Which mainboard are you using?

pyrogx wrote on 2022-08-14, 13:11:

Which mainboard are you using?

Sorry for my late answer.

Is a Gigabyte ga-5ax.

At the end I have reinstalled the OS and problem is gone, didnt use the lite version, just the 98SE oem.

I took another windows 98 boot cd without the microsft ram drive wich one took some of the memory ram to make a virtual disk drive.

I know ram memory is volatile storage, i restart the pc and that is gone, but I don't know how this works if it saves something to disk and loads it again.

Anyway, maybe is not related but is the only thing i saw as a possible option.

is a problem with the IDE driver, i have tried with in theory previous one but the problem is not solved.

W98SE default IDE driver works but it does not identify the hard device.

I have checked the IDE driver registry if i can see something there and no.
this brand is LG and it is curious that windows does not have any driver for LG, for sony etc it has.
Anyway i tried to apply another generid cd-rom driver and the problem persists. Windows apply the driver to the main device and the rest still there with the same driver... It has to be something related to the driver ide

Still with this problem... i need to solve this because it makes a problem to use the dvd drive in games to read the OST, turok for example has an error at the beginning and the game dosnt work at all.
Make an ISO for all my games and use them with daemon tool or fakecd is clearly not a solution, too much waste of time making the iso and copying files.
I can buy a CF card adapter but i dont want to try right now after got a hell with an sd & sata adapters.

Tested to upgrade to the unnoficial sp2.1a doesnt work.

I have followed the registry and i found the device duplicated in SCSI & another microsoft section, is strange because is almost the same registry key applying a different letter earch one, delete them doesnt work.

I have tried to switch to another 80 pin cable, new one from asus, doesnt work, i dont have a 40 pin cable to try, slave and master doesnt work, This shouldn't have anything related with the problem anyway.

Im going to use the patch to kill the ghost floppy drive from Rudolph in case this resolve the problem, i have read another guy who had the HDD duplicated and unplug the floppy drive solved the problem, in this new OS install i never plugged in the floppy drive, just to try...

If that doesnt work, my last chance is perfom another OS installation in case is a problem switching from the factory IDE driver to the ali IDE driver with the drive plugged in, I don't see any sense to try because is using the same driver for the dvd, another thing i havent tried is another bios option.

I dont have more ideas.

Another hours here without success...

No idea what is wrong with windows.

Changing parameters to the drives from the device manager has an effect in SCSI registry keys, deleting them from the registry = delete the drives in device manager.

I tried to change the "targetID" (no idea if it is the SCSI ID, this is the purpose to check SCSID ID incompatibility) because all the drives been in "0", even the IDE key was in 1 for both (using the same IDE channel while conected to the 2nd one?) so i have configured them in different targets, etc and... dosnt work
I have deleted the drivers inf file but still the same.

All the time windows is just performing a new installation when i delete them. If i dont delete the SCSI registry values windows even not launch the "database update".
Something is behind this stuff saying there are 8 drives, maybe this drive is not UDMA-80 pin cable compatible?, to me this dosnt have any sense, 80pin cable is just a cable with more ground points according to what i have read.

what patience I have to have with this windows, helping others is voluntary, but i dont know why i update the thread if no one seems to be interested speaking just to myself.

Have had friends that had issues with some SS7 ALI chipsets and other hardware that works fine on Intel BX440 based P2's . Have you tried that LG on anything newer ?
Back in the day the Lite-On IDE CDR/DVD or NEC CDR/DVD (like ND3550) burners seemed to work well on nearly anything but have no knowledge or experience with the older LG ones as being very good.
I do know the newer SATA LG burners are good but are not compatible with most older IDE controllers using a SATA to IDE adapter....
You say you tried different cables but have you tried the LG on Secondary IDE by itself as Master with only the boot HD on Primary ?
With "ghost floppy", "HDD duplicated" I think you are trying to do too much off the old board without going step by step and checking each by them selves...not all boards can do what you want... just saying 😀

