I have tried to install Windows 98 SE on PC with 915GM Speedster-FA4 motherboard made by MSI and I'd like to share my experience and ask if anybody got better results with motherboard based on Intel 915 series chipset.

What are the items that need driver.

915GM + ICH-6 chipset.
This is officially supported in version 6.3.0.1007 of Intel INF Update Utility.

USB 2.0 controller
- Without any driver, all 8 USB ports are fully functional in USB 1.1 mode, I tried OrangeWare driver (version 2.04.0.0) that is necessary for motherboards with ICH-4 and ICH-5 southbridges, everything looked fine, USB2 EHCI controller was found, USB2 hub was found, usbview utility shows USB2 controller+hub with 8 ports - but it is not switched to USB2 mode.

SATA/PATA disk controller
It contains standard ATA100 interface suitable for connecting of two PATA devices (HDD, CD-ROM) and SATA controller for connecting upto 4 SATA devices. It can be switched (in BIOS) into three modes:
1. Disable SATA. In this mode just PATA devices are recognized, ESDI_506.PDR is used and speed upto 100 MBps can be achieved.
2. SATA Only. In this mode the SATA controller operates in legacy mode, Windows 98 SE see SATA disks as standard ATA devices (ESDI_506.PDR driver) and with enabled DMA the tested transfer speed was upto 135 MBps. The PATA devices are disabled in this mode!
3. Enhanced mode. In this mode both controllers work in native mode. It means that PATA devices are served by ESD_506.PDR, and SATA controller has yellow excalamtion mark - therefore all disk drives connected to SATA ports operate in compatibility (16-bit) mode.

Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900
It has no driver supplied by Intel. It can work as standard PCI graphics controller in 640 x 480 x 4-bit resolution only.
There is no possibility to switch it off manually. If PCI-E graphics card is inserted, it is switched off automatically, but if PCI graphics card is inserted, it is still present.

I tried Nvidia 6200 Turbo Cache PCI-E board but it even does not work as Standard PCI VGA, it works as standard VGA only (again 640x480x4).
Then I tried some old S3 Trio64V+ PCI board and it works fine in 1024x768x16bit. I plan to try other PCI-E boards.

Intel® High Definition Audio
It seems there is no support for HDA bus in Windows 98SE, Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver is available for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 only.
The codec used is Realtek ALC880 and Realtek also offers no solution.

This board contains also two Marvell 1000 Mbps Ethernet controllers - the Windows 98 SE driver works fine, but sometimes it was not able to obtain the IP address from DHCP server, but there is visible delay also in Windows XP on the same computer.

The box I tested had 1024 MB of RAM and it was not necessary to do anything special to install Windows 98 SE from the original CD-ROM to this computer.

The summary so far:
- SATA disks in legacy mode and PATA disks in native mode works perfectly, but not concurrently.
- USB works in 1.1 mode only
- On-board graphics controller works in VGA mode only, add-on PCI board works correctly
- On-board audio does not work at all

What drivers are needed:
- Intel ICH6 SATA controller
- Intel ICH6 USB 2.0 EHCI controller
- Intel 915G(M) GMA900 Graphics controller
- Intel ICH6 HDA controler + Realtek ALC880 codec

Maybe somebody was able modify some existing driver to work or has any other workaround.

I did this test just to see how easy it is to operate Windows 98 SE on newer motherboards with Intel chipset.

I plan to try also next generation motherboard, Gigabyte GA-8I955X Pro with Smithfiled processor but I don't expect big differences.

If anybody has any (better) experience please let me know.

Petr

Hello!

Regarding USB2 - maybe with DLLs from other version of OrangeWare driver
for example v2.09 or v2.1.11.1 could work?

http://file-us.abit.com.tw/pub/download/drivers/usb2/
http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/abit/do...rs/intel/usb20/
http://www.conceptronic.nl/site/DesktopDef...d=18&recid=5606
http://download.tulip.com/support/Conceptr...ectivity/C480i/

There are even newer versions of USB drivers:

U2v2_2_2.exe
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/contact/

U2v2_3.exe
http://www.doubleh.com.tw/download/Driver%...liNEC23-931119/


Regarding Intel Graphics on 915 chipset - you can build your own driver:
http://my.scitechsoft.com/
http://www.scitechsoft.com/chiplist/snap_win_chiplist.html

HTH, Roman

Hello Roman,

thank you for your ideas.

