Did you try using two IDE cables and jumpering both drives to master? I once also had problems with a board when I tried to use both drives on the same channel.
Do you have another HDD you can try?

I tried your suggestion, but unfortunately no result. I also swapped the HDD for another one that already had Win 98 installed. I can't get into my desktop as it crashes when installing the plug and play drivers.. I get a Msgrv32 error code and it freezes. Trying to reinstall Windows also doesn't work as it freezes during installation.

Did you try other IDE cables?
I once had a cable that turned out to be broken. Swapped everything and nothing did help. I assumed the board was broken. When I later used the same cable on another board which did work before, I got the same issues. Was just like you described: Crashes/freezes during installation.

Another option you could try:
Swap the CPU or, if you don't have another CPU that fits, downclock the CPU a bit. Maybe it got degraded by too much overclocking and can't handle stock settings anymore.

I'm going to go with...

Bad caps.
or bad memory,
or too tight on the memory timings...
or a lousy psu,
or some HF switching interference caused by the solar power inverters inducing some RF noise which upsets the giant invisible pixies which live inside of all our electronicals .

but I'm biased, so I'm sticking with bad caps.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-04-28, 16:59:

or some HF switching interference caused by the solar power inverters inducing some RF noise which upsets the giant invisible pixies which live inside of all our electronicals .

but I'm biased, so I'm sticking with bad caps.

😁 😁 😁

Made me spill my tea 😜

1. Probably too obvious but how much ram did you install? Not only does win98 dislike to run with lots of memory but sometimes also struggles to install.
2. Today I've been installing WinMe using usb keyboard and mouse connected by usb hub. I found a bizarre issue that would cause the install to apparently freeze -> it only advanced when I moved the mouse! It would also not register keyboard keystroke until I moved a mouse (which was extremely erratic too with random clicks). Turns out bios usb settings interfered with the install process, had to tweak usb handoff settings.
3. VIA UDMA controllers have always been somewhat buggy, try forcing pio in bios.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-28, 15:06:

Did you try other IDE cables? I once had a cable that turned out to be broken. Swapped everything and nothing did help. I assume […]
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Did you try other IDE cables?
I once had a cable that turned out to be broken. Swapped everything and nothing did help. I assumed the board was broken. When I later used the same cable on another board which did work before, I got the same issues. Was just like you described: Crashes/freezes during installation.

Another option you could try:
Swap the CPU or, if you don't have another CPU that fits, downclock the CPU a bit. Maybe it got degraded by too much downclocking and can't handle stock settings anymore.

It was the CPU! Swapped for another 1 GHZ and it runs fine 😁 Right now I'm installing drivers and hopefully I'll be playing some games in an hour or so