Horun wrote on 2022-08-27, 01:20:

Have had friends that had issues with some SS7 ALI chipsets and other hardware that works fine on Intel BX440 based P2's . Have […]
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Have had friends that had issues with some SS7 ALI chipsets and other hardware that works fine on Intel BX440 based P2's . Have you tried that LG on anything newer ?
Back in the day the Lite-On IDE CDR/DVD or NEC CDR/DVD (like ND3550) burners seemed to work well on nearly anything but have no knowledge or experience with the older LG ones as being very good.
I do know the newer SATA LG burners are good but are not compatible with most older IDE controllers using a SATA to IDE adapter....
You say you tried different cables but have you tried the LG on Secondary IDE by itself as Master with only the boot HD on Primary ?
With "ghost floppy", "HDD duplicated" I think you are trying to do too much off the old board without going step by step and checking each by them selves...not all boards can do what you want... just saying 😀

still here testing hahahaha...

Switched to another generic windows ide driver and no problem, only recognizes one dvd rom.

I cant test the drive in another computer because the other one has sata.

The config right now is HDD channel IDE 1 as master and the optical drive is channel 2 master (tried as slave too). What i havent tried is the same cable because the HDD is in the bottom of the case and the optical drive on the top (is a modern case), anyway ill test that tomorrow.

no idea if a tried too much stuff but is a cd rom drive, it is suppose to work because normally people were installing windows from a cd, this problem is almost a joke 🤣, i have copied windows to the HDD and then install the OS and from the cd too.

In general words, i performed a normal OS installation, after install the drivers.

What i dont allow the OS is install all the hardware, i disable all the stuff in bios because i dont want com ports and not connected the floppy drive, maybe this is an error.

EDIT: again, i have installed the ali ide driver and the problem returns 😁 , anyway probably there are some remnants of the previous installation of the same driver.

I have invest here another amount of hours.

i have "2 fixes", but they are not fixes.

I managed to install only one drive, but the another 7 still present, and they are working even the driver is not installed, but they are recognized in device manager.

So when i launch Turok which needs the first optical drive letter to work, it dosnt recognize the cd. I havent tested another game to see the ressult.

Im going to install again windows 98 from the HDD, without the ram drive to see what happens, in theory a new fresh install without any CD driver in it.

If that dosnt work, im going to leave this because i cant handle it and provide all the info i have and test i have done.

Aladdin V chipset is incompatible with these LG DVD drives if you use the ALi IDE driver. It's not a Windows fault.
You have two options: 1. Use the standard IDE driver from Win98, It'll work just fine. 2. Use a different DVD ROM drive, not an LG one.

pyrogx wrote on 2022-08-28, 14:07:

Aladdin V chipset is incompatible with these LG DVD drives if you use the ALi IDE driver. It's not a Windows fault.
You have two options: 1. Use the standard IDE driver from Win98, It'll work just fine. 2. Use a different DVD ROM drive, not an LG one.

Can be probably, are you completely sure?, do you know about other brands that are incompatible or is just LG brand? (in case i'll buy another incompatible.. that will be crazy 🤣).

That default 98SE is an ESDI driver and the ali one is SCSI.

just to update this for someone who has this board and wants some info, after this im going to leave this aside.

1.Default 98SE driver is an ESDI driver, named as(not literal):
- bus master 5229 master ide
-primary ide fifo.
-secondary ide fifo.

The HDD driver is "MSHDC.INF"
The generic cd-rom driver is "MSCDROM.INF"
You can find both of them inside the "precopy1.cab" from the 98SE installation CD.(open it with winrar)

2.The Ali driver is SCSI driver named as:
-ali ide master ide.
-ali primary ide UDMA.
-ali secondary ide UDMA.

3.With the Microsoft ESDI driver the HDD is recognized as generic type47, to fix this use the patch from Rudolph R. Loew named PTCHDSTR.

