This is the CF-to-IDE adapter card I'm using to replace the original 1700MB mechanical hard drive.

To be honest, this IBM's BIOS is terrible – it can't even be set to boot from CD-ROM!

Booting from a CD wasn't really a thing in the original pentium days. You'll need a simple boot floppy and then you can install 98 from its CD.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-06-25, 03:37:

Booting from a CD wasn't really a thing in the original pentium days. You'll need a simple boot floppy and then you can install 98 from its CD.

Thanks！ May I ask how to create a Windowsinstallation CD and a bootable floppy disk？

If you can get the drive in another machine, there are ways to make it dos bootable.
There's likely some modern tool to write a 98 boot sector even if it's just some random all-but-empty fat32 disk backup to be restored onto it.
Then you just copy the Win98 directory on, and after boot run setup.

If you can find one, it's easy enough to backup a vm and restore it to a real drive.

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 01:39:

Hello, at the beginning of this year, I bought an IBM Aptiva 2168 S65 in Japan. To install my new Voodoo graphics card, I need to reinstall the operating system, but I know nothing about old computer hardware and have no idea how to install Windows 98 on a CF card.When installing from a CD, do I need a floppy disk as a boot disk, or is there another method?

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje

update and use some new technology, read the CF card in your PC using a USB reader, and format with HPUSBDisk.exe

Download a win98 bootdisk, just decompress in a folder, and in HPUSBDisk select the option to create a booteable disk, and select the folder with the bootdisk, voila, you have a booteable CF disk

The copy win98 install folder, and install using setup, thats all

Note that "2168" is the series indicator, basically telling you which case your Aptival has. That doesn't determine which hardware is inside it. Sometimes IBM used some pretty exotic stuff in there that might need specific drivers in Win98. My mother's 2168 (I don't recall which model exactly) had an OPTi Viper chipset, for example. I recommend checking what you have exactly and sorting out drivers before trying to install the OS, so that you're ready to feed it whatever drivers it asks for during the installation.

dionb wrote on 2025-06-25, 08:25:

Note that "2168" is the series indicator, basically telling you which case your Aptival has. That doesn't determine which hardware is inside it. Sometimes IBM used some pretty exotic stuff in there that might need specific drivers in Win98. My mother's 2168 (I don't recall which model exactly) had an OPTi Viper chipset, for example. I recommend checking what you have exactly and sorting out drivers before trying to install the OS, so that you're ready to feed it whatever drivers it asks for during the installation.

This is a photo of my motherboard.

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 08:46:

[...]

This is a photo of my motherboard.

That image is missing most of the relevant parts of the motherboard, but it appears to be this one:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/univer … -scient-pro-57a

If so, you have a Trident TGUI9680 display adapter. You'll need drivers for that. I don't think specific Win98 drivers were ever made, but you can try the Win95 .VXD drivers: https://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid= … &menustate=22,1

The OPTi Viper-M chipset needs IDE HDC drivers if you want to enable DMA, but I've not been able to find any. Possbily they might be included in Win98, but more likely the IDE will show up as "standard IDE controller" and just work - slowly.

You don't show your sound card, but these systems would have originally been shipped with an IBM mWave sound/modem combo. Those are infamously tricky to get to work under Win95, but actually are fairly easy to get running under Win98 if you follow these instructions:
https://aptivasupport.com/win98/win98_and_mwave.html

dionb wrote on 2025-06-25, 09:05:

That image is missing most of the relevant parts of the motherboard, but it appears to be this one: https://theretroweb.com/moth […]
Show full quote

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 08:46:

[...]

This is a photo of my motherboard.

That image is missing most of the relevant parts of the motherboard, but it appears to be this one:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/univer … -scient-pro-57a

If so, you have a Trident TGUI9680 display adapter. You'll need drivers for that. I don't think specific Win98 drivers were ever made, but you can try the Win95 .VXD drivers: https://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid= … &menustate=22,1

The OPTi Viper-M chipset needs IDE HDC drivers if you want to enable DMA, but I've not been able to find any. Possbily they might be included in Win98, but more likely the IDE will show up as "standard IDE controller" and just work - slowly.

