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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
Bill Cunningham wrote:
I know this is about XP and I have XP x64 Pro edition. I would like to create a small partition to install win98se onto for fun and nostalgia If you're going to ask questions about win-98, then why be a bone-head and not cross-post to microsoft.public.win-98.gen_discussion? BillW50 wrote: XP install should let you use either FAT or NTFS as long as the partition is 32GB or smaller if I recall correctly. Any larger and it will only install using NTFS. There are utilities that will convert from NTFS to FAT32 anyway, so no big deal. And if you install Windows 98SE first, dualboot should work just fine. Yes, win-9x/me needs to be installed first on a multi-OS drive, unless you're willing to mess around with a boot manager. And yes, XP was intentionally handicapped by Macro$haft so it can't create FAT32 volumes larger than 32 gb. Booting a system with a DOS floppy with format and fdisk on it is the easiest way to format or partition a hard drive to include a large FAT32 volume. Bill Cunningham wrote: Humm. I have one partiion about 200GB. Maybe that's it then. And does this 32G or less partition have to be at the beginning on the drive? Or can it be the 2nd or 3rd primary partition? The 32-bit IDE driver for win-98 (ESDI_506.PDR) has a design flaw that prevents it from handling hard drives larger than 137 gb. This is the same flaw that the first release of XP had back in 2001. The flaw was fixed in SP-1 for XP, but Macro$haft never released a fix for 98. As has been mentioned already, win-98 enthusiasts have create a patch for this a long time ago. But also note that Intel has a patch for a long time as well (for certain chipsets of the 800-series). Also note that if you use a SATA hard drive (in SATA mode, not IDE-emulation mode) then win-98 will be using the sata driver, not ESDI_506.PDR to access the drive, meaning that win-98 is compatible with drives up to 2 tb in size. Paul wrote: Is FAT32 "efficient" on a 2TB partition ? Not really. Actually, it probably is. Micro$haft designed their FAT-32 format programs to scale up the cluster-size along with hard-drive size in order to keep the total number of allocation units to 2 million or less. Format.com has a /Z command-line switch that allows you to specify an alternate cluster size - but it doesn't work. Having large clusters (either 32 or 64 kb) is not necessarily wasteful on a volume where you primarily store large files (media files, for example). I've used hard-drive formatting tools supplied by drive makers (like Seagate, WD, etc) to format FAT32 volumes using custom cluster-sizes in order to get around the intentional custer-size strategy that Micro$oft designed into format.com. For example, I've installed win-98se on a 500 gb sata hard drive that was formatted as a single volume with 4kb cluster size (same as any NT-based OS would do). This resulted in about 125 million allocation units (far beyond what Macro$haft claimed was possible for either DOS or Win-98 to handle). BillW50 wrote: Windows 98SE is stuck with only using the first 128GB of the drive. That's true only if: 1) the drive is IDE and you choose not to use the above-mentioned community-developed patch, or 2) the drive is IDE and you have a specified motherboard and choose not to use the 32-bit replacement IDE driver from the Intel application accelerator package, or 3) the drive is SATA and you choose to not use the drive in native SATA mode with a compatible win-98 SATA driver One of my win-98 systems has, for example, a 1.5 tb and 750 gb sata hard drive (each formatted as a single FAT32 volume) connected along with a smaller 80 gb IDE drive. BillW50 wrote: Enable48BitLBA - Break the 137Gb barrier! - Windows 9x Member Projects http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/7859...137gb-barrier/ Yes, that is the community-developed replacement for the original ESDI_506.PDR file. Paul wrote: Making sure that no partition gets near the 137GB mark The point with the 137 gb problem is that you can't solve it by simply keeping all volumes smaller than 137 gb. On a single physical drive, win-9x/me will simply not be able to correctly access any sector beyond the 137 gb point, no matter how the drive is partitioned or how the volumes are sized. Again, that only applies if win-98 is using the default 32-bit IDE driver (ESDI_506.PDR) to access the drive. |
#2
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
98 Guy wrote:
