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Old December 20th 17, 04:35 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
98 Guy[_5_]
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Posts: 34
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

wrote:

I managed to install Win98SE on an Asrock VIA board with a Core2
processor, and it screams.


Yes, I also have a win-98 system running on a socket-775 Core2
motherboard with Via chipset.

Roughly when (year) did they stop making mobos and drivers for Win98
compatibility?


I'm not familiar at all with AMD-based systems so I will relate my
Intel-based knowledge here.

Win-98 will run on all motherboards with Intel socket-478 CPU. That
generally means 8xx series chipsets (845, 865, 875). There will be
win-9x drivers for all motherboard components on those boards (AGP/PCI,
IDE, SATA (some will have sata), USB, on-board or integrated video, etc.
Those boards were "current" from around 2000/2001 to as late as 2003 -
2005 time frame. These boards were the last to have AC-97 on-board
audio (which also have win-9x drivers).

The "core" (socket 775) boards were next, and they ran out of steam
around 2007. There will be no win-9x drivers for those boards unless
they have Via chipset (PT880 is the most common) and possibly ALI
chipset. Those boards will almost always have SATA, and (if VIA
chipset) will have Win-9x drivers for SATA as well as everything else
except for on-board HD audio. All 775-based boards will have HD-audio,
and to my knowledge there is no workable solution for win-98 and HD
audio. You will have to add a PCI sound card (Creative sound blaster is
most common) to have win-98 working with sound on these systems.

So if you are looking for the most high-performance motherboards that
can natively support most or almost all integrated functions, then you
will be looking for Socket-775 with Via chipset. The Asrock 4CoreDual
VSTA being one such board - it has both AGP and PCIe slot for video
(only one of them can be used - not both at same time). This is useful
if you have AGP card with win-9x drivers. PCIe video cards for win-9x
are problematic. Win-9x can't handle PCIe or AGP video cards with more
than 256 mb ram on the video card. There is also no USB-3 solution for
win-98 (and in reality there are very few USB-3 solutions for XP).

There are ways to get win-98 somewhat functional on some of the newer
motherboards, but unless you stuff the board with additional PCI cards
(for hard drive, USB, etc) it is pointless to do that.

Regarding win-98 and SATA, the generic SATA controllers made by Silicon
Image (SI) - specifically the SATA-1 controllers (SIL3112, 3114) have
win-98 drivers. Those controller chips will be found on some socket-478
motherboards, maybe some 775 boards, and many aftermarket PCI sata
cards. Adding SATA drives to a win-98 system by using an expansion SATA
PCI card (not PCI-express card) is relatively easy and works well. I
have a variety of SATA drives, from 250 gb to 1.5 tb, that I connect to
my win-98 systems. Win-98 has no problems working with these large
drives, even when they're formatted as a single FAT32 volume.