Nope. Completely flummoxed with this. 🙁 Highpoint Technologies lists the CD drive, but it still doesn't boot up a disc. When it initialises DOS, it can't even detect a CD-ROM drive or load the drivers. I guess from knackering up Windows, what ever drivers I had on the C drive are lost. I just don't get it. And I'm at a loss on what to do. 🙁

Up to 4 IDE Channels are natively supported. However it Sounds like you have two native Channels and another two connected through a separate (RAID) Controller. Can you Tell which Mainboard manufacturer and Model you use and/or make a picture of it? And if it is mounted in a case: Check if nothing is shorted on the backside. If your IDE Connector is laying on such a Case screw that would explain a lot.

AncapDude wrote on Yesterday, 01:03:

Up to 4 IDE Channels are natively supported. However it Sounds like you have two native Channels and another two connected through a separate (RAID) Controller. Can you Tell which Mainboard manufacturer and Model you use and/or make a picture of it? And if it is mounted in a case: Check if nothing is shorted on the backside. If your IDE Connector is laying on such a Case screw that would explain a lot.

Yeah, I think it's the RAID controller drivers that are screwing me up. I'm not sure which ones I installed. This is the motherboard... And pretty sure it was one of these, which is supposed to be supported:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/abit-ab-be6-ii#driver

But I can't for the life of me remember what I tried now. Whenever it tries to load into Windows it detects these devices and then gives me a BSOD and won't go any further. I've tried removing them from the Device Manager in Safe Mode, but it still does the same thing again. 🙁

I'm not sure if anything has shorted on the back; I'll have to check sometime in the day. I was considering connecting up my other motherboard again and see if I can get anywhere with that. At least that didn't give me issues connecting up the CD drive. If I can get that working again, I can re-install Windows.

Thats a nice Board however. I recommend to use the Black Ports near the floppy Connector unless you need more IDE Devices. That are Channels 1+2. The white ones are Channel 3+4 connected to another Controller Chip. I am not Sure if they are handled by your Main BIOS or Option Rom (I assume the latter), but you may Look into your BIOS If you can switch ide 3+4 between RAID and IDE or native. In the official manual they also recommend to use only hard Discs on the white Channels. Seems they dont trust their assembled Hardware too much 😅

Dont Deal with Windows. All your drives should be detected properly before boot first. If that is solved, then go on with your OS.

AncapDude wrote on Yesterday, 02:35:

Thats a nice Board however. I recommend to use the Black Ports near the floppy Connector unless you need more IDE Devices. That are Channels 1+2. The white ones are Channel 3+4 connected to another Controller Chip. I am not Sure if they are handled by your Main BIOS or Option Rom (I assume the latter), but you may Look into your BIOS If you can switch ide 3+4 between RAID and IDE or native. In the official manual they also recommend to use only hard Discs on the white Channels. Seems they dont trust their assembled Hardware too much 😅

Dont Deal with Windows. All your drives should be detected properly before boot first. If that is solved, then go on with your OS.

Hmm, okay. Getting them detected properly during boot first is proving a real headache. I've done what you've/the manual suggested though and hooked the CD to the black and HDD to the white. Totally missed that info. I don't recall seeing any option at all for IDE 3 and 4; I can only see mention of 1 and 2. Next time I boot up, I'll take pics of all the settings in each menu and upload. If I'm unable to get a CD drive working with this motherboard, I may have to consider sending it back and getting a refund. Would rather not do that though.

No one has confirmed either way, but from what I've read and understand, I wouldn't be able to mount a CD image/98 disc using the Gotek flash floppy drive. It's designed only for floppy images, which makes sense. So that plan is out then.

Well, but you can boot a floppy image with CD drivers like the Win98 for FreeDOS bootdisk to see if your optical drive is found and accessible.

AncapDude wrote on Yesterday, 14:06:

Well, but you can boot a floppy image with CD drivers like the Win98 for FreeDOS bootdisk to see if your optical drive is found and accessible.

I'll probably just temporarily hook up the floppy drive from the other setup. The floppy drive has the front panel missing because of how it's set up and designed with the other case, so I'll eventually get a new floppy drive for my current case. For aesthetic reasons. I have a boot disk pre-made, but I'm not confident it'll rectify the problem with Windows. I know DOS couldn't detect the CD drivers I have in my root driver folder. I'm sure I had the command set up right in the autoexec and config files though. So it makes me wonder if it could find the drivers no problem, but just not the device itself.

It doesn't recognise or work with my floppy drive either. 😒 I'm starting to wonder if it's something about the CD and floppy drives specifically it doesn't like. They came from an early 2000 Tiny build, but I don't see how or why they'd be an issue. If it is I have no luck getting any floppy or CD drive to work at all, I may have to get a refund. 🙁

Couldn't see any RAID to IDE options in the BIOS, but these are all the menus and options I have:

And then the error I get with the floppy drive...

Hmm. I think I might be getting somewhere, but there’s still some discrepancies that don’t make sense. So far, the HDD is not being recognised by IDE 3 or 4. Unless it’s just the cable I’m using. However, the CD-ROM is now working! I’m not sure what I’ve done differently. Pretty sure I’ve tried both a 39 and 40 pin, the same as yesterday, and both appear to be recognised in IDE 1 and 2. It’s also booted up the 98 disc. 😃

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 15:55:

It doesn't recognise or work with my floppy drive either. 😒 I'm starting to wonder if it's something about the CD and floppy drives specifically it doesn't like. They came from an early 2000 Tiny build, but I don't see how or why they'd be an issue. If it is I have no luck getting any floppy or CD drive to work at all, I may have to get a refund. 🙁

Couldn't see any RAID to IDE options in the BIOS, but these are all the menus and options I have:

A few points to note re. this board and its HPT366 controller...

