[Tripredacus]

Welcome to Project Shiva!

This is a project to resurrect (no pun intended) my old Windows 98 Server. Yes, you read that right. This project officially starts tomorrow, but be warned: Its not just Windows 98, also Windows 7. First let's do a little history.

Once upon a time, I had my first Windows 98 PC was called Hive City. I had almost forgot about it until I posted a screenshot in this thread:
http://www.msfn.org/...rencys-in-98se/

Hive City was built in 1999 and had the following specs:
CPU: Pentium 133MHz
RAM: unknown (this information is actually known but kept on Shiva's original HDD)
HDD: 8GB ATA 100
Sound: Guillemont (sic) 128 voice PCI
Video: Intergraph Voodoo Rush 6MB

Hive City had some problems. It was originally built with a 4x CD-ROM drive. I had bought a 24x CD-ROM drive at a computer show. This drive proved a disasterous (sic) upgrade. It did not work, in fact it worked its awesome "frying" magic on the following components:
- Power Supply
- Serial Port on MB
- itself
- 14k Modem

All was not lost, as I spent the "mad dough" on a PCI USB card. It cost $40 I believe. Previous to this (since such things as PCI USB card did not exist yet) I had used the PC 6 months with just the keyboard. I had also replaced the modem with a 14k I found in the trash. You won't believe this, I can't prove it, and I don't care. But this modem I found in the trash connected at ISDN speed. IDK if it was an ISDN modem, but it worked with my regular dial-up I had at the time. Besides it saying it connected to the ISP at 100k, it actually downloaded near that speed. Average DL speeds were 80kbps iirc. Unfortunately, I had stored this PC away and it was mistakenly thrown out! That screenshot is all that remains.

Hive City was replaced by Shiva, a totally new PC. It started with a Gigabyte motherboard, a Pentium II 233MHz CPU and a 32MB Riva TNT2 video card. Also I think a Sound Blaster of some sort. In 2003, Shiva was upgraded to another motherboard and a Pentium III 533BMHz CPU. Yes B! For some reason, some P3's had a B after the speed before the MHz, don't ask me why. It also ended up with 768MB RAM. Shiva has had 3 video cards. The first was mentioned. The second a Voodoo 3 PCI which was traded to a dude for a GeForce 2 MX and $20. The last (and final) is the video card I paid the most money for. You know this guy: 3dfx Voodoo 5500 AGP 2x 64MB.

You 9xers might not have ever owned one of these guys, but this is why I still prop 98. This Voodoo card excels in 2 things still unmatched in today's video card world. HEY if I am wrong, please show me some infos! OK OK to start these are those 2 things:
1. On-chip AA
2. Open GL support

Let's start with #1. On this card, you can enable AA (1x or 2x) and have no CPU hit. I have not owned a video card since this (both GeForce and Radeon) that do not make a CPU hit when AA is enabled. The Voodoo handled all AA with no CPU requirement. This is a win in my book. OK now, #2 yes Glide and OpenGL are a "thing of the past" yet still companies use OpenGL in their games. You get no CPU hit with GL with this card, still not matched against others using games that use GL. Of all the video cards I have parted ways with, or put in the basement, I can't let go of this guy. This Voodoo is the centerpeice and is the focal point of Project Shiva.

As I may have mentioned in the past, Shiva was a Windows 98 Server. It ran Windows 98a and hacked USB 1.1 support. It served up Quake 3 Dedicated and Shoutcast back in the day. It had only 3 reinstalls, 2 due to board swaps, 1 due to me installing DOS 5.5 overtop it. The crowning achievement was the uptime record (for me) which was just over 3 months without a reboot. So now we have set the stage. Let me detail this project:

First, I need to upgrade my existing computer using new parts
Second, I need to rebuild Shiva using my computer's old parts
Third, I need to build a PC for my mother using my existing computer's parts

However, my main goal will be to build Shiva first, as it does not require parts from either of the 2 projects above. To start, I have acquired a free 5 bay chassis (read:case) and ... oh wait for this. I asked the VP of IT of my company if we had any leftover Windows 98 VLKs, he said "WHAT? Here take it" W00T! The chassis is In-Win Z589AQB.

Known specs for Shiva:
Mainboard: Intel D850MV
CPU: Intel Pentium IV 1.7GHz
RAM: 768MB RDRAM (1st gen) PC800
Video: Voodoo 5 5500 AGP 2x 64MB
Sound: tba
HDD: 20GB IDE, 20GB IDE
CD-ROM: 8x CD-RW Iomega Terminator model

For the first time, Shiva *may* get Windows 98 SE. It currently has a different version and may need to get installed if it doesn't like migrating all those things. Note, I had posted here on MSFN from Shiva (as it exists as of this moment) almost exactly 1 year ago when Infocore (my current PC) had a mainboard failure.

