you about how to treat unrecognized or Non-DOS partitions or something like that?

dormcat wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:51:

You can see the drive in BIOS but not with FDISK? Wait, I see your BIOS screencap; it should NOT be "Removable."

This is an old screenshot, now it is set to User and I could access it for a while but now I cannot proceed with an fdisk because cannot find C:
Thank you for your tips, I will keep them in mind if I find a that kind of module.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:09:

When you ran FDISK, did it first ask you about how to treat unrecognized partitions or something like that?

Nope, It just displayed a single line telling me C: cannot be reached or is unavailable. I am not sure about the exact text because I am away from home until Sunday.

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-28, 12:03:

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:09:

When you ran FDISK, did it first ask you about how to treat unrecognized partitions or something like that?

Nope, It just displayed a single line telling me C: cannot be reached or is unavailable. I am not sure about the exact text because I am away from home until Sunday.

Ok, first we need to get this disk back into windows 10 to make sure it is blank.

Follow these steps to run DISKPART with “CLEAN” option. The process is the same from XP to WIN11.

Make sure you know which drive is the compact flash, or YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF YOUR DATA if the wrong drive is selected.

https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/how-to-dis … rompt-005929en/

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-28, 12:03:

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:09:

When you ran FDISK, did it first ask you about how to treat unrecognized partitions or something like that?

Nope, It just displayed a single line telling me C: cannot be reached or is unavailable. I am not sure about the exact text because I am away from home until Sunday.

OK, my friend here are the complete instructions, I found one other step I left out. LBA Mode Control needs to be toggled "on" and then "off" again during Compact Flash disk setup. I enclosed these steps in asterisks below for easier viewing in the future, but I recommend you don't jump around.

I took a run through five (5) recently purchased used 4GB compact flash drives, and I was able to successfully install Windows 98 SE on each drive without any problems. Please follow the revised instructions below. I used the Secondary Master because of cable management. I also tested on Primary and the results are the same:

Insert the Compact Flash into its IDE adapter.
Insert the Windows 98 SE Boot floppy into its drive.
Start the computer.
Insert the Windows 98 SE CD into its drive.
Press F2 to enter the BIOS and set:
********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** **********
********** Advanced ---> IDE Configuration ---> IDE Primary (or Secondary) Master ---> User ---> LBA Mode Control ---> ENABLED ****************
********** Exit ---> Exit Saving Changes ---> Yes ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** *********
********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** **********
(Machine reboots)
Boot into Startup without CD support using the already inserted floppy disk. (You don't need the CD, yet.)
Run FDISK.
Enable large disk support when prompted.
If NTFS is identified, select "YES" to treat them as large partitions.
Select option 3 to access the delete partitions submenu. (If the disk is already blank, you will receive a notice informing of no partitions.)
Select the option necessary to delete every partition and logical drive from the disk (In my case, I only needed to select option 4 because the entire drive was NTFS).
When finished, you will be brought back to the main menu after pressing ESC out of the delete partition submenu.
Create a new partition.
When prompted, DO NOT allocate all space and set partition as active. You will do this manually for verification purposes.
When drive calculation is finished, it should default to maximum size of available disk space, 8GB in your case. (In my case it is 4GB).
*****There is no point going further if you don’t see 8GB. *****
Press ENTER to accept the default allocation of maximum partition size, which will be the entire drive (unless you plan on creating logical drives, then type in the value desired.)
After primary partition 1 is created, set it to ACTIVE.
Exit FDISK.
Ctrl + Alt + Delete to reboot.
(Machine reboots)
Press F2 to enter the BIOS and set:
********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** **********
********** Advanced ---> IDE Configuration ---> IDE Primary (or Secondary) Master ---> User ---> LBA Mode Control ---> DISABLED ****************
********** Exit ---> Exit Saving Changes ---> Yes ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** *********
********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********** **********
Boot into Startup with CD support using the already inserted floppy disk.
Run FORMAT C: /Q /V:Win98se (The quick option probably won't work, but it is a habit of mine to use /q. Unconditionally format the drive, if necessary. Press Y to continue)
MD C:\WINDOWS
MD C:\WINDOWS\CABS
CD C:\WINDOWS\CABS
COPY D:\WIN98\*.*
Eject the CD and the floppy disk; they are no longer needed.
SETUP <---- (Make sure you are in the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory)
Go through Windows setup and reboot.
(Machine reboots)
Setup should continue normally after reboot.
Windows setup continues and reboots one final time.
The installation is complete.

****Please note:****
If you run FDISK again in DOS or Windows, the partition(s) will show an accurate allocation of space, but FDISK will report the disk is only 473MB. You can safely ignore this calculation.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-29, 21:19:

SETUP <---- (Make sure you are in the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory) Go through Windows setup and reboot. (Machine reboots) Setup sh […]
Show full quote

SETUP <---- (Make sure you are in the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory)
Go through Windows setup and reboot.
(Machine reboots)
Setup should continue normally after reboot.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to write down this guide for me and anyone struggling with the process. I do really appreciate that.

I followed your guide thoroughly and everything went smoothly and exactly as you described until the point I quoted above, where, after running the setup I am prompted with the message attached.
Before continuing I wanted to know your opinion.

I couldn't even get my retro machine (an ASUS A7M266-M OEM HP board) that I was using with a CF reader to fully POST (it would just hang at the BIOS when a card was plugged in and when I took the card out and tried to boot the system it said there was a BIOS checksum error and reset some of my settings).

Eventually I just bailed and used a SATA to IDE adapter to use an SSD instead (which worked but installing Windows 98 was very slow; though that might have been the CD drive's fault, I can't tell).

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-30, 11:19:

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to write down this guide for me and anyone struggling with the process. I do […]
Show full quote

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-29, 21:19:

SETUP <---- (Make sure you are in the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory) Go through Windows setup and reboot. (Machine reboots) Setup sh […]
Show full quote

SETUP <---- (Make sure you are in the C:\WINDOWS\CABS directory)
Go through Windows setup and reboot.
(Machine reboots)
Setup should continue normally after reboot.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to write down this guide for me and anyone struggling with the process. I do really appreciate that.

I followed your guide thoroughly and everything went smoothly and exactly as you described until the point I quoted above, where, after running the setup I am prompted with the message attached.
Before continuing I wanted to know your opinion.

No problem, I'm glad it worked out great. Looking at your errors, where did you get the boot disk? I used an "original" Windows 98 SE boot disk. Do you have this? It looks to me you booted the system with a different version of DOS. I'm guessing you didn't load SMARTDRV or any other caching utility. However, no matter; you can work around this problem. Press ENTER to exit setup. (Or Ctrl+C to break out of the operation, if necessary.)

Now re-run setup, but use: SETUP.EXE /IS to skip running scandisk on setup. It's not necessary, anyway, since you just partitioned and unconditionally formatted the drive.