Meatball wrote on 2022-01-30, 19:51:

Looks good. I hope the oracle gives you some good news.

It'd say it is a success! =D

Jackpot! Nice work!

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-30, 20:15:

Jackpot! Nice work!

Thank you so much for your help, it was crucial. Still amazed by your willing to help out in such a limited situation. I did definitely learned a lot.

Step 2 now is to get the rest of my hardware work, but it is just drivers and everything is already tested and working in my old win 98 installation before the hard disk died on me.
I'll post pictures in the future!

Also, saving this thread for future reference.

Yay!

Cheers,

Btw, my baby:

pentotark wrote on 2022-01-30, 20:53:

Btw, my baby:

Very nice!

The mystery continues.
I was installing the drivers and after I tried to boot win 98 with the CF and a hard disk full of files I wanted to transfer. After that, the CF wont boot anymore.
So I repeated the sequence Meatball wrote down on page 2 from the beginning (reinstalling everything once again) but I get stuck to the point it is time to install windows from the cab files.

When creating a windows folder with:
MD c:\windows

I get a new folder named win@oss.
This is so spooky.

I decided to go on and keep following the guide copying everything in on the win98 folder in the CD:
c:
cd win@oss
cd cabs
copy e:\win98\*.*
(for some reason the cd drive is on E: as D: is taken by Microsoft Ram Drive)
And I get this error:
"Not ready writing drive C:"

I am very confused right now. Does of you know what is going on?

The CF guide I wrote for you was not designed for swapping disks in and out of the system. My system has worked for years now without the kind of problems you're going through, but I am not swapping disks in and out of the system.

I don't think it is much of a mystery. The problem is the unstable system you're creating moving parts in and out. The best advice I can give you at this point is to stop moving disks around. Ram drives? Additional hard disks? Where are all of these things coming from? You don't need any of these things. All you need is the CF drive, and optionally a network card and/or a USB Flash drive for copying drivers or software over. A CD burner is also an alternative. If you need to keep doing all of these things, then it's probably best for you to stop using Compact Flash with this board.

Pick a configuration, and go with it. You may have to spend a little more money, but it will save you time. All I use to copy software is a single 2GB USB flash drive.

Meatball wrote on 2022-02-08, 16:56:

The CF guide I wrote for you was not designed for swapping disks in and out of the system. My system has worked for years now without the kind of problems you're going through, but I am not swapping disks in and out of the system.

I don't think it is much of a mystery. The problem is the unstable system you're creating moving parts in and out. The best advice I can give you at this point is to stop moving disks around. Ram drives? Additional hard disks? Where are all of these things coming from? You don't need any of these things. All you need is the CF drive, and optionally a network card and/or a USB Flash drive for copying drivers or software over. A CD burner is also an alternative. If you need to keep doing all of these things, then it's probably best for you to stop using Compact Flash with this board.

Pick a configuration, and go with it. You may have to spend a little more money, but it will save you time. All I use to copy software is a single USB Flash drive.

It was my fault messing around this time. Lesson learned.
Right now the system comprises of a cd drive, my CF and a floppy. There is nothing else. I don't know why there is a ram drive when the windows floppy boots.
The issue described above persists.
I thought it could have been a faulty cd data cable connector so I took another one but when I create a new windows folder all I get is one named win@oss.

After changing the cable it seems it made a difference because now I can copy the CABS files from cd to win@oss\cabs. Lets see if this can work!

Start from the very beginning of the guide, FDISK and all.

Meatball wrote on 2022-02-08, 17:10:

Start from the very beginning of the guide, FDISK and all.

I repeated your guide multiple times, but once I performed all operation with fdisk, put back LBA to disabled, booting with cd support and created the cab folder, If I move to it i get "invalid directory".
If i DIR, I can see there is only win@oss folder instead of windows folder.
I move on and continue your guide copying the cab files from the cd to the win@oss\cab folder.
the command would be:
copy e:\win\*.*
I use E instead of D becase in D the boot floppy loaded "diagnostic tools".
Anyway the copy works just good anyway.
I eject the floppy and the cd and type SETUP /is and I get the error: "Not ready reading drive A. Abort, Retry, Fail?"

If I keep floppy and CD inside, then SETUP /is will launch the CD installation (even tho I made sure I was on c:), copying all cab files to a new windows temporary directory.
I can see the CF activity led flashing while I can see the message "Copying files needed for Windows Setup.
The CF led stops flashing, and a wait for a while but nothing happens, the installation process seems to a halt.

I tried the whole process a couple times, then, suspecting there is something bad with my CF, I followed your guide from the beginning with a new CF card (4GB) but I get stuck here nonetheless. Repeated this another time but nothing moves on.

Is this the same boot disk from the files copied over form the beginning? It seems like you made changes. Where are these diagnostic tools coming from? This shouldn't be. There shouldn't be any "Win@oss" directory, either. You should not be continuing on in the face of problems, either.

Disconnect all power, pull the battery on your motherboard, and erase the BIOS.
Take out the compact flash and install it into your Windows 10 machine. Follow this guide. USE THE COMMAND LINE, NOT THE GUI.
BE CAREFUL, IF YOU DO THIS WRONG, SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR WINDOWS 10 MACHINE:
https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/how-to-dis … rompt-005929en/
Run "DISKPART CLEAN" to completely destroy all partitions. Remove the CF.
Attach the Compact Flash to secondary IDE as Master.
Attach the CD Drive to IDE primary as Master.
Get a new boot floppy. If you don't have only a C: and a D:, something is wrong. You should only have a D: drive available from the beginning, though.
Follow the guide I wrote up, earlier.

Meatball wrote on 2022-02-08, 18:31:

Is this the same boot disk from the files copied over form the beginning? It seems like you made changes.

I was able to reinstall Windows 98 finally.
You were correct, the boot floppy we made together was not the same anymore because during the previous installation I crated a startup disk overwriting the one we crated together. I thought it was the same thing but obviously it is not. Also I did not know you could skip this step (I learned how to skip it only the second time).

So I moved your files back again inside the floppy and now the installation went smoothly as the previous time.

I will keep this installation as is and not move any drives or anything this time.

Thank you so much for your help!