Paul wrote: Is FAT32 "efficient" on a 2TB partition ? Not really. Actually, it probably is. Micro$haft designed their FAT-32 format programs to scale up the cluster-size along with hard-drive size in order to keep the total number of allocation units to 2 million or less. Format.com has a /Z command-line switch that allows you to specify an alternate cluster size - but it doesn't work. Having large clusters (either 32 or 64 kb) is not necessarily wasteful on a volume where you primarily store large files (media files, for example). I've used hard-drive formatting tools supplied by drive makers (like Seagate, WD, etc) to format FAT32 volumes using custom cluster-sizes in order to get around the intentional custer-size strategy that Micro$oft designed into format.com. For example, I've installed win-98se on a 500 gb sata hard drive that was formatted as a single volume with 4kb cluster size (same as any NT-based OS would do). This resulted in about 125 million allocation units (far beyond what Macro$haft claimed was possible for either DOS or Win-98 to handle). I would expect the size of the FAT is a bit of an issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_...cation_Tabl e "Because each FAT32 entry occupies 32 bits (4 bytes) the maximal number of clusters (268435444) requires..." 1073741776 bytes or a gigabyte of RAM to hold the whole FAT. How many of those could you have sloshing around, without needing to re-read the FAT ? That's got to have some impact. Win98 has some funny address space limitations I don't understand, so a FAT that big might even cause problems with the dimensions of some of the addressing. I've not tested this, mainly because I wouldn't recommend it as a configuration to anyone. It would be fun to test, but I don't have a spare disk that size which is completely empty. Paul |
#3
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
"Paul" wrote in message ... 98 Guy wrote: Paul wrote: Is FAT32 "efficient" on a 2TB partition ? Not really. Actually, it probably is. Micro$haft designed their FAT-32 format programs to scale up the cluster-size along with hard-drive size in order to keep the total number of allocation units to 2 million or less. Format.com has a /Z command-line switch that allows you to specify an alternate cluster size - but it doesn't work. Having large clusters (either 32 or 64 kb) is not necessarily wasteful on a volume where you primarily store large files (media files, for example). I've used hard-drive formatting tools supplied by drive makers (like Seagate, WD, etc) to format FAT32 volumes using custom cluster-sizes in order to get around the intentional custer-size strategy that Micro$oft designed into format.com. For example, I've installed win-98se on a 500 gb sata hard drive that was formatted as a single volume with 4kb cluster size (same as any NT-based OS would do). This resulted in about 125 million allocation units (far beyond what Macro$haft claimed was possible for either DOS or Win-98 to handle). I would expect the size of the FAT is a bit of an issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_...cation_Tabl e "Because each FAT32 entry occupies 32 bits (4 bytes) the maximal number of clusters (268435444) requires..." 1073741776 bytes or a gigabyte of RAM to hold the whole FAT. How many of those could you have sloshing around, without needing to re-read the FAT ? That's got to have some impact. Win98 has some funny address space limitations I don't understand, so a FAT that big might even cause problems with the dimensions of some of the addressing. I've not tested this, mainly because I wouldn't recommend it as a configuration to anyone. It would be fun to test, but I don't have a spare disk that size which is completely empty. Paul I have talked to others about the possibility of a FAT64. They say they don't think it would be practical. MS does have this exFat thing that must be an extension. Bill |
#4
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
"98 Guy" "98"@Guy . com wrote in message ... If you're going to ask questions about win-98, then why be a bone-head and not cross-post to microsoft.public.win-98.gen_discussion? Wow I just found out about this group. I always liked 98. It was DOS with windows. Now Windows has a "fake" DOS, basically a CLI or DOS box. I can't get my 98se to boot and I think I now know why. I had a genuine win98se CD years ago. Now I don't know where it's at and I have a copy of it I burned. I must not have made the CD-R bootable. I'm not sure what to do now. Bill |
#5
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
Bill Cunningham wrote:
I'm not sure what to do now. I've never installed from CD. With current drives sizes I've copied the CD to a folder on one of the partitions and used a floppy disk to boot and run the installation from the HD drive. If you've no longer got a floppy drive any other bootable CD ought to suffice to give you a DOS prompt and HD access too. This helps with the "insert installation CD" messages later and also allows editing the /WIN98/MABATCH.INF [Setup] InstallDir="e:\WINBUNT" InstallType=3 ProductKey="12345-67890-abcdef-ghijk-lmnop" NoPrompt2Boot=1 Axel |
#6
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
"Bill Cunningham" wrote in message
... "98 Guy" "98"@Guy . com wrote in message ... If you're going to ask questions about win-98, then why be a bone-head and not cross-post to microsoft.public.win-98.gen_discussion? Wow I just found out about this group. I always liked 98. It was DOS with windows. Now Windows has a "fake" DOS, basically a CLI or DOS box. I can't get my 98se to boot and I think I now know why. I had a genuine win98se CD years ago. Now I don't know where it's at and I have a copy of it I burned. I must not have made the CD-R bootable. I'm not sure what to do now. Bill I have a Genuine windows 98 se CD too That have to run in windows 98 fe But there is a work around to it By adding win98 boot to your CD-R bootable I would use http://www.deepburner.com/ The Free will do the job |
