d - Discover the max HDD size that your BIOS can handle and try something smaller, or you won't be able to know if the problem is the adapter (yes, sometimes an unsupported HDD makes the system hang at detection). 128GB is the max I've seen some (very few) socket 7 motherboards handle. Just think that many PIII can't handle 128GB, it's too large for that time period.
e - Consider an earlier SATA PCI card, Promise is indeed good, as the 300 TX2+ doesn't have drivers for windows 98
f - Use some Dynamic Drive Overlay software, although I'm not sure what's the process to install it if the system hangs at disk detection

Jan has a patched BIOS for that board that supports up to 128 gigabyte hard drives: http://www.steunebrink.info/k6plus.htm

Ohhhh thank you for this, I'll try the patched BIOS !

So I tried zo update my BIOS yesterday. I did not know that Awdflash 6.31 was known to sometime freeze/hang without notice and I learned it the hard way 😀 The tool just crashed right after erasing the current BIOS !

Now I need to salvage my BIOS ... I was not prepared for that but we'll see 😀

mtest001 wrote on 2023-11-15, 08:28:

So I tried zo update my BIOS yesterday. I did not know that Awdflash 6.31 was known to sometime freeze/hang without notice and I learned it the hard way 😀 The tool just crash right after erasing the current BIOS !

Now I need to salvage my BIOS ... I was not prepared for that but we'll see 😀

that's why i never touch the BIOS in older machines, hope it turns out ok for you!

btw, ide to sd-card also an option

mtest001 wrote on 2023-11-15, 08:28:

So I tried zo update my BIOS yesterday. I did not know that Awdflash 6.31 was known to sometime freeze/hang without notice and I learned it the hard way 😀 The tool just crash right after erasing the current BIOS !

Now I need to salvage my BIOS ... I was not prepared for that but we'll see 😀

The problem might not be with software, sometimes old EEPROM chips fail when writing. If you have (access to) an EEPROM programmer recovery is easy, otherwise you either need to try the bootblock procedure (needs a floppy drive and another working system to prep the disk) or hotflash on another board that can read & write this type of EEPROM.

If the EEPROM is dead, new ones can still be sourced, or pull one from a dead motherboard.

dionb wrote on 2023-11-15, 11:12:

The problem might not be with software, sometimes old EEPROM chips fail when writing. If you have (access to) an EEPROM programmer recovery is easy, otherwise you either need to try the bootblock procedure (needs a floppy drive and another working system to prep the disk) or hotflash on another board that can read & write this type of EEPROM.

If the EEPROM is dead, new ones can still be sourced, or pull one from a dead motherboard.

Thanks, I'll try the bootblock procedure...

So finally after several unsuccessful attempts to get a 128 GB ssd hooked to my P200MMX@225 (tried 2 different SATA->IDE adapters and 2 different disks but I think those disks were simply too big or two recent), I switched to a CF->IDE adaper and a 16 GB CF and things worked just fine.

The only issue so far is that I cannot enable the DMA mode on the disk from the device manager of Windows98 se... But still the performance is slightly better than will old IDE HDD.

It's a nice upgrade, my HDD was only 4.3 GB... The CF is 4 x bigger !

I tried to lower the voltage on the CF adapter from 5V to 3.3V and still not able to enable DMA. Funny enough if I disable UDMA in the BIOS then in Windows the DMA checkbox is ticked.

mtest001 wrote on 2023-12-16, 22:45:

I tried to lower the voltage on the CF adapter from 5V to 3.3V and still not able to enable DMA. Funny enough if I disable UDMA in the BIOS then in Windows the DMA checkbox is ticked.

@Repo Man11: Thanks for promoting my patched BIOSes, again. 😀

@mtest001:
Great that you were able to recover from the bad flash!

About the UDMA issue, this is a BIOS bug as well. Here is the story:

Last year, when working on another i430TX board, I noticed that the BIOS summary screen indicated that the drives where running in UDMA 5 or 6 mode.
Because the i430TX chipset supports ATA33, any drive should be indicated as running in UDMA 2 max.
I’ve seen this before and always considered this a cosmetic issue and that the BIOS just displayed the capability of the drive and not the actual transfer mode.
However, I found that Windows 98 doesn’t like the BIOS reporting higher UDMA modes on older hardware and refuses to use any DMA mode when set in Device Manager. This results in a fall-back to PIO mode 4 with reduced Harddisk performance.
I’ve tested this on my i430TX board with an 11/1998 Award BIOS and a clean Win98 install, so I was using the standard Microsoft Bus Master IDE drivers.
Indeed the DMA mode would not stick and the atto disk benchmark measured a poor 9MB/s.
Luckily most Award BIOSes from 03/1999 or later have a fix for this UDMA bug and I found a way to apply this fix to older Award BIOSes as well.
I’ve tested this fix on my TX board and now Win98 allowed to select DMA in device manager and after a reboot I got 30MB/s in atto disk benchmark! 😀

Now that I have a patch for this UDMA bug, I will apply it to the next HOT-569 patched BIOS version as well. Just give me a few weeks to get it ready.

