Vortex86DX

[serpent99]

I'm sure some of you have heard this before- trying to get win98 running on new hardware. I work on industrial equipment. Most of the controls are Win98 based. The motherboards they used in these machines was total crap, they're all dropping like flies, they were 733 Celeron with a via chipset. On top of this there's some proprietary ISA cards and the display only plays nice with certain video chips (TTL LCD panel)

The card I've been using as a replacement went "end of life" and there's not much to choose from for a replacement.

I found this card and I'm in the process of testing it out-

PCA-6743 SBC CPU Card

I managed to get Win 98 up and running but I'm running into a few snags. It uses a SATA hard drive. There a driver package listed on the website for the board I'm using, it has the following files in a folder labeled "install file"-

iteatapi.cat

iteatapi.inf

ITEATAPI.mpd

ITEPM.VXD

There's a feature in the bios that lets me set the SATA controller to "native mode" or "legacy mode" I can only get Win98 to work if this is set to "legacy mode". The problem with this is when i use "legacy mode" for some reason the floppy drive stops working. If I switch to "native mode" win98 hangs on boot. I've tried updating the ide drivers but Win98 complains that the above listed files are not for my hardware. Is it possible that I need to somehow load the above drivers ahead of time so native mode will work? Kind of like slipstreaming them into the install cd or loading them using F6 when installing XP?

In addition to the SATA port, there's a standard parallel ide port, maybe I need to try using a regular PATA hard drive.

Other problems are I can't find a USB driver, and the floppy controller shares some I/O's with something listed as "motherboard resources" and neither will let me change their properties.

I know this is a lot but there's millions of dollars worth of hardware sitting in factories all over the world waiting on a solution. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Chris

Edited August 24, 2010 by serpent99

[rloew]

I'm sure some of you have heard this before- trying to get win98 running on new hardware. I work on industrial equipment. Most of the controls are Win98 based. The motherboards they used in these machines was total crap, they're all dropping like flies, they were 733 Celeron with a via chipset. On top of this there's some proprietary ISA cards and the display only plays nice with certain video chips (TTL LCD panel)

The card I've been using as a replacement went "end of life" and there's not much to choose from for a replacement.

I found this card and I'm in the process of testing it out-

PCA-6743 SBC CPU Card

I managed to get Win 98 up and running but I'm running into a few snags. It uses a SATA hard drive. There a driver package listed on the website for the board I'm using, it has the following files in a folder labeled "install file"-

iteatapi.cat

iteatapi.inf

ITEATAPI.mpd

ITEPM.VXD

There's a feature in the bios that lets me set the SATA controller to "native mode" or "legacy mode" I can only get Win98 to work if this is set to "legacy mode". The problem with this is when i use "legacy mode" for some reason the floppy drive stops working. If I switch to "native mode" win98 hangs on boot. I've tried updating the ide drivers but Win98 complains that the above listed files are not for my hardware. Is it possible that I need to somehow load the above drivers ahead of time so native mode will work? Kind of like slipstreaming them into the install cd or loading them using F6 when installing XP?

In addition to the SATA port, there's a standard parallel ide port, maybe I need to try using a regular PATA hard drive.

Other problems are I can't find a USB driver, and the floppy controller shares some I/O's with something listed as "motherboard resources" and neither will let me change their properties.

I know this is a lot but there's millions of dollars worth of hardware sitting in factories all over the world waiting on a solution. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Chris

I wrote a Patch for Windows 98 that supports SATA in "native mode". Otherwise you will probably need to use PATA Drives.

Does the BIOS have a "Raid" Mode for SATA?

[herbalist]

Just to clarify, are you referring to 98FE (gold) or 98SE?

[serpent99]

running 98 SE 4.10.2222A

Chris

Just to clarify, are you referring to 98FE (gold) or 98SE?

[serpent99]

There's no raid drive option. While it was in Legacy mode, I right clicked on the inf file listed above and chose "install" I have no idea as to what it did. Anyway, I changed back to native mode and it hung on boot, so I booted in DOS and ran setup on the win98 install cd and it went through setup again really quickly. Now for some reason native SATA mode works with win98.

