Win98banter - View Single Post

**98 Guy[_5_]** · March 7th 16, 05:43 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion

wrote:

But this computer is 15 years old

And it has USB 2 ports?

Or are they USB 1.1?

One of these days I need to find a newer and faster computer, which
will still run 98. I do have a much newer computer, but there are no
drivers for W98 available.

You can install win-98 on many motherboards that have no drivers for the
chipset. You just won't be able to use on-board ethernet (network) port
or on-board sound. But those are possible if you have PCI ethernet and
sound card with win-98 drivers.

I only use it as a storage machine, with XP installed. I'm no fan
of XP, but for a storage machine it works, and I could not use
that 750gb hard drive on W98 anyhow.

I've been using hard drives of 500 gb to 1.5 gb with my win-98 system
for the past 5 to 7 years.

All you need is a motherboard with on-board SIL 3112 or 3114 sata
controller, or VIA chipset, or PCI SATA card with SIL 3112 or 3114
controller. Many via chipsets with SATA controllers have win-98
drivers.

If you want to keep it simple, look for motherboards with Intel 865 or
875 chipsets with AGP slots, and get a SATA-I PCI controller card (2
port or 4 port). SATA-1 controller will be 3112 or 3114 chip (and
win-98 drivers are easily available). In device manager, the SATA
controller will be called "SCSI" controller. In the bios, the SATA
controller is set to Native mode (not IDE or "Legacy" mode). When set
to native mode, the controller will appear to win-98 as a true SATA
controller, and will use SIL driver. This will allow you to use drives
larger than 137 gb.

The 137 gb problem that win-98 has is caused by the IDE driver
(ESDI_506.pdr). Win-98 uses that driver for all IDE drives - including
the situation when the SATA controller is set to "legacy" or "IDE mode"
in the BIOS. So to avoid that problem you set the SATA controller to
Native or SATA mode and use the manufacturer-supplied driver and there
is no more 137 gb limitation. But there has to be win-98 driver for the
SATA controller, and they exist for all SATA type 1 (SATA-I) controller
chips. Newer SATA controllers (like SATA-II or SATA-III) don't have
win-98 drivers.