Anyways, Infocore mainboard, ram will go to new PC using the other In-Win case I picked up. It will then move to Intel DQ965GF with SATA HDDs and Windows 7 Pro x86. I had bought a SATA DVD-RW drive because the target board only has 1 PATA port, and I have 4 PATA drives.... bad things. So new board will use 2 PATA drives, 2 SATA HDDs and 1 SATA DVD-RW.

OK OK this was all a fine story and TL;DR to most of you guys I bet, but I needs to know this important infos: Where Shiva goes there is not ethernet up thar. What do I need to know about getting WiFi to work on 98? Can it handle G speed?

Anyways, if you have any questions, ask away.

[dencorso]

Yes, it can handle G speed. But take care to get an Wireless Adapter that has 98SE drivers, such as the el-cheapo D-Link DWL-G122 USB dongle (versions Ax, Bx or Cx, but *not* Dx).

[Multibooter]

Tripredacus, on 26 February 2010 - 07:53 PM, said:

Hive City was replaced by Shiva

Nice that you give your computers a name, like Jerry Pournelle many years ago.

Quote

3dfx Voodoo 5500 AGP 2x 64MB... this is why I still prop 98. This Voodoo card excels in 2 things still unmatched in today's video card world... 1. On-chip AA 2. Open GL support

Interesting, but I understand very little about video cards, I am not into games, I even had to look up some info in http://en.wikipedia....i/Anti-aliasing I am using a bfg 7800 GS video card http://www.bfgtech.c...r78256gsoc.aspx , which software would run (better) with your old card?

Quote

To start, I have acquired a free 5 bay chassis

Having a modern Win98 computer is a little luxury. My guess is that you'll have to budget $500 for it. The box and the power supply may prove to be the only useful free components of your Win98 system. Eventually I'll get an X6800 CPU for my Win98 system, but they still sell for around $200.

Quote

specs for Shiva: Mainboard: Intel D850MV

I guess your objective is to build yourself a computer which works with your old video card. The only advice I would dare to give you is to get a newer motherboard fully compatible with Win98 AND newer operating systems, like the excellent Asus P5PE-VM (dual-core support for multi-booting, AGP, max 2GB RAM, only 1 floppy drive, only 3 PCI slots, onboard Gigabit Ethernet controller). You'll save yourself a lot of time and hassles, like looking for drivers.

Quote

Where Shiva goes there is not ethernet up thar

I would still consider an inconvenient long ethernet cable. On my Win98 computer I can watch nicely foreign TV via the internet when my Win98 machine is connected vie Ethernet cable. When connected via slow g-speed WLAN, movies don't display properly. I haven't tried brand-specific super-g yet, since devices of different brands (PCI-cards, router, Nintendo, PS3, Win98/WinXP computers, Asus netbook) connect to the home WLAN.

Quote

What do I need to know about getting WiFi to work on 98? Can it handle G speed?

WLAN with g speed is no problem under Win98, just get a PCI WLAN card which has a Win98 driver. I am happy with the D-Link DWL-AG530, firmware revisions A3 and A4, an external antenna can be screwed on. Netgear has removed all their Win98 drivers from their website, but D-Link drivers are still available, albeit hidden: ftp://ftp.dlink.com/...lag530/Drivers/ It is difficult, however, to find WLAN cards which have drivers for Win9x/XP/Vista AND Linux, anybody has some suggestions?

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 27 February 2010 - 06:09 AM

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 26 February 2010 - 11:12 PM, said:

D-Link DWL-G122 ... versions Ax, Bx or Cx, but *not* Dx).

Yes. It's very important to look at firmware revisions when buying add-ons for Win98. Very often manufacturers change chips, but keep the old packaging and model number. I assume D-Link sold 4 completely different beasts under the same model number, and for version D there is no manufacturer-provided Win98 driver. Unfortunately the firmware revision is often not visible on the box, only inside, on the sticker of the device.

[Tripredacus]

So far I have spent only $28! That is for a SATA DVD drive for my other computer. I have all the other parts for it already. Not only do I like that video card, but I like Rambus. The only reason I stopped using it was because of the prices to buy more memory! When all is said and done I will do some benchmark comparisons between the two systems and we will see how it looks.

Only things left to buy on this project are Wireless card, and also a PCI-E video card for my other computer. Total about $100 I'd say.

