Should you not have any luck with anything better, I believe a USB 3.x PCI card would allow transfers up to the bandwidth limit of PCI, so thus a USB 3 NIC or SATA adapter would be 95% as fast as they would be as a dedicated PCI card.

Edit: Well lookee here, Startech do a USB 3.0 with an internal SATA for you.. so just USB Nic required...
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Port-Supe … B00AWP9LMG?th=1
edit2: you might find a better deal elsewhere, Startech stuff frequently gets surplussed.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-04-27, 14:08:

Edit: Well lookee here, Startech do a USB 3.0 with an internal SATA for you.. so just USB Nic required...

I can't imagine win98 having any host drivers for USB3 let alone USB3 NICs.

It wasn't clear if that was a bonus or an absolute requirement. There's not many SATA chips have Win98 support either.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-04-27, 14:08:

Should you not have any luck with anything better, I believe a USB 3.x PCI card would allow transfers up to the bandwidth limit […]
Show full quote

Should you not have any luck with anything better, I believe a USB 3.x PCI card would allow transfers up to the bandwidth limit of PCI, so thus a USB 3 NIC or SATA adapter would be 95% as fast as they would be as a dedicated PCI card.

Edit: Well lookee here, Startech do a USB 3.0 with an internal SATA for you.. so just USB Nic required...
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Port-Supe … B00AWP9LMG?th=1
edit2: you might find a better deal elsewhere, Startech stuff frequently gets surplussed.

This card uses SATA power to power the USB 3.0 ports, it's not providing SATA.

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-04-27, 18:02:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-04-27, 14:08:

Should you not have any luck with anything better, I believe a USB 3.x PCI card would allow transfers up to the bandwidth limit […]
Show full quote

Should you not have any luck with anything better, I believe a USB 3.x PCI card would allow transfers up to the bandwidth limit of PCI, so thus a USB 3 NIC or SATA adapter would be 95% as fast as they would be as a dedicated PCI card.

Edit: Well lookee here, Startech do a USB 3.0 with an internal SATA for you.. so just USB Nic required...
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Port-Supe … B00AWP9LMG?th=1
edit2: you might find a better deal elsewhere, Startech stuff frequently gets surplussed.

This card uses SATA power to power the USB 3.0 ports, it's not providing SATA.

Duhdoy, I shouldn't post before coffee, was reading it as the 4 pin providing power for an adapter if you had no SATA power, derp.

If the spare slot is the shared isa /pci you might be able to jam an isa lan and pci sata in there.

They orient opposite, and sata doesn't need a backplate so it might just fit.

Just curious, but that board has 5 pci slots. What do you have in the other 4?

Sound card,usb 2.0, scsi, & what? a modem?

I'm going with v2 sli + sb + lan.
It's also possible it's effectively only 4 because of the isa/pci sharing.

douglar wrote on 2026-04-28, 02:55:

Just curious, but that board has 5 pci slots. What do you have in the other 4?

Sound card,usb 2.0, scsi, & what? a modem?

Around 2000, PCI slots could fill up rapidly. Lots of ways you could run out, particularly if you also want non-period correct I/O such as SATA or USB 2.0.

To make matters worse: even with 5 PCI slots + 1 AGP , you still only have 4 PCI interrupts to share. If you have cards that absolutely insist on unshared interrupts (SBLive, video capture cards etc) you can often only put them in one or two slots out of the total meaning even more shenanigans if you're nearing a full loadout.

myne wrote on 2026-04-28, 00:25:

If the spare slot is the shared isa /pci you might be able to jam an isa lan and pci sata in there.

I've already done this! 😀 Got a Matrox m3D crammed in there!

douglar wrote on 2026-04-28, 02:55:

Just curious, but that board has 5 pci slots. What do you have in the other 4?

myne wrote on 2026-04-28, 03:50:

I'm going with v2 sli + sb + lan.
It's also possible it's effectively only 4 because of the isa/pci sharing.

So currently the machine is as follows:

AGP - GeForce FX5600
PCI 1 - Intel PRO/1000 GT
PCI 2 - STB Voodoo2 12MB
PCI 3 - STB Voodoo2 12MB
PCI 4 - Reserved [Waiting for a 3D Blaster PCI to come along at the right price!]
PCI 5 - Matrox m3D (PowerVR)
ISA 1 - PicoGUS
ISA 2 - Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold

I know I could technically put something in PCI 4, but I'm currently on the lookout for a 3D Blaster PCI (CT6240 or CT6260) to come along, so if/as/when I get one of those I'd be back to the original problem. So I was looking to try and solve the issue with a single card. That Lindy card looked perfect, and it seems to have drivers for Win 98 for both LAN and SATA, but I just can't get hold of one anywhere.

My other thought is I am considering using an ISA expander (such as this one, taken from this thread) to split ISA 1 into 2 or more ports. I could then run an XT-IDE card perhaps, and overcome the LBA28 limit that way? But I don't know if there are any downsides to that approach, such as performance drops, etc.? I thought it would probably be fine, as I assume the XT-IDE ROM gets shadowed into system RAM? But I wasn't sure....

Picogus can do wifi ne2000 can't it?
Most of the time it should be plenty fast.