I have tried the following OrangeWare drivers with no success:
DriverVer=4/01/2003,1.01.0000.2
DriverVer=08/01/2003,2.01.0006.2
DriverVer=10/15/2003,2.01.0007.1
DriverVer=1/15/2004,2.01.0010.0
DriverVer=3/15/2004,2.01.0011.0
DriverVer=8/01/2004,2.02.0002.0
DriverVer=11/15/2004,2.03.0000.0
DriverVer=1/15/2005,2.04.0000.0

Yesterday I've got the following reply from OrangeWare:

But the difference between ICH5 and ICH6 seems not to be big, maybe some easy trick can enable the USB2.0 functionality, I don't know.

Regarding SciTech, I almost forgot that they exist. I have used their driver 15 years ago very often.
Unfortunately they support VEN_8086&DEV_2582 = "Intel® 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family" only and not VEN_8086&DEV_2592 "Mobile Intel® 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family".

Bad luck.

Petr

Hello!

Thanks for your investigation!
BTW, where can I download USB driver v2.4 (1/15/2005)?

Regards, Roman

I forgot where I found it, so I put it here: http://www.winpack.org/petr/usb2-ow-2.04.zip

Petr

Hello!

I asked at news://news.scitechsoft.com/ about
and here is the reply:

Let's hope they will update them soon ...

Thanks for USB drivers,
Roman

Hello!

It seems that the latest beta (3.1.3) of Scitech SNAP supports
i915GM chipset ...

Regards, Roman

Thanks for the information. I'll try it when I will have some time. There are also SciTech drivers for Geforce 6200, I should check if they oficially support PCI-E version or AGP only as Nvidia does.

Petr

I'm still figuring out how to unpack the installer and install this thing manually, since I have a system with a 945GM but they only want to support 945G. I want to force the 945G drivers on it, I think it should work fine since the two are very similar. (It says "unsupported chipset" when run).

Hello, Petr. Have you managed to install USB 2.0 support on your i915 chipset?

I have tried different OrangeWare drivers with no luck, and http://www.winpack.org/petr/usb2-ow-2.04.zip is no longer available.

Thanks.

As I mentioned several times, there is no Win9x support for USB2.0 in Intel ICH6, ICH7 and ICH8 southbridges.

The newest Orangeware driver I know is here: http://old.winpack.org/petr/U2v242.exe but it supports ICH4 only.

There are universal EHCI (USB2.0) drivers for DOS, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and newer - but none for Win9x, all are bound to specific PCI IDs.

Petr

Thank you for your reply. I think that I got very lucky because only USB 2.0 is left without the driver under Win98SE.

Here is my experience with my Intel 915P motherboard (Gigabyte).


I have tried Geforce 6200 PCI-E and its driver was very unstable under Win98. nVidia's tech support (after complaining a bit that they do not make video boards) told me to stop using this obsolete operating system. However, two different models of ATI X550 do work properly. They have limited DOS memory to maybe a megabyte or smth, but it is OK.

The driver for Realtek ALC codec (integrated) is not stable, but I don't care as I have a good sound card (Yamaha YMF724). Yay, DOS games!

VIA VT6410 SATA/RAID controller works properly. I have tried only P-ATA devices (three 250 GB hard drives are connected). Operating of RAID-ed drives in DOS mode is possible, but if writing is attempted it may corrupt the entire disk.

Marvell network interface works properly (except, read below).

This Windows 98 machine can not operate for more than 4 or 5 days because of some timer problem I have not been able to resolve so far. The system clock slows down, then there appear timing problems in MIDI hardware, then network card (Marvell) wouldn't accept incoming connections, regular digital audio wouldn't play (PCI board). I suspect it's because system timer shares IRQ 0 with an IDE controller, but I'm not sure. There are no observable problems running Win98 for shorter periods of time, like one day.

lol happy newyear im enjoying the read btw (or thread)

Hello!

Have you tried to install Windows 98 in non-ACPI mode ?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q186111/


With above command line option, APM system device will be installed instead of ACPI.
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=116
Windows 9x/ME have problems with newer versions of ACPI (especially
with enhanced ACPI APIC:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/apic.mspx
Hint - you can change installed Windows PC from ACPI to APM by thy following registry hack:
http://www.physik.uni-freiburg.de/~zwerger...aio/acpieng.htm



BTW, in Windows 2k/XP, APM is enabled by using "Standard PC" HAL:
http://www.staudio.de/kb/english/2000xp/index.html


Regards, Roman

From what I can tell, motherboards based on the Intel 915P chipset are probably the most desirable for Windows-98se at this point. That particular chipset does not have integrated video, and it does have DDR-2 support. The next best would be 915PL, followed by the 875.

