Win 98 SE on new hardware - no go

[twilyth]

I'm really surprised I haven't started throwing shit yet. I have a butt load of old Travan tapes that I want to sell but I need to erase the data and maybe look at some of the tapes to make sure there's nothing there I care about. I'm using an old Adaptec SCSI card.

There were no drivers for Vista 64-bit so I set up another machine with Vista 32. That didn't work because I couldn't find software that would recognize the tape drive. Well, I did, but i couldn't get it to work.

I tried setting up a virtual machine, but there doesn't seem to be any way to patch the scsi driver through to the VM.

So finally I broke down and figured I'd just install Win 98 in it's own partition and run the original driver and software. Except every time I install the OS, I get an error message saying that there isn't enough memory to load windows. There's 533k of DOS memory free, but no high memory. The total memory is 4Gb. I tried safe mode, but it's the same thing.

So now, I'm rebuilding yet another machine based on a Pentium 4 chip and mobo. If this mutha fucking piece of shit cock sucker doesn't work, I'm going to have to kill something.

I can sell those tapes for about $10 a piece and I've got at least 30 of them - well, maybe less since half are Travan 4 (5gb?) and the rest are Travan 5 (10gb native). Maybe it's not like hitting the lottery, but it's something.

Anyway, anybody who was around for Win98 probably has Alzheimer's by now, but if anyone has a clue as to why it would give me that error, I'd be very interested.

Oh, something else that's odd. When I try to boot from the cd to a dos prompt, it leaves me with a prompt for the A: drive. Except I don't have a floppy drive in the box. I even have it disabled in the bios. One last thing I'll try is reformatting the drive and reinstalling in case there is some corruption from a previous install - but I'm not expecting anything.

The IT gods have got a hard-on for me. Everything I touch that's PC related seems to turn to shit. I'm almost afraid to touch anything.

 

[DR.Death]

u need a floppy drive for win 98 in order to put the boot disk in and start of of it and then use f-disk to delete the partitions and format:c to format then u type setup(c and d can change to the appropriate letter ) and then windows setup should start and should install it

 

[alexp999]

u need a floppy drive for win 98 in order to put the boot disk in and start of of it and then use f-disk to delete the partitions and format:c to format then u type setup(c and d can change to the appropriate letter ) and then windows setup should start and should install it

I have a Win 98 CD that is bootable

 

[Frick]

You don't need a floppy for it. I've installed Win98 hundreds of times without floppys. BTW, twilyth, any progress with that old machine?

 

[Ketxxx]

Win98 won't work on new hardware as its not supported by the mainboard BIOS anymore (I forget the details on this, just remember something about the mobo BIOS needs something in it for compatibility with OSes). You should be able to get away with a old P4 478 mobo, or failing that, you will be able to install and use Win98 no probs on a old Athlon XP system.

 

[AsRock]

Win98 won't work on new hardware as its not supported by the mainboard BIOS anymore (I forget the details on this, just remember something about the mobo BIOS needs something in it for compatibility with OSes). You should be able to get away with a old P4 478 mobo, or failing that, you will be able to install and use Win98 no probs on a old Athlon XP system.

Shame to as it would fly like a mofo...

I remember trying win 3.11 on win98 machine dam that was fast!

Everything I touch that's PC related seems to turn to shit. I'm almost afraid to touch anything.

Sounds just like my wife lol. Just wish some times my wife was afraid to touch them too.

EDIT: In the bios make the CDRom boot 1st. If that fails check if the win98 files are on the HDD if so try the link below. If there not plug the HDD in another comp and copy the win98 files of the CD tot he HDD.

Could try this.
http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win98/install98stepbystep1/indexfullpage.htm

 

[twilyth]

BTW, twilyth, any progress with that old machine?

Thanks for asking. No.

The P4 was completely disassembled but I had a newish (2007) Athlon 5200+ that was still intact, more or less, so I tried that one. Same result. NOW I'll pull the mobo out of there and replace it with the P4. I guess it might be handy to have an old machine with Win98 on it as I'm digging through old backups.

Win98 won't work on new hardware as its not supported by the mainboard BIOS anymore (I forget the details on this, just remember something about the mobo BIOS needs something in it for compatibility with OSes). You should be able to get away with a old P4 478 mobo, or failing that, you will be able to install and use Win98 no probs on a old Athlon XP system.

OK, so I'm not crazy AND incompetent. That's good to know. Thank you.

EDIT: In the bios make the CDRom boot 1st. If that fails check if the win98 files are on the HDD if so try the link below. If there not plug the HDD in another comp and copy the win98 files of the CD tot he HDD.

Could try this.
http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win98/install98stepbystep1/indexfullpage.htm

I've done the install at least a dozen times so far and have reformatted twice. I think it must be something with the hardware itself like Ketxxx was saying.