So here's where I am now-

1. My floppy drive works in DOS and surprisingly in Win98 safe mode but it won't work when I'm normally booted up. In device manager under "standard floppy disk controller" it shows a conflict with "motherboard resources" input/output range 03F0-03F5, cannot change resources in floppy or "motherboard resources"

2. System information shows the IDE controller as "forced hardware" IRQ 14, 15

3. The USB controller needs drivers. Are there any drivers that might work for this?

thanks for your patience.

Chris

[serpent99]

update-

I managed to get the usb to work by using a generic usb driver package I found here. I can live with the forced hardware on the IDE controller but I really need the floppy to work. Any ideas?

Chris

[osRe]

I managed to get the usb to work by using a generic usb driver package I found here. I can live with the forced hardware on the IDE controller but I really need the floppy to work. Any ideas?

Not sure what's that conflict might be, but how about using an external USB floppy drive?

[dencorso]

Did you try to go to the Device Manager -> "Floppy Disk Controller", go to Properties -> Resources, click on "Set Configuration Manually", click on Change Settings and select a new range from the list that shows "No devices are conflicting" in the Conflict Information Box, click OK, OK, and reboot?

Were you unable to change anything because it is grayed out?

[rloew]

There's no raid drive option. While it was in Legacy mode, I right clicked on the inf file listed above and chose "install" I have no idea as to what it did. Anyway, I changed back to native mode and it hung on boot, so I booted in DOS and ran setup on the win98 install cd and it went through setup again really quickly. Now for some reason native SATA mode works with win98.

So here's where I am now-

1. My floppy drive works in DOS and surprisingly in Win98 safe mode but it won't work when I'm normally booted up. In device manager under "standard floppy disk controller" it shows a conflict with "motherboard resources" input/output range 03F0-03F5, cannot change resources in floppy or "motherboard resources"

2. System information shows the IDE controller as "forced hardware" IRQ 14, 15

3. The USB controller needs drivers. Are there any drivers that might work for this?

thanks for your patience.

Chris

This doesn't sound like "Native" Mode. "Native Mode only uses one Interrupt for both Channels.

You may be looking at the PATA Interface. The SATA controller may be in Compatability Mode and have no driver.

Edited August 25, 2010 by rloew

[serpent99]

When I try to set the resources for the floppy controller manually, it says "this resource setting cannot be modified", the same goes for the "motherboard resources" device that the floppy controller is conflicting with. I disabled the "motherboard resources" device and it made absolutely no difference. There's 2 of them listed, I only disabled the one with the conflicting I/O

As for native mode using only one interrupt, when it boots in the pci device listing, it only has one ide controller listed on irq 15.

I have more than one reason to believe the bios on this board has some issues. Advantech implies support for Win98, it seems they put all their time into refining it for Win XP and XPce. Maybe if I complain a little they'll fix the code.

I really appreciate you guys helping out.

[rloew]

When I try to set the resources for the floppy controller manually, it says "this resource setting cannot be modified", the same goes for the "motherboard resources" device that the floppy controller is conflicting with. I disabled the "motherboard resources" device and it made absolutely no difference. There's 2 of them listed, I only disabled the one with the conflicting I/O

As for native mode using only one interrupt, when it boots in the pci device listing, it only has one ide controller listed on irq 15.

I have more than one reason to believe the bios on this board has some issues. Advantech implies support for Win98, it seems they put all their time into refining it for Win XP and XPce. Maybe if I complain a little they'll fix the code.

I really appreciate you guys helping out.

Try disabling the PATA IDE Controller.

[serpent99]

Try disabling the PATA IDE Controller.

In addition to being able to set the IDE controller to legacy or native mode, the bios in this thing has options to set the PIO mode, enable UDMA and select the UDMA mode (mode 0-5) and that's about it. There's one IDE port, one SATA port and one compactflash port. The lone SATA drive shows up as the Primary Slave. When I hook a Cd drive to the lone IDE port it comes up as Secondary Master. I would guess the CF would come up as Primary Master.