According to the mobot on motherboard.org, Soyo has this board:

Soyo SY-P4I915 DRAGON 3

Which I can't find on Soyo's web site nor can I find much about it doing a general web search. Seems that it would make a great win-98 platform. It seems to have ATA-133, which very few boards have.

http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/motherbo...28%2BV2.0%2529/

One problem could be finding a PCI-express video card with win-98 drivers. I guess you can always use a PCI video card.

There is also the Gigabyte GA-8I915P-D ad\nd the Microstar MSI 915P Neo2. Asus doesn't seem to make a board based on the 915P.

All of the 915-based boards that I've looked at all claim that they don't support Win-98, yet in their driver download section there is always support for win-98 for the various components (audio, chipset, ethernet).

Can anyone else post their experiences with Win-98 and motherboards based on the i915?

I'm using an IG80 mobo with WinMe currently if that helps?

Thanks to Modicr, I got a graphics driver from Scitechsoft.

Anything in particular you'd like to know? I have a spare IDE hd so I could install 98se if you really need to know something specific.

Well, you've got PCI-express, SATA, 6-channel audio, and firewire (1394). Do any of those work under 98se?

Scitech drivers working fine on Intel 915 GM/GMS chipset,intel 828801FB/FBM PCI Express root port 2660/2662 states "this device is working properly" under the general tab, seems to fail with not enabled in bios sometimes though. Going to look into that some more, using winme ntkern.vxd etc to lessen chances of missing symbols. Usbhub20.sys reports missing none, having a play with that later in the week

Maybe I shouldn't have volunteered so readily ;-)

Unlike the Me install, many error messages during 98se drivers installation, eg., missing *.vxd's. It seemed to forget it had a cd rom & the file dialogue box refused to point to D:

However, eventually it did boot with just 3 yellow !?'s :-)

I'll look a bit further.

1394 is there, IP1000 gigabit ethernet, but I'll test them just to be sure.

After much messing around:

1394 working ok on an external dvd.

Sound out ok, but can't test 6 ch's as I only have stereo kit.

I installed the evaluation copy of Paragon "mount everything 3" & connected a 250G sata hd. I can read from it ok, but no ntfs writes without buying the s/w.

Does anyone know if writes are reliable with the Paragon s/w? I may buy it if so. It's supposed to mount Ext2/3 hd's too but no joy there (on another system, not this ig80)

Ethernet Nic shows up twice in dev' man' & I can't get a reliable connection so unsure what's up there.

Interestingly the Scitech graphics driver works better than on Me!

Anything else before I dismantle it all?

Are there any utility programs for the sound component that at least indicates that you have control of 6 separate audio channels?

Not sure why you're messing with NTFS for tha SATA drive. I thought you said you had ME?

Most motherboards with giga-bit nic's usually show drivers for win-98.

Do you have a PCI-express video card? Would be interesting to see if you could get that working under 98.

I don't know offhand.

Because I don't have a spare sata, so I borrowed 1 from a pc that has XP & thus NTFS :-)
98se opened a folder containing about 3000 files fairly quickly.

It eventually found the local network & is working ok now.

I have nothing PCI-X related I'm afraid. The application I bought the IG80 for only needs the onboard stuff.

I am using Me on a Thinkpad, but out of curiosity decided to try it on the IG80. In fact it seems that 98se works almost as well.

modicr ::

I'm gonna try to switch the system to APM upon next reboot (running XP at the moment) and see if there will be any changes.


I believe ATi videocards up to X850 work properly. At least the latest Catalyst v6.2 reports support.

I set ACPIOption = 2, Windows reinstalled all mobo "devices" during 3 reboots. ACPI Power Button is no longer listed as system device and the system timer is alone on IRQ 0. I hope this would fix my issue..

I can't even get ANY optical/internal CD or DVD drive recognized in 98SE on a Dell Dimension 3100, which has a 915GV chipset. This thread here pretty much outlines the EXACT problems i was having installing 98SE. In the end, the poster also can NOT get his DVD burner detected in 98SE. Is this a 915GV-related problem only? What are we i915 owners to do?

Hmm... bug Intel until they release suitable drivers ?

For Windows 98/ME:
USB driver v2.4 (1/15/2005)? It is now here: http://old.winpack.org/petr/usb2-ow-2.04.zip
As for video - VBEMP 9x supports this Intel 915 card. And SNAP Graphics 3.1.8 also.