You don't show your sound card, but these systems would have originally been shipped with an IBM mWave sound/modem combo. Those are infamously tricky to get to work under Win95, but actually are fairly easy to get running under Win98 if you follow these instructions:
https://aptivasupport.com/win98/win98_and_mwave.html

Yes, actually I have an mWave sound card.

theelf wrote on 2025-06-25, 05:59:

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje […]
Show full quote

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 01:39:

Hello, at the beginning of this year, I bought an IBM Aptiva 2168 S65 in Japan. To install my new Voodoo graphics card, I need to reinstall the operating system, but I know nothing about old computer hardware and have no idea how to install Windows 98 on a CF card.When installing from a CD, do I need a floppy disk as a boot disk, or is there another method?

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje

update and use some new technology, read the CF card in your PC using a USB reader, and format with HPUSBDisk.exe

The attachment HPUSBDisk.zip is no longer available

Download a win98 bootdisk, just decompress in a folder, and in HPUSBDisk select the option to create a booteable disk, and select the folder with the bootdisk, voila, you have a booteable CF disk

The copy win98 install folder, and install using setup, thats all

According to your method, I just need to boot from the hard drive, right？

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 10:02:

theelf wrote on 2025-06-25, 05:59:

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje […]
Show full quote

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 01:39:

Hello, at the beginning of this year, I bought an IBM Aptiva 2168 S65 in Japan. To install my new Voodoo graphics card, I need to reinstall the operating system, but I know nothing about old computer hardware and have no idea how to install Windows 98 on a CF card.When installing from a CD, do I need a floppy disk as a boot disk, or is there another method?

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje

update and use some new technology, read the CF card in your PC using a USB reader, and format with HPUSBDisk.exe

The attachment HPUSBDisk.zip is no longer available

Download a win98 bootdisk, just decompress in a folder, and in HPUSBDisk select the option to create a booteable disk, and select the folder with the bootdisk, voila, you have a booteable CF disk

The copy win98 install folder, and install using setup, thats all

According to your method, I just need to boot from the hard drive, right？

Yes, no floopy, just boot and install from setup. Remember to do a config.sys with himem.sys

theelf wrote on 2025-06-25, 12:15:

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 10:02:

theelf wrote on 2025-06-25, 05:59:

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje […]
Show full quote

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje

update and use some new technology, read the CF card in your PC using a USB reader, and format with HPUSBDisk.exe

The attachment HPUSBDisk.zip is no longer available

Download a win98 bootdisk, just decompress in a folder, and in HPUSBDisk select the option to create a booteable disk, and select the folder with the bootdisk, voila, you have a booteable CF disk

The copy win98 install folder, and install using setup, thats all

According to your method, I just need to boot from the hard drive, right？

Yes, no floopy, just boot and install from setup. Remember to do a config.sys with himem.sys

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what "config.sys with himem.sys" means.

theelf wrote on 2025-06-25, 05:59:

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje […]
Show full quote

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-25, 01:39:

Hello, at the beginning of this year, I bought an IBM Aptiva 2168 S65 in Japan. To install my new Voodoo graphics card, I need to reinstall the operating system, but I know nothing about old computer hardware and have no idea how to install Windows 98 on a CF card.When installing from a CD, do I need a floppy disk as a boot disk, or is there another method?

Floppy are relics from the past! jeje

update and use some new technology, read the CF card in your PC using a USB reader, and format with HPUSBDisk.exe

The attachment HPUSBDisk.zip is no longer available

Download a win98 bootdisk, just decompress in a folder, and in HPUSBDisk select the option to create a booteable disk, and select the folder with the bootdisk, voila, you have a booteable CF disk

The copy win98 install folder, and install using setup, thats all

I followed your method to create a bootable CF card, but now the computer looks like this when starting from the hard drive.
It first displays the characters 'I990301', then shows a floppy disk insertion animation, just like this.

An interesting issue – the 8GB CF card is only recognized as 3.26GB. I'm not sure why this is happening

Currently, there's nothing on this hard drive except the bootable disk. I modified the BIOS settings, and now it powers on but only displays the letter 'j' with a blinking cursor. Weird issue.

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-26, 03:28:

An interesting issue – the 8GB CF card is only recognized as 3.26GB. I'm not sure why this is happening

That's likely the hard drive size limit for the BIOS. To be sure, have you done a search to see if there is a BIOS update available for this board?

Repo Man11 wrote on 2025-06-26, 04:17:

yrz2001 wrote on 2025-06-26, 03:28:

An interesting issue – the 8GB CF card is only recognized as 3.26GB. I'm not sure why this is happening

That's likely the hard drive size limit for the BIOS. To be sure, have you done a search to see if there is a BIOS update available for this board?

There probably are (updates), but I don't know how to download and update them

2gb fat partition.
Work around.