pci card with ide/sata controller

[brianmgb]

A word of warning on the PCI controller cards,I bought one but only discovered afterwards that the drivers for win98 could only be installed if win98 was already on the PC.

On the box XP win98 and win2K were supported but in fact only XP would allow recognition from bios.

[Sysdll]

On the Maxtor I have I didn’t need the drivers to install 98se. Maxblast found the controller and drive, formatted it for fat 32, and instructed me on how to proceed.

[Mijzelf]

in fact only XP would allow recognition from bios.

I don't understand this. How can an OS affect recognition by the bios?

[brianmgb]

What I was trying to say is that according to the manufacturers manual that the card could be installed and was accessible to XP but for win98se the OS had to be already installed on an existing HD.I was primarily interested to use a 500GB disk which would be my primary disk and this proved impossible with this card controller.

[Sysdll]

You didn’t say what controller and hard drive you were using. I’ve tried the generic ATA cards and found them to be trash. Give Promise or Maxtor (same cards) a try, especially the Promise SATA150 TX2. It installs 98se without problems. It’s an SATA card and I use only the ATA port so I don't know if SATA drives will work the same way.

Edited April 22, 2008 by Sysdll

[brianmgb]

the PCI controller card was an inexpensive device,don't remember what ,bought it online.The hard drive is a WD,so no problem htere.

Am going to try soporific's LBA zip as well as his autoload and update CD's. for win98.It will be a few days before I get round to it.

[jaclaz]

As far as I know there are TWO kinds of "expansion" cards, just like the old SCSI ones.

1. that include a (usually in the form of an EPROM or EEPROM or FLASH chip) an extension to BIOS

2. that do not include such an extension

First type allows for booting from the connected device, second does not.

I have experienced in the past (with SCSI cards) also conflicts between PC BIOS and extension on card, I remember a HP that didn't "like" an Advansys card but that booted just fine with an Adaptec one.

Whether later in the boot process the Operating System that is loading has the right drivers or not is another matter.

Typically the missing or wrong driver causes either "limited 16-bit" access in Win9x/ME or a reboot and a 0x0000007b BSOD on NT/2K/XP/2003.

Theoretically it is possible to write a BIOS extension to support enhanced features, using a network card with a BOOTROM socket, here is an example:

http://www.fitzenreiter.de/ata/ata_eng.htm

(people don't do this at home, risky business!)

jaclaz