...its not a RAID controller, merely a secondary IDE controller which supports UltraDMA 66 devices

...generally, dont connect ATAPI devices (CDs, DVDs etc) to the controller - they may work but it's not recommended - stick to UltraDMA 66 (and above) hard drives only

...if you want to boot off a drive connected to this controller, remember to promote the UDMA66 setting in the BIOS (Advanced BIOS Features > First Boot Device)

...the HighPoint controller BIOS (in your current case v1.25.x thru a module of the overall ABIT motherboard BIOS beh-70) doesn't properly support hard drives larger than 64GB. There is a beta BIOS from ABIT which gets round this problem but, at the cost of reduced high-end processor support (it's based on the earlier beh-XU BIOS)

...it's best to ensure that both BIOS and driver versions for your chosen OS match. Note that none of the drivers on the Retroweb page you linked relate to the HighPoint HPT366 controller - for W98 SE you'd need the attached version...

What happens with the white Ports if you disable the "ULTRA-DMA66 IDE Controller" Option? Only that one. Sounds like All 4 Ports are handled by your Main BIOS then. Give it a try.

But that the floppy isnt working either sounds not good. They are almost failsafe except for wrong cable direction. Easy to Detect this if the floppy is always lit. Maybe there is really something wrong with the board on Hardware level.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on Yesterday, 17:27:

A few points to note re. this board and its HPT366 controller... […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 15:55:

It doesn't recognise or work with my floppy drive either. 😒 I'm starting to wonder if it's something about the CD and floppy drives specifically it doesn't like. They came from an early 2000 Tiny build, but I don't see how or why they'd be an issue. If it is I have no luck getting any floppy or CD drive to work at all, I may have to get a refund. 🙁

Couldn't see any RAID to IDE options in the BIOS, but these are all the menus and options I have:

A few points to note re. this board and its HPT366 controller...

...its not a RAID controller, merely a secondary IDE controller which supports UltraDMA 66 devices

...generally, dont connect ATAPI devices (CDs, DVDs etc) to the controller - they may work but it's not recommended - stick to UltraDMA 66 (and above) hard drives only

...if you want to boot off a drive connected to this controller, remember to promote the UDMA66 setting in the BIOS (Advanced BIOS Features > First Boot Device)

...the HighPoint controller BIOS (in your current case v1.25.x thru a module of the overall ABIT motherboard BIOS beh-70) doesn't properly support hard drives larger than 64GB. There is a beta BIOS from ABIT which gets round this problem but, at the cost of reduced high-end processor support (it's based on the earlier beh-XU BIOS)

...it's best to ensure that both BIOS and driver versions for your chosen OS match. Note that none of the drivers on the Retroweb page you linked relate to the HighPoint HPT366 controller - for W98 SE you'd need the attached version...

The attachment 1250.exe is no longer available

Now, I'm wondering if this is related to my current problem. I managed to get the CD-ROM working on IDE 1 and the HDD on IDE 3 and was able to completely reformat the drive and do a fresh install of Windows. I thought 'oh great, I've finally gotten somewhere!' And then when it tried to boot Windows for the first time, this happened...

But thanks for the info and link. How exactly do you know if HDDs are UltraDMA 66 supported? Hopefully disabling an option or two in the BIOS will help me get around the BSOD.

I know the previous BIOS had to be updated before I could use an 80 gig HDD. I'm not 100% sure if the current one is the latest. The guy who sold it to me said it was.

AncapDude wrote on Yesterday, 17:28:

What happens with the white Ports if you disable the "ULTRA-DMA66 IDE Controller" Option? Only that one. Sounds like All 4 Ports are handled by your Main BIOS then. Give it a try.

But that the floppy isnt working either sounds not good. They are almost failsafe except for wrong cable direction. Easy to Detect this if the floppy is always lit. Maybe there is really something wrong with the board on Hardware level.

I think I did try, but didn't notice if it had done anything or not. I'll try again. I think it must have been connected wrong to begin with, as you say, because the green light did indeed stay lit. The second time around, it initialised properly, but I still got that error on boot. As I managed to get the CD-ROM working properly, I'm sure I can do the same for the floppy drive. 😀

It's easy enough to check drive specs online - both the Maxtor & Samsung show as UltraDMA 133, so backwards compatible to UDMA66

Far as the BSOD is concerned you could try an OS install with the hdd connected to IDE1 or 2, then...

...restart and install the HPT366 drivers then shutdown

...move the hdd to IDE3

...restart and change the boot order in the bios to start UDMA66

...save & reboot

Success! Thank you everyone. 😄 I'm not sure if it was because of setting UDMA66 in the BIOS or connecting the HDD to IDE 1 instead of 3, but I managed to do another fresh install of Windows and no BSOD. It's also recognising my CD drive on the Secondary Slave, so I can set my other two HDDs to be Primary Slave and Secondary Master. I just need to order myself some more IDE cables and a new floppy drive for this case. I will experiment at getting the other two HDDs set up first though. I just need to transfer my USB controller drivers to my flash floppy so I can access all the stuff collected thus far on my pen drive. 😀