4. Using the device manager, updating the 5229 master ide driver manually, choosing the 9x ali driver you just install the master ide driver but not the 1 & 2 ide fifo channels, windows keeps the fifo ones but this is not enough to change the way the drivers works.According to the registry there is 2 registry keys, one for ESDI and another for SCSI and looking there windows still working as ESDI untill you install the full ali driver, I have not tested(i did it, after mess a lot with the registry, i dont trust on that test,any way is 2-3mb read difference) if there is a difference in performance but the LG drive is not bugged with 8x drives listed/recognized.

5.I "found" only one way to install "only 1 drive" instead of 8 (windows keeps recognizing 8 drives). You have to delete just the driver from the windows/inf folder.
If you delete the registry keys associated to the IDE drive windows doent know what you have installed, this means it will send you a pop up every time you turn on the computer about an "unknown drive connected" 8 times!.
If you just delete the inf files, windows keeps the drives to show them in the device manager with the yellow advice on each one, you can disable each one there.
Even doing this the problem is not solved, for example Turok, which uses the first drive of the computer to recognize the CD (and by this way you have OST in the game) cant recognize the CD, even if you make sure your only drive letter is the first one after the HDD.
Another problem comes with this, if you plug in a USB storage before windows run (or i assume whatever device wich windows assign a letter to it) the new device keeps the first letter, even if you assign the letter using the device manager or the registry.
Another problem is, even if you disable the drives in device manager, windows still showing them in My Computer... i have managed to fix that using the program TweakUI which allows you to remove them from My Computer.
One time, after doing all this stuff, i have changed the letter for my drive in the registry, restart the computer and run windows in safe mode without restarting to windows normal mode (what a mistake), changed here something and then restart windows to normal mode , and what a surprise!, i had 1 drive + another ghost drive in My Computer. So i had to install drivers for all the drives (because that letter was already disabled in TweakUI for My computer and it appears there anyway), delete the inf files and start again, once done everything properly Turok still not recognizing the CD.

My thoughts and conclusion:
I have tried many times, no idea if there is a method to disable that drives etc but i put on it a lot of work, not worth it, i havent tried another brand, im going to do it.

I havent searched a lot info about ESDI and SCSI drives, from what i have read the SCSI bus is composed by 8 drives (I don't know how it would be at that time, technology evolves), is there an incompatibility and the drive is marked as 8 drives and taking the entire SCSI bus? (no idea if this mean more resourses for the computer or is just a ghost drives).

ESDI according to wikipedia can handle data rates of 10, 15, or 20 Mbit/s, i've done a crystal disk mark test and i got 23-25 read/30-31 write, does not reflect the test result.

SCSI can handle more speed (no idea how was in that time), because my board only can handle UDMA 33, if here is not any performance problem (i havent tested, i mean a problem, not just speed rate) 3-5 mb /s is not too much difference (now i have 27,5/31 with the ali one) but if someone has the UDMA 66 version and it happens that the performance is the same you have a bottleneck problem, so i recommend to change for another brand whatever the case, but especially if a bottleneck occurs as I have mentioned.

Cheers.

omg just to comment something related to this ga-5ax 4.1

Yesterday i used the ms dos fast method from Phil, while restarting the machine to dos i saw the irq & dma wrong, i though what is wrong now...
Checking the bios option for isa & pnp os, i can choose between this 2 options, and changing from auto (irq 5, dma 1-5) to manual and having selected the same IRQ & DMA before windows starts it says "irq 7, dma 3-7".

The manual configuration is completely a lie, i have all the other irq and dma in pnp os without this ones being choosed as isa, and the bios is doing whatever he wants.
The real thing is there is only two options pre-configured 😀 , auto irq=5 and manual irq=7.
Maybe is related too how many irq are left and depends it choose one or another, because i have coms disabled etc, so there are more irq available.

At least, with no doubt if i choose in bios ISA ports, the bios don't choose those for the connected card, is... no words.