try booting with a 98se boot disk and then select the cd drive and run setup.

If it's the board I'm seeing online, it has a SATA controller on there. Try disabling it if you haven't already, or try using a SATA optical drive

ninkeo wrote:

If it's the board I'm seeing online, it has a SATA controller on there. Try disabling it if you haven't already, or try using a SATA optical drive

It does have SATA controller also. But disabling it would also make my HDD stop being detected.

For using a data optical drive, I was under the impression that a version of windows that old would not have any SATA drivers available. Is that true?

Put your SATA controller in IDE/legacy mode from the BIOS.
Boot from the Windows 98SE floppy boot disk, then you can install via the CD-ROM.
Windows 98SE does have SATA support through 3rd party drivers. I'm using a SATA optical drive in one of my builds -- the driver disk for my motherboard came with the Win9x SATA drivers that need to be installed after the OS install.

Here's a screenshot showing my SATA driver installed under 98SE:

For your specific motherboard, you'll need the Windows 9x drivers for the Promise 20378 S-ATA RAID/Ultra controller.

Ok, I've made some BIOS changes and made some changes as follows:

Under Integrated peripherals, On-Chip IDE Configuration,

On-Chip ATA(s) Operate Mode: Legacy Mode
ATA Configuration: P-ATA Only
S-ATA Keep Enabled: Yes
P-ATA Keep Enabled: Yes
P-ATA Channel Selection: Both
Combined Mode Operation: S-ATA 1st Channel
S-ATA Ports Definition: P0-3rd./P1-4th.

I have two optical drives on the same IDE cable, both are jumpered to cable select. The one in the primary position is able to be seen in BIOS and by the Windows installer. Just not the salve optical. No big deal.
HDD and floppy drive can both bee seen in BIOS also. It doesn't seem to want to boot from the floppy.

I'm not really sure why this works. I know what SATA is and I know what PATA is, but I don't know why setting the ATA Configuration as PATA only would help anything.

Anayways, I can boot from the CD and start the installer now. There is another error related to ScanDisk which I will start a new thread about here: Why is Windows install ScanDisk lying about an error on my HDD?

wiretap wrote:

Put your SATA controller in IDE/legacy mode from the BIOS. Boot from the Windows 98SE floppy boot disk, then you can install via […]
Show full quote

Put your SATA controller in IDE/legacy mode from the BIOS.
Boot from the Windows 98SE floppy boot disk, then you can install via the CD-ROM.
Windows 98SE does have SATA support through 3rd party drivers. I'm using a SATA optical drive in one of my builds -- the driver disk for my motherboard came with the Win9x SATA drivers that need to be installed after the OS install.

For your specific motherboard, you'll need the Windows 9x drivers for the Promise 20378 S-ATA RAID/Ultra controller.

I wasn't able to find a floppy that any of the drives I have access to are able to read. Is that an age thing for floppies?

Floppy disks were always unreliable even back in the day A Gotek floppy emulator is a good thing to have if you think you'll be using them often and are cheap on ebay.

Looking at P 3-20 your manual you can get around needing raid drivers
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/865PE … o2V#down-manual

According to the manual you want:
ATA Configuration P-ATA+S-ATA
Combined Mode Option *S-ATA 1st Channel / P-ATA 1st Channel
S-ATA Ports Definition P0-Master / P1-Slave

*When choosing S-ATA 1st Channel, you can use SATA1 & SATA2, IDE2.
When choosing P-ATA 1st Channel, you can use IDE1, SATA1 & SATA2.

So if you select the options in bold Sata port 1 will act at Primary IDE channel that the system will boot from
Sata port 2 would act as if you had a slave device on your primary IDE channel.
Your actual IDE port is acting like the secondary IDE channel.

This is all because to conform to the legacy standard you can only have a max of 4 drives. If you wanted more this is where things like RAID or SCSI came in to get around the limitation.

chinny22 wrote:

Floppy disks were always unreliable even back in the day A Gotek floppy emulator is a good thing to have if you think you'll be […]
Show full quote

Floppy disks were always unreliable even back in the day A Gotek floppy emulator is a good thing to have if you think you'll be using them often and are cheap on ebay.

Looking at P 3-20 your manual you can get around needing raid drivers
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/865PE … o2V#down-manual

According to the manual you want:
ATA Configuration P-ATA+S-ATA
Combined Mode Option *S-ATA 1st Channel / P-ATA 1st Channel
S-ATA Ports Definition P0-Master / P1-Slave

*When choosing S-ATA 1st Channel, you can use SATA1 & SATA2, IDE2.
When choosing P-ATA 1st Channel, you can use IDE1, SATA1 & SATA2.

So if you select the options in bold Sata port 1 will act at Primary IDE channel that the system will boot from
Sata port 2 would act as if you had a slave device on your primary IDE channel.
Your actual IDE port is acting like the secondary IDE channel.

This is all because to conform to the legacy standard you can only have a max of 4 drives. If you wanted more this is where things like RAID or SCSI came in to get around the limitation.

Does that max of 4 drives include partitioned hdds?

tails wrote:

Does that max of 4 drives include partitioned hdds?

Nope, limit is on physical drives only.