#7
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
Paul wrote:
For example, I've installed win-98se on a 500 gb sata hard drive that was formatted as a single volume with 4kb cluster size (same as any NT-based OS would do). This resulted in about 125 million allocation units (far beyond what Macro$haft claimed was possible for either DOS or Win-98 to handle). I would expect the size of the FAT is a bit of an issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_...cation_Tabl e "Because each FAT32 entry occupies 32 bits (4 bytes) the maximal number of clusters (268435444) requires..." 1073741776 bytes or a gigabyte of RAM to hold the whole FAT. I don't think that win-9x/me ever loads the entire FAT during normal operation. Right now I've got two large SATA drives (A and B) connected to the win-98 system I'm typing this post on. chkdsk on drive A: 1,464,780,864 kilobytes total disk space 900,908,800 kilobytes free 32,768 bytes in each allocation unit 45,774,402 total allocation units on disk 28,153,400 available allocation units on disk Drive B is a 750 gb drive, with 22.8 million total clusters, with about 6000 free clusters. I have 2 gb ram on this system (with a "special" memory patch that allows win-98 to see and use all 2 gb). According to Norton System Information, I currently have 2015 mb free, and 87.3 mb in use. I have Firefox 2 running, and it's using 24 mb (the most of any loaded module). Win16 Sys is listed as using 21.1 mb, Win32 Sys is using 14.6, Netscape (Communicator, what I'm using to read/post to usenet) is using 14.1 mb. 32-bit device drivers are using 9.51 mb. I see no large block of ram being used to store or cache the hard drives or their FAT's. Regarding this issue of cluster size and FAT-32, have a look at what I posted back in 2007: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...on/Rd6U5kIturI Cluster size and exploring the limits of FAT-32 ================================= So here is the master summary of this thread: --------------------------- 1) Scandisk (DOS scandisk.exe, not Windows scandskw.exe) does not appear to have a cluster-count limitation. Both Win-98se and Win-ME versions of scandisk have been run on drives with up to 31 million clusters and have executed properly with no errors. Himem.sys must be loaded for scandisk to function properly. Microsoft states that FAT-32 volumes are limited to 4.17 million clusters because of scandisk.exe, and that scandisk.exe is limited to a memory or data array size of 16 million bytes. It could very well be that this 16 mb limit is based on Microsoft's stated minimum system requirements for Windows 98 (which is 16 mb of system RAM) and that scandisk will automatically make use of all available system memory if required. ---------------------------- 2) Win-98se has been installed directly on 160 gb volumes formatted with 4kb cluster size (resulting in 40 million clusters) and has not shown any instability. This was performed on a 160 gb SATA drive assigned to a RAID controller (but not used in RAID mode). To test for 137gb data corruption (which theoretically takes place when a read or write across the 137 gb boundary occurrs) a series of 1 gb VOB files were copied repeatedly in order to fill the drive. The drive was eventually filled with 150 of these 1 gb files, and no drive corruption occurred. ---------------------------- 3) The only drawback that I've seen when running a volume with a large cluster count is that DOS will take a much longer time to perform the first DIR command. This might also happen in Windows as well - I may have seen this effect but I haven't specifically looked for it. The issue is the computation and display of free remaining drive space, which is part of the DIR command and also happens when browsing the drives in windows. Related to this is the question does windows store the amount of remaining drive space somewhere on the drive (instead of requiring it to be re-calculated every time it's needed). --------------------------- 4) Standard DOS tools like fdisk and format can be used to partition and format hard drives in excess of 137 gb. Fdisk was used to partition a 160 gb drive into a 32 gb primary and 121 gb secondary. The updated or "fixed" version of fdisk.exe was used. What has not been tested (yet) is the undocumented /Z:n command line parameter for format, which allows the user to specify a particular cluster size (n x 512 bytes). Third-party drive utilities (based on On Track's Disc Manager) can also be used to partition and format hard drives, but I have found those utilities to be very unstable and to lock up/crash about 75% of the time I use them. --------------------------- 5) There is evidence that 6,291,204 clusters may represent some sort of "magic number". A third-party drive partition tool (PartitionMagic Pro Server 8.05) resorted to this cluster count when an existing 32 gb partition was manually resized to 4kb cluster size. Norton Disk Doctor and Speed Disk was found to work properly using this cluster count, but not on a volume with a slightly larger cluster count of 7.8 million clusters (see note 7 below). This 6.3 million cluster