[dencorso]

Multibooter, on 27 February 2010 - 05:54 AM, said:

dencorso, on 26 February 2010 - 11:12 PM, said:

D-Link DWL-G122 ... versions Ax, Bx or Cx, but *not* Dx).

Yes. It's very important to look at firmware revisions when buying add-ons for Win98. Very often manufacturers change chips, but keep the old packaging and model number. I assume D-Link sold 4 completely different beasts under the same model number, and for version D there is no manufacturer-provided Win98 driver. Unfortunately the firmware revision is often not visible on the box, only inside, on the sticker of the device.

You're quite right! That's one reason to buy it used, say, from e-Bay (the other one is that probably there's no more Ax, Bx and Cx to be found new). Here is a scan of the dongle, with the hardware version pointed by a red arrow (the C1 is the more versatile, having drivers for 98 to Vista64 and is recognized natively by Win 7 (link)):

Attached File(s)

•  DWL-G122.gif (104.19K)
  Number of downloads: 9

[risk_reversal]

The Edimax EW-7128G has 98SE drivers which can be downloaded from the edimax.com site. The card works well in 'G' mode. This is a pci wifi card. I know you were specifically asking about usb wireless but perhaps this may nevertheless be of interest.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16833315041

I have ADSL2+ and download throughput is about 11,500 kbps. Edimax will also provide the Aegis3 driver which is the supplicant so that the card can be enabled to work with wpa encryption (this also works fine on my Edimax card).

The card has a Ralink RT25xx chipset which in addition is Linux compatible.

Good Luck

This post has been edited by risk_reversal: 27 February 2010 - 04:39 PM

[Multibooter]

risk_reversal, on 27 February 2010 - 04:35 PM, said:

The Edimax EW-7128G has 98SE drivers... in addition is Linux compatible.

Thanks a LOT risk_reversal. Looks like a very useful card. Are there any Win98/Vista/Linux compatible WLAN cards, with detachable antenna AND the a-frequencies? That would be an ideal WLAN card. Edimax apparently has no a/b/g dual-band WLAN cards.

[Tripredacus]

Here's an update for you all. This project turned out horrible! Let me start out by outlining these systems:

1. Infocore: This was my regular XP system.
2. Old Infocore: this was the system that used to be my XP system.
3. Shiva: This machine was my Win98 PC
4. Server(s): I had 2 PCs in 2U Server chassis that I got parts from.

Step 1: Build new Shiva.
- Take out PSU from Infocore, 400W Antec. Put into 5 Bay chassis from work.
- Take out motherboard, CPU, RAM from Old Infocore and put into chass.... WOOOPS!

Guess what, I happened to have gotten 2 Mini-ATX chassis from the scrap pile! The Intel D850 board I had was full ATX! It did not fit in the case.
Secondary objective: use Shiva's old case.

- Take out video card (Voodoo) and motherboard (Abit BE-6?). Take out IO Shield, take out power supply.
- Take out PSU from new Shiva, put into old Shiva
- Put in IO Shield.... doesn't stay in. Hold it in while putting in motherboard.
- Put in Voodoo card.... WOOOPS!

Guess what, part 2. AGP slot in D850 board has different keying than the Voodoo card! What a pain! I took a break, just sat there looking at it and decided to shelve it.

- Take out Radeon x1650 from Infocore. Hook everything else up.
- Boot PC.

At this point, Windows started without error, of course it needed to install some drivers. But there was an initial problem, the CD Drive was not detected. It also had decided to reboot on its own twice before I got the CD Drive to show up. It was also unable to detect UFD I had plugged in, I had put the chipset drivers on there but couldn't get to it. Shiva is REALLY unstable now, it likes to reboot sometimes while accessing the CD Drive. Course of action to be taken at a later time:
1. Try a different CD Drive.
2. Try a different video card. It is likely that the video card, which requires additional power, is causing a problem. I had also not researched whether or not Windows 98 (or the board) liked the fact that I had put a 512MB Radeon X1650 in it.

Project Shiva is on hold! However, I am obviously typing to you from something, and if you were paying attention, I said I took the PSU out of my main computer, and that Shiva reboots! So here's the continuing story...