I'll report back once I put the p4 together. I'm tempted to build it as a 3rd "spare", but I've got to exercise some self control here.

 

[jagd]

Win98 has problems with more than 768Mb ram http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q253912

So finally I broke down and figured I'd just install Win 98 in it's own partition and run the original driver and software. Except every time I install the OS, I get an error message saying that there isn't enough memory to load windows.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Win 98 can work fine on modern hardware, though expect many problems. It won't like 512MB+ RAM for instance. Seeing the sole purpose is to erase tapes, just install XP/2K or in the unlikely event there are no 2K drivers install NT4. Saves a lot of trouble. Or just burn the tapes, something gives me a feeling they are ancient and worthless.

 

[twilyth]

I'm not sure the tapes are completely worthless. It was around that time that I lost several hard drives - the infamous Hitachi deathstars. So there might be some stuff I want but have just forgotten about. I'm a serious pack rat anyway - virtually pathological - so I don't have a lot of choice.

If I don't erase them, I can't sell them. I used to scan a lot of documents so there's no telling what might be on there. Although at this point it's consuming so much time, I'm wondering if it's worth it.

I finally got the P4 set up but, as expected, it's not going well. First, I pulled the mobo out of one box only to install it back in the same one. This is the kind of brain dead shit I do all of the time. Now the little snot won't even boot and it gives me an error tone that I've never heard before. It's not a post code though since it repeats. When I had it in the other box I didn't see anything in the bios. Asus P400C-E is the mobo I think.

I know all of the peripherals are working and the machine starts - at least the lights come on and the fans spin - but no video. It has a PCI video card that worked in the other case, but now - nothing. I'm taking a break before I go back into battle. I must be getting mellow in my old age since I haven't broken anything yet - at least not intentionally and not that I know of.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Win98 won't work on new hardware as its not supported by the mainboard BIOS anymore (I forget the details on this, just remember something about the mobo BIOS needs something in it for compatibility with OSes). You should be able to get away with a old P4 478 mobo, or failing that, you will be able to install and use Win98 no probs on a old Athlon XP system.

Thats why im keeping at least one old board

 

[twilyth]

Win98 has problems with more than 768Mb ram http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q253912

Excellent article! Thank you.

Since the second machine i put together for this little cluster fuck is still operational, I might give one of those work arounds a try. Although I think I may have already transplanted the drive I was using. Well, even so, I'm getting nowhere with the P4 so . . .

 

[thraxed]

Why not just install 98 with virtualbox or vmware, and access your stuff that way?

 

[twilyth]

Why not just install 98 with virtualbox or vmware, and access your stuff that way?

I tried that but there was no obvious way to patch the driver through to the virtual machine. There is probably a command that you can put in the system setup but it seemed easier to do it on another rig - famous last words. If you know how to do that, please let me know.

jagd: I tried both work arounds but neither does the trick. I even tried starting windows from the command prompt with a variety of flags, including the "/d:s" one in the second method.

Anyway, I figured out the problem with the P4 rig - no 4pin power connector for video?/CPU?. So now I have to hunt down another power supply or pull one from one of the working rigs.

This is starting to feel like one of those bad shaggy dog stories that takes forever to tell and isn't even funny. I'm not normally a stubborn person, but this has almost become a matter of honor.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Second vote for Windows XP.... Should never be a necessity for Windows 98 anymore.

And no P4 connector? What kinda crappy generic PSU are you using? I've got a generic $5 one with a P4 connector..

 

[twilyth]

Second vote for Windows XP.... Should never be a necessity for Windows 98 anymore.

And no P4 connector? What kinda crappy generic PSU are you using? I've got a generic $5 one with a P4 connector..

Dude, this isn't new hardware. Do you think I want to build a Pentium 4 rig? This is shit that I got like 8-10 years ago. I have 20+4 psu's, I just overlooked it on this build since the +4 socket isn't right next to the 20 pin connector where you would expect it. Not only that, I barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday let alone system requirements for a P4 mobo.

Oh, btw, the mb is a P4C800-E.

I've looked into options for passing a device driver through to the VM and it seems you can do it for HDD's/DVD but the only options for SCSI drivers are LSI and Buslogic. I could have sworn that Virtualbox had a window for specific commands you want to issue on a specific VM, but I don't see it anywhere.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Dude, this isn't new hardware. Do you think I want to build a Pentium 4 rig? This is shit that I got like 8-10 years ago. I have 20+4 psu's, I just overlooked it on this build since the +4 socket isn't right next to the 20 pin connector where you would expect it. Not only that, I barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday let alone system requirements for a P4 mobo.