count, combined with 32kb cluster size, results in a volume size of 206 gb. Perhaps this set of parameters is the reason for the 200 gb hard drive size which emerged in early to mid 2003. A dir command is also performed instantly with no delays in computing free space given a volume with 6.3 million clusters. --------------------------- 6) Win-98 versions of Scandisk (scandskw.exe) and Defrag did not function on a volume with 6.3 million clusters but seems to be limited to the MS stated value of 4.17 clusters. However, Windows ME versions of dskmaint.dll and defrag.exe does appear to function correctly with Windows 98se and compatibility with volume size of up to 31.2 million clusters has been observed. It is not know what their ultimate limit is. ---------------------------- 7) Norton Utilities is a very common third-party set of applications and their compatibility with large hard drives with a large cluster count may be of importance to some people. I have found that Norton Disk Doctor and Norton Speed disk were compatible with volumes with up to 6.3 million clusters, but not more without using the command-line parameter /NOLBA. When using this parameter, NDD and SD worked on volumes with 7.8 million clusters but not 31 million. The exact cluster-count limit is therefore unknown at this point and I may explore that in the future. The switch /NOLBA forces NDD and SD to skip the drive configuration check. This can also be done using a registry entry by adding a DWORD registry value named NOLBACHECK at this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Symantec\Norton Utilities When this option is set to 1, Norton Disk Doctor and Speed Disk skip the drive configuration check. ---------------------------- 8) Anyone considering adding a large hard drive (a drive larger than 137 gb) to an existing win-98 computer needs to consider certain issues that include the drive type (IDE/PATA vs SATA) as well as how the drive is controlled by the motherboard BIOS (mapped to IDE channel or controlled by RAID controller). The main issue here is that you DO NOT WANT the win-98se 32-bit driver (ESDI_506.PDR) to be used to access a hard drive larger than 137 gb. Many or most motherboards made for the past 3 years will have built-in SATA ports. Windows-98 users are advised to obtain SATA drives instead of the older conventional IDE drives when adding a new drive (larger than 137 gb) to a system or if building a new system. ==================================== And see also this: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...on/DV_7O2vV1hw Windows 98 large file-count tests on large volume (500 gb hard drive) |
#8
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
Bill Cunningham wrote:
I have talked to others about the possibility of a FAT64. They say they don't think it would be practical. MS does have this exFat thing that must be an extension. There is really no problem with the current structure of FAT-32 when used with hard drives of 2 tb or smaller. The FAT-32 method of storing files IS NOT limited to any particular file-size (clusing chaining can theoretically give you a single file that can take up the entire drive). The file-size entry for FAT-32 could make use of a few spare bits so that the max-file-size (as recorded in the FAT) could easily be 2 to 8 times more than the current limit of 4 gb. |
#9
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
"Hot-Text" wrote in message ... "Bill Cunningham" wrote in message ... "98 Guy" "98"@Guy . com wrote in message ... If you're going to ask questions about win-98, then why be a bone-head and not cross-post to microsoft.public.win-98.gen_discussion? Wow I just found out about this group. I always liked 98. It was DOS with windows. Now Windows has a "fake" DOS, basically a CLI or DOS box. I can't get my 98se to boot and I think I now know why. I had a genuine win98se CD years ago. Now I don't know where it's at and I have a copy of it I burned. I must not have made the CD-R bootable. I'm not sure what to do now. Bill I have a Genuine windows 98 se CD too That have to run in windows 98 fe But there is a work around to it By adding win98 boot to your CD-R bootable I would use http://www.deepburner.com/ The Free will do the job What is "win98 boot"? Bill |
#10
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using an old OS (specifically, Windows 98) on XP
"98 Guy" "98"@Guy . com wrote in message ... Bill Cunningham wrote: I have talked to others about the possibility of a FAT64. They say they don't think it would be practical. MS does have this exFat thing that must be an extension. There is really no problem with the current structure of FAT-32 when used with hard drives of 2 tb or smaller. The FAT-32 method of storing files IS NOT limited to any particular file-size (clusing chaining can theoretically give you a single file that can take up the entire drive). The file-size entry for FAT-32 could make use of a few spare bits so that the max-file-size (as recorded in the FAT) could easily be 2 to 8 times more than the current limit of 4 gb. So when we get up into the extbytes and petabytes we'll definately need a FAT64 or better then right? Bill |
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