Cheers, Jan

Thanks for the feedback @Chkcpu and for proposing a fix, that would be very nice. I'll be happy to be the guinea pig for you 😀

It's a pity the BIOS settings for UDMA only propose "AUTO" or "Disabled", and there is no way to manually force it.

Hey, try something real quick,

Change to 64mb of ram and see if the system is faster.

That chipset can only cache 64mb unless you go k6-3/3+/2+

Btw, some pmmx 200s had 3.5x unlocked. You can try 1.5x setting and see if you get 3.5x

@chkcpu, is that pio bug present on tyan s1564?

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-12-17, 23:46:

Hey, try something real quick,
Change to 64mb of ram and see if the system is faster.
That chipset can only cache 64mb unless you go k6-3/3+/2+

Yes, I am aware of this limitation, however I understand that the performance hit is relatively limited (see for example https://www.anandtech.com/show/96/2 - comparing the perfs between 64MB and 96MB). Now you are right perhaps it would be worth giving it a try to see by myself if there is any noticeable difference.

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-12-17, 23:46:

Btw, some pmmx 200s had 3.5x unlocked. You can try 1.5x setting and see if you get 3.5x

Good to know I may try this also. I still not have taken the time to test how far I can overclock that little P200, I thought 3x75 was a safe and conservative ratio.

Most pmmx can do 250 if I recall from my tinkering

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-12-17, 23:46:

@chkcpu, is that pio bug present on tyan s1564?

Hi Sphere,
No, the Tyan S1564 is not affected by this Win98 UDMA bug because the i430HX chipset uses the 82371SB (PIIX3) southbridge that doesn’t do UDMA. The same goes for boards with the i430FX and i430VX chipset.
So your S1564 will happily run Win98 in PIO 4 or MW DMA 2 modes via the on-board IDE channels.

Only socket 7 boards running a 02/1999 or earlier Award BIOS with UDMA supporting chipsets are affected by this bug. So boards with i430TX, ALi154x, SiS-5582/5591/5598, and VIA VP2/VP3/MVP3 chipsets to name a few. But you should be fine when running a 03/1999 or later BIOS on these boards.
It is possible that early Award BIOSes on Slot 1 boards are affected as well, but I have no data on that.

Cheers, Jan

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-12-18, 17:04:

Most pmmx can do 250 if I recall from my tinkering

That's possible, however I remember clearly my rationale back then for not pushing it too much: I needed my computer for my studies and, as a second level priority, for LAN parties, so I could basically not afford the downtime and budget impact of a toasted CPU 😀 Hence the conservative 3x75 MHz.

About the original post, I think you can still use that 160 gb hdd with the SATA->IDE adapter.
Using another pc and hitachi f tool, you can limit the hdd size. Try 32 gb, it should work.
https://files.hddguru.com/download/Software/H … FEATURE%20TOOL/

mtest001 wrote on 2023-12-18, 22:00:

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-12-18, 17:04:

Most pmmx can do 250 if I recall from my tinkering

That's possible, however I remember clearly my rationale back then for not pushing it too much: I needed my computer for my studies and, as a second level priority, for LAN parties, so I could basically not afford the downtime and budget impact of a toasted CPU 😀 Hence the conservative 3x75 MHz.

bah…. at that time i had a PII233 and a friend of me P233MMX at 83Mhzx3,5 (290Mhz) …. still work TODAY.

let me expand on that remark 🤣, I recall some samples posting well into the 300s like 330mhz
250 is nothing, if it's stable, run it !!overclock!!:p

Pentium 1 Tillamook 266 ppga, those nutty bastards will do 400 mhz without breaking a sweat.
We recently confirmed some rare film chip units had 4.5x multi(66x4.5), and a 5x multi(90x5) was on the books but is as of yet unconfirmed within the community.