I don't know if there's a point saving a slot for the 3D Blaster, because from what I hear every other graphics device in the system has to be removed for it to work. Even if you just have to pull the AGP card, you're still having to open and mess around with the system every time, so having it's own slot is not much of an advantage.

myne wrote on 2026-04-28, 12:08:

Picogus can do wifi ne2000 can't it?
Most of the time it should be plenty fast.

I think that only applies to the PicoGUS 1.x doesn't it, where you BYO Pico? As far as I know, you can't do that with the PicoGUS 2.0? Or have I got this wrong?! 😀

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-04-28, 14:00:

I don't know if there's a point saving a slot for the 3D Blaster, because from what I hear every other graphics device in the system has to be removed for it to work. Even if you just have to pull the AGP card, you're still having to open and mess around with the system every time, so having it's own slot is not much of an advantage.

Aside from that, my opinion on that card is...

It would crown a P166 system, but here you'll likely be dragging it along behind on a string, over about PIII-500, software rendering gets faster. I gotta guess you're having performance above that level to adequately feed two V2s, or a PVR. If you write "3D Blaster, creative technology" on a rock with sharpie and set it on top of your system, you have achieved 95% value of the asking prices just by having the name on it, and the rock provides the 3D performance for last 5% (On fast systems). This is a card that actually makes more sense to put on a shelf to look at than run it in a fast system. In the context of a system of it's time, it enhances the system, a couple of years don't seem like much but it's a lot in early 3D. Hell, I'm planning a build around a Rage II, and that ain't a rocketship.

So I do admit that the 3D Blaster is a bit of an imbalance compared to the rest of the system, but my basic goal for the machine is to be able to run as many proprietary 3D API's as possible. I currently have openGL, DirectX, Glide, and PowerSGL covered, and the 3D Blaster PCI would give me Creative CGL (mostly) and Rendition Verite support. I'm not really looking to use the 3D Blaster for general purpose 3D, just API specific games/patches/versions.

I currently have an external VGA switch, so my hope was that the 3D Blaster would work when software directly used it, and I could switch my output to the card. But, if that didn't work, my other hope was that I could just switch between AGP and PCI as the display adapter in the BIOS at boot, and that would switch from using the GeForce to the 3D Blaster (again, using the external VGA switch).

Peckmore wrote on 2026-04-28, 11:01:

My other thought is I am considering using an ISA expander (such as this one, taken from this thread) to split ISA 1 into 2 or more ports. I could then run an XT-IDE card perhaps, and overcome the LBA28 limit that way? But I don't know if there are any downsides to that approach, such as performance drops, etc.? I thought it would probably be fine, as I assume the XT-IDE ROM gets shadowed into system RAM? But I wasn't sure....

You don’t need an XTIde card to use XTide universal bios. You can stick it on any isa card that supports a rom, or sometimes you can sneak it onto the system board rom if there’s unused space.

If you use XTide, you might see a performance decrease in DOS compared to an ide controller manufacturer BIOS. Once you start Windows, you will be using a protected driver, not XTide so it won’t matter.

Might be easier to see if you can just patch your mobo bios to support lba48. Look for that thread

douglar wrote on 2026-04-28, 15:27:

You don’t need an XTIde card to use XTide universal bios. You can stick it on any isa card that supports a rom, or sometimes you can sneak it onto the system board rom if there’s unused space.

Unfortunately the two ISA cards I have in the system don't support option ROMs, so I thought if I had to get an ISA card specifically for the purpose, I might as well get an XTIDE card?

douglar wrote on 2026-04-28, 15:27:

If you use XTide, you might see a performance decrease in DOS compared to an ide controller manufacturer BIOS. Once you start Windows, you will be using a protected driver, not XTide so it won’t matter.

Ok, this might be a silly question but does this mean that, even though my BIOS only supports LBA28, the drive would work in Windows 98 SE? I have the drive currently connected, and Windows does see it as >127GB and identifies the size correctly, but I haven't been using it as I assumed that any writes beyond the 127GB mark would write to the wrong address and so corrupt?

For any DOS-only software, my boot disk is big enough that I can create a partition to store any DOS software on, and if the larger disk would work in Windows 98 SE without XT-IDE then I can just use that drive for storing software I plan to use in Windows.

douglar wrote on 2026-04-28, 15:27:

Might be easier to see if you can just patch your mobo bios to support lba48. Look for that thread

I did come across this thread, but wasn't sure what the final outcome was? I think from the last post it seemed like it was working, but I wasn't 100% sure if the Intel Accelerator application was required? It was also an older BIOS version that was modified, so wasn't sure whether it was worth pursuing?

If the drive is in the bios drive table with an lba28 size, you are likely only going to see that size under dos and windows. Windows is going to stick with that size to avoid data corruption.

If you don’t set up the drive in the bios drive table and install the win98 lba48 patch, you won’t see the drive in Dos, but windows might detect the device and allow you to use the full size when windows starts.

If you want it in DOS and you can’t get XTide universal bios loaded as an option rom and you can’t patch your motherboard bios, and you can’t add a vendor pci bios, you can try ontrack 10.46.

https://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid= … 056&menustate=0

Edit: and here is the bios patching thread-- DIY Bios Modding guide Jan Steunebrink k6-2+/3+ 128gb