I would definitely try changing the hard disk setting from Auto to manual and see if that solves the issue.

Under type I have:
-CD\DVD
-ARMD

LBA:
-Enable
-Disable
-Auto

Block multi sector:
-Enable
-Disable
-Auto

PIO:
-1 to 4 + auto

DMA:
-A long list of dma modes

SMART
-Enable
-Disable

32bit:
-Enable
-Disable

The screen shot shows how it was detected - I would match all of those setting manually and see if that speeds things up.

It took a while to find this, but I had this experience with an older P4 motherboard:

"I wanted to get this out there in case anyone else with this board has this issue. I was given this board a few months ago and it had some obvious failing capacitors, but it still booted into Windows when I replaced the blown power supply. So I recently got around to replacing the bad caps, and installed Windows XP on a 240 gig SSD connected to the SATA 0 port by using the CDROM on the SATA 1 port and everything went fine. It was on BIOS FC from 11/18/2003 and I decided to update it to FG dated 9/9/2004. When I rebooted after the update, it wouldn't load Windows and the message was "Error loading operating system." I tried many different things, but had no luck. I then stepped it back by flashed it to FF which was dated 8/11/2004, but I still had the same error!

I went into Standard CMOS Features and changed IDE Channel 0 Master's Access Mode from Auto to Large and then it loaded Windows with no issue."

GA-8IPE1000 Pro (rev. 2.x) BIOS FG

thank you, I'll come home this evening and try it out

Okay by playing with the settings I have better identified the problem.

The motherboard can't access the hard drive if the controller is set to compatible mode.

If I put all the settings manually the boot phase ends right away because the card does not need to access the disk.

But right after that the attempt to boot an operating system occurs and at that point it freezes again for a few minutes until it fails by booting from the second device (the floppy)

At that point the Windows98 boot floppy is loaded, I give the fdisk command and again disk access is attempted, failing again. Fdisk then returns the error "error reading fixed disk"

Ideas?

I have no experience with installing Win98 with that chipset; the latest I've ever tried it with was an Intel 875. I did find this guide for installing Win98 on an X58 motherboard, maybe it has the answer? https://www.modlabs.net/articles/installing-w … et#.Y7NUqhXMKUk

Solved, just set from BIOS the hard disk's DMA mode to "SWDMA" (single word dma)

I wonder why...

What style of cable are you using for IDE (40 wire or 80 wire) ?
Also, since this is IDE controller "talking to" SATA SSD, I guess there is an adapter somewhere ?
If so, adapter may not support higher/other modes (that are selected by default by "AUTO" setting).

agent_x007 wrote on 2023-01-09, 13:50:

What style of cable are you using for IDE (40 wire or 80 wire) ?
Also, since this is IDE controller "talking to" SATA SSD, I guess there is an adapter somewhere ?
If so, adapter may not support higher/other modes (that are selected by default by "AUTO" setting).

I do not have any IDE cable. The controller is a SATA (intel ICH10R built into the X58 chipset), connected to a SATA SSD via a SATA cable.

However, set in compatible mode it emulates a PATA/IDE controller and the operating system does not notice that it is working with a SATA controller

why exactly are you trying to run windows 98 on an x58 system anyway that hardware is much to new for windows 98. there isn't going to be any official drivers for any of the chipset or ide/sata stuff.

u would be much better off getting a hold of something from the pentium 3 or early pentium 4 era on intel or and athlon or athlon xp from amd those will all have driver for windows 98 and AGP is much more compatible for windows 98.

x58 is much more suited for windows xp or 7

aaron158 wrote on 2023-01-09, 16:57:

why exactly are you trying to run windows 98 on an x58 system anyway that hardware is much to new for windows 98. there isn't going to be any official drivers for any of the chipset or ide/sata stuff.

If you want performance, X58 will be faster than Pentium III/Athlon XP.
Sure, for GPUs you are limited to PCX series or GF6/7 from NV and X8xx/X6xx/X3xx cards from ATI, BUT platform itself should still be faster without drivers vs. old platforms with official ones.
You can plug a separate PCI sound card or PCI IDE/SATA controller card with Win98 driver (if you can't live with basic M$ driver for it). As multiple PCI ports aren't uncommon on X58.

Still, unless "official" drivers make you faster, there is no point in them (to me at least).
Problems with devices on Win98 (Resource conflicts for example), can be easily solved by disabling it in device manager. I don't care about having red crosses or yellow triangles in it - if games work, it's fine to me.

agent_x007 wrote on 2023-01-10, 07:51:

If you want performance, X58 will be faster than Pentium III/Athlon XP. Sure, for GPUs you are limited to PCX series or GF6/7 fr […]
Show full quote

aaron158 wrote on 2023-01-09, 16:57:

why exactly are you trying to run windows 98 on an x58 system anyway that hardware is much to new for windows 98. there isn't going to be any official drivers for any of the chipset or ide/sata stuff.

If you want performance, X58 will be faster than Pentium III/Athlon XP.
Sure, for GPUs you are limited to PCX series or GF6/7 from NV and X8xx/X6xx/X3xx cards from ATI, BUT platform itself should still be faster without drivers vs. old platforms with official ones.
You can plug a separate PCI sound card or PCI IDE/SATA controller card with Win98 driver (if you can't live with basic M$ driver for it). As multiple PCI ports aren't uncommon on X58.

Still, unless "official" drivers make you faster, there is no point in them (to me at least).
Problems with devices on Win98 (Resource conflicts for example), can be easily solved by disabling it in device manager. I don't care about having red crosses or yellow triangles in it - if games work, it's fine to me.

p3/p4 althon xp can run any windows 98 era game at high fps already.

You are correct, games for Win98 probably don't need more than PIII/AthlonXP.
However that's not what OP has running or what he asked about.
Maybe he wants to dual/triple boot with XP/7 on this setup (because X58 will be great at that) ?
(and PIII/AXP are simply too slow for that)

I confirm that with the options explained in the posts above it works, soon I will post a thread where I illustrate this strange configuration

aaron158 wrote on 2023-01-09, 16:57:

why exactly are you trying to run windows 98 on an x58 system anyway that hardware is much to new for windows 98. there isn't going to be any official drivers for any of the chipset or ide/sata stuff.

u would be much better off getting a hold of something from the pentium 3 or early pentium 4 era on intel or and athlon or athlon xp from amd those will all have driver for windows 98 and AGP is much more compatible for windows 98.

x58 is much more suited for windows xp or 7

There is no specific motivation, I would say for fun and curiosity