What is the max size of drive that the BIOS on the motherboard supports?

That will determine whether you want to go with an IDE to SATA adapter or with a PCI SATA RAID card.

I use the Chinese IDE to SATA and IDE to M.2 adapters and both work just fine.

Sure they take a few weeks to arrive, but if your motherboard supports big enough drives or if you don't mind using a drive overlay software then that is the way to go.

If you do get a PCI SATA card, make sure it is a SATA 1 card as you will not find any real SATA II PCI cards with Windows 9x drivers so you will be stuck in compatibility mode in Windows 9x.

The best ones to get are the Promise SATA 1 RAID cards as they have the BIOS and also have Windows 9x drivers available.... except for the really high end ones with a RAM slot for cache.

Maxtor also rebranded them but they are the same exact Promise chipset.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-05-04, 07:13:

What is the max size of drive that the BIOS on the motherboard supports?

I'm not certain what the max size is, though I'll be going below that likely (16gb is the most common cheap drive on eBay, stock drive with the machine is 19gb) I might go for a 32GB drive if it's cheap enough. Can you link the SATA to IDE and/or m.2 to IDE adapters you bought?

Win98 drivers aren't the only challenge for a SATA adapter, it also needs to work on a PCI 2.1 bus without 3.3V.

As that's a card design thing rather than something to do with the chip, it's difficult to give generic recommendations, but one range of cards almost certain to work is the Promise SATA150-series (TX2Plus, TX4). They also have Win98SE drivers.

Does SATA even use 3.3v anymore? Or is this a concern with the older cards / drives? I'm finding most cables only have 5v and 12v + GND.

Brickpad wrote on 2021-05-04, 14:57:

Does SATA even use 3.3v anymore? Or is this a concern with the older cards / drives? I'm finding most cables only have 5v and 12v + GND.

It's not about the SATA drive itself (which you don't power from the controller card anyway), just the PCI card. Same issue as with some Ethernet cards (RTL8139D-based) and USB 2.0 controllers.

I found these two SATA to IDE adapters on Amazon for $10:
https://www.amazon.com/SinLoon-Female-Adapter … /dp/B07TPBC34F/
https://www.amazon.com/GODSHARK-Adapter-Drive … /dp/B07R4TLBQJ/
They look identical, but reviews seem good for both (besides the complaints that the IDE connector is flipped upside down... really?)

I looked for Promise SATA150 cards on eBay, but all I found were SATA300 cards and SATA II 150. Not sure if those will work as well, though they are a bit more expensive ($20)

While you might be one of the lucky ones that get good results with those adapter...
you might want to get this one
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2sat2 https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Drive-Opt … NGC2/ref=sr_1_3
It has a marvell Chip

brian105 wrote on 2021-05-04, 17:23:

I found these two SATA to IDE adapters on Amazon for $10: https://www.amazon.com/SinLoon-Female-Adapter … /dp/B07TPBC34F/ https: […]
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I found these two SATA to IDE adapters on Amazon for $10:
https://www.amazon.com/SinLoon-Female-Adapter … /dp/B07TPBC34F/
https://www.amazon.com/GODSHARK-Adapter-Drive … /dp/B07R4TLBQJ/
They look identical, but reviews seem good for both (besides the complaints that the IDE connector is flipped upside down... really?)

I looked for Promise SATA150 cards on eBay, but all I found were SATA300 cards and SATA II 150. Not sure if those will work as well, though they are a bit more expensive ($20)

The promise cards all work under IDE emulation. You don't even need drivers and they are very, very fast for win98. I was using the SATA 150 card and I saw speed of around 120MB/s.

So the SATA II/SATA 300 cards should work fine? They're around $15 on eBay.

Both the TX2 and TX4 have official driver support for windows 98. I would guess that they will both run at the same speed though regardless, but the 300 series might be faster. I have seen both cases - SATA II devices that function as SATA 1 speeds and sometimes SATA II devices that get most of the SATA II speeds. Not that you are likely to notice either way.

Personally I own a SATA TX2 promise card and I have had some success with it on my 440BX board.

Unfortunately I can't find any cards which are supported under 98 (SATA 150 tx2+/tx4 and fasttrak s150 tx2+/tx4) for a normal price. But I've heard that these cards had OEM variants which are basically the same but named differently. Does anybody know the model numbers for some of these OEM variants?

Nope do not know what the OEM variants are. What is a normal price for ?
Have you figured out how to mount in the case to replace the Bigfoot ? just curious....

brian105 wrote on 2021-05-05, 02:05:

Unfortunately I can't find any cards which are supported under 98 (SATA 150 tx2+/tx4 and fasttrak s150 tx2+/tx4) for a normal price. But I've heard that these cards had OEM variants which are basically the same but named differently. Does anybody know the model numbers for some of these OEM variants?

I did a quick ebay search and found a ton of TX4's that were pretty cheap. You can also get an ultra ATA IDE controller instead.

I imagine there are other SATA controller cards that will also work. The promise cards have officially drivers but you don't actually need them. What matters is that the controller can do "legacy" or IDE emulation, which many of them can.

Horun wrote on 2021-05-05, 02:50:

Nope do not know what the OEM variants are. What is a normal price for ?
Have you figured out how to mount in the case to replace the Bigfoot ? just curious....

Probably gorilla tape, the best way to mount SSD's (TM). As long as I don't jostle the case around a lot, it should stay in place.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-05, 02:51:

I did a quick ebay search and found a ton of TX4's that were pretty cheap. You can also get an ultra ATA IDE controller instead.

Are you sure they weren't SATA II 150 TX4's or SATA 300 TX4's? I saw a lot of those, but no SATA 150 TX4's.

The Promise Sata 1 cards are not showing up as much as they used to. Just keep an eye out and you should be able to snag a few for cheap when they do pop up.

Promise Ultra 100 cards are still readily available and pretty inexpensive - combined with a SATA adapter, you'll still probably spend less than you would for one of their SATA cards. While I was lucky enough to get one of the cheap Sil3114 cards to work in a Socket 7 system, it gives errors when I try to use it with my Epox MVP3G-M, but the Promise card never fails to work. Here's a Promise Ultra 100 combined with a no name SATA adapter and an old intel SSD.

Here's the Sil3114 on my TXP4 with a newer SSD. Probably the main advantage is less clutter since you use the SATA cable from the card to the drive rather than an IDE cable to the adapter.

I managed to snag a card for $20 including shipping. It's not exactly Promise, but it's an OEM branded one (Maxtor SATA/150 PCI). It has the same chipset on it, and checking driver support reveals that it does support Windows 98. I've attached a picture of it (really awful picture from the seller) and the drivers to use for later.

brian105 wrote on 2021-05-05, 18:35:

I managed to snag a card for $20 including shipping. It's not exactly Promise, but it's an OEM branded one (Maxtor SATA/150 PCI). It has the same chipset on it, and checking driver support reveals that it does support Windows 98. I've attached a picture of it (really awful picture from the seller) and the drivers to use for later.

That looks suspiciously like a rebranded SATA150-TX2Plus. Fingers crossed it works just like the original 😀