P4's aren't "that" old

Old, yes. Ancient? Try rebuilding a DOS machine with an ISA card that was custom made by an EE that worked at the place 10 years before its 64mb SSD HDD decided to crap

 

[RickJ5]

I use Norton Ghost 2003 and wanted to give it MS DOS instead of the PC DOS it comes with. Ghost said specifically that it had to be MS DOS from Windows 98, not from XP. So, I built a new Windows 98 SE machine just to make DOS disks for Ghost. I used an Abit IC7-G board which is an 875 chipset just like the P4C800-E, so the P4C800-E should work. I have a 2.8 gig Northwood CPU in it. I used two 256M memory sticks for a total of 512M of memory. I used two 40 gig hard drives I think it was. The hard drives and the optical are all IDE, not SATA. It has a ATI 9800 AGP video card in it and an old Sound Blaster. If you stick to the formula I used it should work.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

I use Norton Ghost 2003 and wanted to give it MS DOS instead of the PC DOS it comes with. Ghost said specifically that it had to be MS DOS from Windows 98, not from XP. So, I built a new Windows 98 SE machine just to make DOS disks for Ghost. I used an Abit IC7-G board which is an 875 chipset just like the P4C800-E, so the P4C800-E should work. I have a 2.8 gig Northwood CPU in it. I used two 256M memory sticks for a total of 512M of memory. I used two 40 gig hard drives I think it was. The hard drives and the optical are all IDE, not SATA. It has a ATI 9800 AGP video card in it and an old Sound Blaster. If you stick to the formula I used it should work.

http://www.bootdisk.com/ Has boot disk executables you can run on any windows to create a Windows XX version boot floppy

 

[thraxed]

Most like to get it to work with vmware you would need to purchase usb to whatever connection it is ya need.

 

[twilyth]

Most like to get it to work with vmware you would need to purchase usb to whatever connection it is ya need.

Whoa! 50-pin wide SCSI to USB2? Ouch! My butt hurts just thinking about how much that would cost. But yeah, you're probably right. I perused the virtualbox (Sun's product is more advanced than VMware) manual and I would have to break out the soldering iron and duct tape to slap together some sort of interface it would be able to interact with.

Update: I finally got the OS installed, but now, it hangs during boot up. I forget what I was trying to do last night when this happened. I think I was trying to install a device driver - for the audio chipset maybe. So I'll have to try safe mode and see if I can uninstall it.

I had this dream of making the machine fully functional. Silly rabbit. I was even using the original install CD from ASUS.

Does anyone knowwhere I can get a copy of Win NT? I tried usenet but the only thing I could find was Win98SE. You can't even get it from MS Technet - but they still have Win 3.11 and DOS. WTF? If you're not going to make an OS available after EOL, then why are these 2 an exception? No NT, Millenium - not even server 2000. Again, WTF?

 

[twilyth]

Well, everything seems to be running and as long as all I need to do is erase tapes, I'm good to go - I think. But the harddrive in the machine is only 8 gig and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to use a usb external drive. So if I actually want to keep any of the stuff, I'll have to figure something out.

BTW, I did a search on scsi-usb adapters. There are a couple out there for 50pin external drives - but just a couple. They run between 70 and $100. Not a bad deal I suppose and it would give me the option of running the tape drive in a virtual machine. I'm tempted, but the issue is, do I really need it? I'm gonna have to think on that.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I'd use a NIC and transfer the stuff you want to keep to another computer. As long as you got Win98 drivers for it, it should work fine.

Just remember FAT32 has a 4 GiB filesize limit. Applications like WinRAR can work around it. Any 120 GiB or less IDE hard drive should work in it.

 

[Kenshai]

Is the copy of 98 with or without usb support? I know they made both, if it's with an external should work just fine.

 

[twilyth]

I'd use a NIC and transfer the stuff you want to keep to another computer. As long as you got Win98 drivers for it, it should work fine.

Just remember FAT32 has a 4 GiB filesize limit. Applications like WinRAR can work around it. Any 120 GiB or less IDE hard drive should work in it.

Is the copy of 98 with or without usb support? I know they made both, if it's with an external should work just fine.

Have you guys tapped into my web cam? This very evening/morning I was trying to get winblows to recognize a USB card reader. Then I realized that in 1999, a CF card would probably be mistaken for reverse-engineered alien tech. (yes, checked wikipedia and know that they were introduced in 1994 - but remember, we're talking Windows here).

After finding out that the only browser that will run reliably, if at all, under Win98se is Opera, I managed to find a site that has generic USB drivers. I'm going to install them now and see what happens. Having the card reader would be nice, but what I really need is an external drive.

I'm hoping that the USB interface will obscure any issues regarding the size of the drive. I mean, aside from reporting the drive size in windows, the OS shouldn't care if the space is actually addressable - right? We'll soon see. However if there is a size issue, I think the spare drive I have is an old Hitachi deathstar in an external case - should be either 120 or 100 gb.

Thanks guys.