1. Take out motherboard, CPU, RAM, Sound card from Infocore.
2. Take out motherboard, CPU, RAM from 2U #1. Put those parts into Infocore.
3. Take out RAM, HDD from 2U #2. Put into Infocore.
4. Take out ATAPI DVD and CD drives, put in SATA DVD drive. Hook up SATA HDD #2. There are 2 SATA HDDs in this system. One is new, the other was already present. I made sure to keep that one, and the two IDE HDDs disconnected for now.
5. Boot PC, and then run BIOS update.
6. Go into BIOS, set memory to custom timings 533, 4-3-3-11. Reason is, have 4 sticks at different speeds, so underclocking 2 sticks but keeping dual channel.
7. Install Windows 7 Pro using answer file.
8. After booting to audit, sysprep -oobe -shutdown.
9. Hook up remaining Hard Drives. Go to BIOS and set to boot off SATA first (as XP is on one of the IDE drives).
10. Go through Windows welcome, new computer name: BEHEMOTH
11. Install Creative Drivers that were saved to IDE HDD before upgrade. Set up 5.1 surround with Windows Speaker cpl.
12. Install Firefox, copy over profile from IDE HDD, go to MSFN and post!

Project Shiva is not finished yet. I need to rectify the rebooting problem, if you have any ideas, let me know. And NO the Voodoo card is not available. I will be keeping it. In addition, I need to take the parts from Infocore I removed and make a whole other PC with it, but I don't have a chassis to fit a full size ATX board in it.

I may yet need to do a reinstall of 98 on Shiva, but I'd rather not. I was pleased that it didn't BSOD on me because it is customized with boot up and shutdown screens already. Current full Shiva specs:

board: Intel D850MV
RAM: 768MB RDRAM PC800
CPU: Pentium 4 2.0GHz
Video: ATI Radeon X1650 512MB AGP
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Live PCI
HDDs: 20GB WD, 20GB Maxtor
CD: 48x Compaq "Spare" CD-ROM ATAPI
PSU: Antec 400W ATX

[risk_reversal]

Multibooter, on 27 February 2010 - 06:00 PM, said:

risk_reversal, on 27 February 2010 - 04:35 PM, said:

The Edimax EW-7128G has 98SE drivers... in addition is Linux compatible.

Thanks a LOT risk_reversal. Looks like a very useful card. Are there any Win98/Vista/Linux compatible WLAN cards, with detachable antenna AND the a-frequencies? That would be an ideal WLAN card. Edimax apparently has no a/b/g dual-band WLAN cards.

The only other card which I found that might work with 98SE and which has 'a' mode was the Cisco Aironet 802.11A/B/G Wireless PCI Adapter (pretty sure it was this one, the drivers are available on the Cisco site just have to hunt them down). This card has wpa and I am sure that the Aegis3 98SE supplicant would also work. Also has removable aerial [reverse SMA, I think]

I did consider this card seriously but my understanding is that it is no longer manufactured and can only / sometimes be found on fleebay. This card was apparently extremely expensive when new.

http://www.cisco.com...00801ebc33.html

Good Luck

This post has been edited by risk_reversal: 28 February 2010 - 06:39 AM

[Tripredacus]

After having to work on that ThinkPad today, I realized that I should bring Shiva into work to get it going. It would solve the problem of not having extra monitors or keyboards (say if I needed to download something) and lack of floppy disks and drives. So Shiva will be brought into work and maybe I can get it fixed up. I'm still worried about the video card, I'll have to look it up if there are Windows 98 drivers for it.

[Tripredacus]

Shiva is just about back to normal, but a few problems I can't seem to sort out.

1. USB not installed. Anytime I go to install the drivers for USB, I get a BSOD.
2. Can't get the video card to work properly. Yes the X1650 is not compatible, I replaced it with a Radeon 9600 XT instead. I have the drivers from ATI installed and it is detected in Device Manager as such. However, it also detects "Standard Display Adapter" as well. In Display Properties, it says my primary display is the Standard Display Adapter and the secondary monitor is the Radeon and is disabled. I was originally using VGA to the monitor, so I shut down and connected to DVI but it is still the same. As a result, I am stuck with 16 colors and 800x600.

Any ideas? I'd rather use this video card, although I do have some others like a GeForce 3 floating around somewhere.

UPDATE: USB still broken. I fixed the video card problem by editing the system.ini. Then set the colors to 256, which at that point the ATI Software detected the card and was able to go to 32bit color and 1024x768 using the DVI port.

This post has been edited by Tripredacus: 06 May 2010 - 01:36 PM

[Tripredacus]

Today is the day! I will boot it up and attempt to get USB working. Once that is done, I will also try to get the internet going. I found a USB wireless "card". It is a D-Link DWL-G122 and there are Windows 98 drivers on the website. I hope that means that there are some on the CD it came with. But obviously if I get USB working, I won't have to worry about whether or not there are drivers on CDs in order to install them.

