X4 card will work in X16 slot.

Tape drive might have jumper settings to enable termination, no separate terminator needed. HBA also needs to have termination enabled.

Just make sure the maleness/femaleness of the connectors and the cable line up. That site lists cables of all kinds.

Biggest question is if there will be HBA drivers for win98 available.

And the answer is: no. The drivers listed for that particular card (LSI20320IE) start at Win2k.

I would recommend not using a PCIe SCSI HBA anyway on that particular motherboard.
My recommendation would be something like a PCI Adaptec card, such as AHA2940UW. It has the 68pin bus required. It can be easily found for a lot less than $20 on ebay and is plentiful. And has drivers ranging from DOS to Win7. 😀
https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/support/s … 940/aha-2940uw/

since the mainboard does have conventional pci slot, i think Op better try to find some old adaptec card like the 2940 which does have windows 98 driver
the LSI20320IE does have dos driver available but no windows 98 support. (you can find the driver on the broadcom website, chip is LSI but Broadcom bought LSI.
query:
- Group: Storage Adapters, Controllers, and ICs
- Family: Legacy Host Bus Adapters
- Product: LSI20320IE
- Asset types: Driver
)
I bet that you can still boot windows 98 using the card and it will running in bios compatible mode which is slow but not that bad.

IMHO, I would not even bother with a PCIE SCSI HBA if this Compaq DDS-4 tape drive is your only device.

The Asus K8N4-E has one PCIE x16, three PCIE x1 and three PCI slots available. Since DDS-4 tape drives top out at 3.2MB/s, it just makes sense to put a well-supported SCSI PCI HBA there. Consider the Adaptec AIC-7800 series, like AHA-29160.

Yes the AHA29160 is another good option, but be careful because it has variants that are 64-bit PCI and will not work in that motherboard which only has 32-bit PCI slots.
It also seems to be a lot more expensive on ebay (starting at $40 currently) with little added benefit over the 2940, at least for a tape drive.
I use a 2940UW in a Pentium Pro machine with NT4 and it performs very well with a SCSI drive.

stamasd wrote on 2024-10-28, 16:33:

Yes the AHA29160 is another good option, but be careful because it has variants that are 64-bit PCI and will not work in that motherboard which only has 32-bit PCI slots.

That's incorrect. If it fits mechanically in the 32-bit PCI slot it will work even with the 64-bit part of the connector floating.
Or you try an Adaptec 19160.

Thank you all for the replies - I had no idea the card I had found didn't support Win98. Sadly, money's an issue at the moment, and getting one from Ebay is out of the question. The international shipping fee is 60$ which is way too much (exchange rates). But I'm still gonna go with the Adaptec, which seems to be on AliExpress as well, going for about the same price as the other one.

At least this controller seems to have working drivers that run under Windows 10 / Windows 11.

Google says the drive you have is SCSI-2.
Any of the Adaptec AHA-2940 cards, with or without W or UW, so a AHA-2940, AHA-2940U, AHA-2940UW will be able to control that drive.
A cable wont be cheap. If funds are limited for you then put it off until you have some more cash mate. Its not going to be a do or die device. It wont be fun getting it actually working anyway. Tape drive software was never inspiring.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-10-29, 01:55:

Google says the drive you have is SCSI-2.
Any of the Adaptec AHA-2940 cards, with or without W or UW, so a AHA-2940, AHA-2940U, AHA-2940UW will be able to control that drive.
A cable wont be cheap. If funds are limited for you then put it off until you have some more cash mate. Its not going to be a do or die device. It wont be fun getting it actually working anyway. Tape drive software was never inspiring.

Agree ! Have had Travan and DAT drives and they are not as fun as one might think. Having a ZIP drive under Win9x was better in many ways, but that is just me 😀

Next problem would be finding an application software supporting tape drives under 9x.
While NT4 and W2K came with integrateted tape backup software the w9x line missed that feature.
For testing the HP library and tape tools may be used, but for backup additional software is needed.
ARC-Solo by Cheyenne, or Central Point Backup come to my mind.
Not sure if the windows-Versions of open source software still support 9x?

Having recently installed both a 2940U2W and a 29160 in my Windows 98SE system, I can assure you, the 29160 is a poor choice for 98 unless you require Ultra160 support. If you go the Adaptec route, I recommend the 2940U2W. It supports internal or external LVD SCSI devices and driver support is baked into 98.

With regards to termination, LVD SCSI devices typically do not self terminate and instead rely on an internal cable with a built-in terminator or an external LVD terminator.