songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 09:06:

A word of warning though; the VIA KT600 implementation of SATA 1.0 is 1.5Gbps only, and NOT COMPATIBLE with SATA2/SATA3.

They fixed this with later Athlon64 motherboards which use the VT8237R Plus southbridge. The "plus" revision has full support for SATA2. Not sure if any AthlonXP motherboards use that southbridge chip though.

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 09:06:

The AGP slot on the board is 4x/8x only, it would be nice to have universal AGP, but the VIA chipset for that is KT266A, not KT600.

Some KT333 motherboards have an universal AGP slot which works fine with 3.3V cards. For example, I'm using a Voodoo 3 on an ECS K7VTA3 v6.0 without any issues.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-20, 09:14:

They fixed this with later Athlon64 motherboards which use the VT8237R Plus southbridge. The "plus" revision has full support fo […]
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songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 09:06:

A word of warning though; the VIA KT600 implementation of SATA 1.0 is 1.5Gbps only, and NOT COMPATIBLE with SATA2/SATA3.

They fixed this with later Athlon64 motherboards which use the VT8237R Plus southbridge. The "plus" revision has full support for SATA2. Not sure if any AthlonXP motherboards use that southbridge chip though.

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 09:06:

The AGP slot on the board is 4x/8x only, it would be nice to have universal AGP, but the VIA chipset for that is KT266A, not KT600.

Some KT333 motherboards have an universal AGP slot which works fine with 3.3V cards. For example, I'm using a Voodoo 3 on an ECS K7VTA3 v6.0 without any issues.

Thanks for your input. The only VIA chipset board with a working universal AGP I have is based on KT266A, a FIC AN-11 "Stealth".

Here to attest that installing Windows XP on a SATA drive on this motherboard is nightmare. Even DOS and FDISK see the drive. XP does not.

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 16:40:

Here to attest that installing Windows XP on a SATA drive on this motherboard is nightmare. Even DOS and FDISK see the drive. XP does not.

Right. DOS sees the storage because the BIOS knows how to work the controller. XP does not use the BIOS.

You need to get an XP driver on a diskette and load the driver during the install when prompted for third part drivers.

Or you could roll your own custom install with the driver included, but that's a little trickier.

Or maybe there's an ISO with your driver on it out there somewhere already

p.s. I misread your handle as "Songoffail" when I first looked at your post, which is a song that I sing often when working on old computer parts, but "Songoffall" is also nice.

douglar wrote on 2025-01-20, 18:43:

Right. DOS sees the storage because the BIOS knows how to work the controller. XP does not use the BIOS. […]
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songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 16:40:

Here to attest that installing Windows XP on a SATA drive on this motherboard is nightmare. Even DOS and FDISK see the drive. XP does not.

Right. DOS sees the storage because the BIOS knows how to work the controller. XP does not use the BIOS.

You need to get an XP driver on a diskette and load the driver during the install when prompted for third part drivers.

Or you could roll your own custom install with the driver included, but that's a little trickier.

Or maybe there's an ISO with your driver on it out there somewhere already

p.s. I misread your handle as "Songoffail" when I first looked at your post, which is a song that I sing often when working on old computer parts, but "Songoffall" is also nice.

It's my old handle from late 90s/early 2000s forums. I also had the habit of using whatever malware had wrecked my last client as a handle, both hated it and knew if not for it I would make much less money.

As for the driver, I actually tried doing it two ways: the one from the support CD/Elite Group website, and there's an option to autodetect and install the driver when you use WinSetupFromUsb. Neither worked. Which makes it an actual nightmare. The only option that comes to my mind is to use a PATA HDD, install Windows XP, install all necessary drivers, then migrate the OS to the SATA HDD, but I don't have the energy to deal with that right now. Some other day maybe.

On all of my Via chipset motherboards that have this bug I just use one of these with an SSD. No fuss, no muss.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2025-01-20, 20:01:

On all of my Via chipset motherboards that have this bug I just use one of these with an SSD. No fuss, no muss.

I don't think this is the result of the "bug", more the result of bad Windows XP support for earlier SATA controllers. This SATA controller pretends to be SCSI. Later controllers support IDE and AHCI modes.

But the device you posted looks a really nice and universal solution to a different problem - drive support on these motherboards. Guess I'll get a few of those.

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 19:39:

As for the driver, I actually tried doing it two ways: the one from the support CD/Elite Group website, and there's an option to autodetect and install the driver when you use WinSetupFromUsb. Neither worked.

When installing WinXP the classic way (e.g. from the official CD) there's a point during the early stages of the installation when it asks you to "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver". While it doesn't specifically say "SATA" there, this is needed for SATA disks too.

In summary, you need to download the special floppy version of the SATA driver for your motherboard, put that on a floppy disk, press F6 when prompted during installation and then point Windows to the relevant file on the floppy when asked. That's the official way. Unofficially, you can slipstream those SATA drivers onto the install image by using nLite, then burn the image to a new CD, and use that for installing WinXP.

As to where to find the floppy version of the SATA driver, I think some of VIA's later 4-in-1 driver packs have it. Been a while since I bothered with this, but there should be a special folder intended for this purpose somewhere in the 4-in-1 driver pack. You just copy the contents of that folder onto the floppy disk and you're good to go.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-21, 06:58:

When installing WinXP the classic way (e.g. from the official CD) there's a point during the early stages of the installation wh […]
Show full quote

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-20, 19:39:

As for the driver, I actually tried doing it two ways: the one from the support CD/Elite Group website, and there's an option to autodetect and install the driver when you use WinSetupFromUsb. Neither worked.

When installing WinXP the classic way (e.g. from the official CD) there's a point during the early stages of the installation when it asks you to "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver". While it doesn't specifically say "SATA" there, this is needed for SATA disks too.

In summary, you need to download the special floppy version of the SATA driver for your motherboard, put that on a floppy disk, press F6 when prompted during installation and then point Windows to the relevant file on the floppy when asked. That's the official way. Unofficially, you can slipstream those SATA drivers onto the install image by using nLite, then burn the image to a new CD, and use that for installing WinXP.

As to where to find the floppy version of the SATA driver, I think some of VIA's later 4-in-1 driver packs have it. Been a while since I bothered with this, but there should be a special folder intended for this purpose somewhere in the 4-in-1 driver pack. You just copy the contents of that folder onto the floppy disk and you're good to go.

I know, friend 😀) that's exactly what I did. With the USB install method, you first let the program autodetect the controller, choose the driver and it gets loaded up to a virtual floppy disk. Then, during the F6 phase, those drivers show up.

Tried all of that, still Windows XP failed to see the HDD.

Guess I don't have to test too much stuff as you are doing all the work 😀
At least now I can avoid wasting time with SSDs not working with XP.

Ubuntu 7.04 works though... if it is of any consolation.

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-21, 11:56:

Tried all of that, still Windows XP failed to see the HDD.

Do you have a Windows XP ISO with SP3 rolled into it?

Seems like there's a better chance that will work because it came out a couple years after your board.

douglar wrote on 2025-01-21, 13:20:

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-21, 11:56:

Tried all of that, still Windows XP failed to see the HDD.

Do you have a Windows XP ISO with SP3 rolled into it?

Seems like there's a better chance that will work because it came out a couple years after your board.

Maybe, but I'd much rather just put a PATA HDD on this thing and troubleshoot the SATA from within the OS.