[dencorso]

Even if you get the USB going, you'll still need drivers. NUSB 3.3 caters only for mass storage devices, and that a Wi-Fi dongle is not. So, the D-Link DWL-G122 USB dongle versions Ax, Bx or Cx, have drivers for Win 9x but version Dx has *not*. Hope you have one of the first three versions, not the Dx. See post #6, for more info on locating the version of it.

[Tripredacus]

I have checked the compatibility, it is a Rev B1 and drivers are available. However, I was not able to get the USB drivers to work. I am using Win98 FE and any time I try to install the USB Drivers I get a BSOD. I will see about bringing a CD home from work. I've had USB working on this OS previously, but as noted it was with a different motherboard. I also had used Win98 SE USB files to get USB 2.0 to work.

I have finally put Shiva where it will go. I still do not have a monitor for it yet so I used my trickery. Shiva is now a member of a (probably) insane setup. Here is the hook up:

Shiva S-Video to AV switch box. Audio from green out on sound card (configured to run in 2 channel) to AV Switch box.
AV Switch box (4 inputs, 1 out):
Input1: DTV Satellite Receiver (Composite)
Input2: PS2 (Composite)
Input3: Shive (Composite Audio + S-Video)
Input4: empty
Output: VCR!

Yes output everything to VCR, which can also play tapes still. VCR out to 4 channel (heavily modified by me) sound system. Video out to television. So Shiva actually displays to a TV, through a VCR. Maybe not the ideal setup, but it connects that way because the VCR handles all audio from all the components. When I get a monitor, I will use the TV as a second display. Also, because of the age of the TV, I can't read anything on the screen unless I set resolution to 640x480! I tested audio with Winamp (sound is better than from any other input) and some games. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Diablo played, but Carmageddon 2 did not seem to like S-Video.

Current task list:
1. Get USB installed
2. Playing movies problem!
3. Test out transparency

OK weird issue about playing movies. I tried only playing movies in Winamp, did not try Divx or WMPC yet. But the videos play fine, no artifacts, sounds good but... they play UPSIDE DOWN! What can cause videos to play upside down? I've never seen this before, no idea where to start...

EDIT: forgot to say I wanted to test out how well transparency works with the new hardware. I added that to #3.

This post has been edited by Tripredacus: 17 May 2010 - 08:47 AM

[allen2]

For movies playing upside down, i remember a setting on some graphics card divers to flip video and also on divxG400 (directshow filter) also ffdshow (not sure if it works for W98) and vlc have this option built-in.

This post has been edited by allen2: 17 May 2010 - 09:53 AM

[dencorso]

Well... considering your present solution for video display I guess you might as well fasten an old armchair to the ceiling... and use salvaged 1945 fighter-plane seat-belts to keep you sitting upside-down on it!

Now, seriously, forget about any manufacturer's drivers and go straight to PassingBy's NUSB for Win 98FE. You'll find it here. Also consider giving Shiva a four-port USB 2.0 PCI add-on card, preferably powered by a Via chipset. e-Bay is your friend!

[Tripredacus]

Well I'm going to try out this USB thing tonight. I do not need additional USB ports, My board has 4 on the back already and I am not using any of them. If I manage to get the wireless installed, I'll see how the transparency works out!

Oh, I forgot to add, I'll look into any flip video settings too.

Update
I followed the link you sent me Dencorso, and got USB installed. There was about 5 reboots involved. I then plugged in my Wireless and the drivers appeared to be installed, as well as the software. But the software would not open. It was then I found the NIC flagged in Device Manager with a Code 2:


However, that did not stop me from playing around. Oh and you can tell by the following screenshots that USB drives do work for me! It shows up in My Computer, but besides that, it was how I got the screenshots to my W7 PC to upload them! So you can see, almost 10 years later I can still have transparency in Windows 98 FE. As noted above, my resolution is REALLY low so I can read the text on my TV, which is a 20" CRT...


Some people might notice I'm "cheating" with the transparency... yes it is with some old version of Windowblinds. Do not ask me where I got it, it is from 2001 and got it in 2001.... Here is another:

This post has been edited by Tripredacus: 24 May 2010 - 08:29 AM

[Tripredacus]

I confirmed that USB Drives are running at 2.0 speeds. Also installed a Logitech USB gamepad with no problems and even worked without rebooting or having to configure it first!

[dencorso]

Let me guess: your only problem now is the D-Link dongle?
Well, trying various different drivers usually solves it.
Serach the net for them. D-Link Australia, New Zeland and UK all offer diferent drivers.
And their sites are a PITA to find things in, sorry, but they usually actually do offer the right drivers somewhere.
Here's a start: v2.04 (AUS) and V. 2.00 & v2.04 (USA). V2.00 may be what you're looking for.