[petekeller]

I only asked for clarification because his statement seemed open ended. Thanks for the response Rloew. I'm slowly planning a new computer
but I'm not sure what OS's will end up on it. I'll try 98SE and 2K and see how much I can get out of them. My fallback OS is XP. My current
motherboard (ASUS P4S800D-X) supports SATA-1 and as a boot drive, but I don't use it. The advantages seem small compared to the disruption
it would cause with my existing setup. SATA-2 and SATA-3 would offer considerable advantages, as would USB3.

Oops. Forgot to ask RLoew. Last night I searched this forum for your comments on testing of video card with 512 MB memory on Win98.
I didn't come up with anything. What did you determine?

This post has been edited by petekeller: 23 April 2011 - 09:52 AM

[Multibooter]

wsxedcrfv, on 23 April 2011 - 07:26 AM, said:

SATA-2 expansion cards only come (I believe) as PCIe cards (not sure which type - x1 or x4)... and hence the usefulness of trying to find a solution to SATA-2 functionality for win-98 is limited to a very small audience.

Not sure. I have been using the Vantec eSATA II-150 2Port Cardbus card UGT-ST350CB in one of the PCMCIA slots in my 11-year-old Inspiron 7500 laptop for over a year. An 11-year-old laptop with eSATA under Win98 and WinXP! The Win98SE driver is not on the accompanying CD, but can be downloaded from www.vantecusa.com

I am not sure whether the card is really SATA II. The box states SATA II-150, but under "Features" the box states "Transfer Rates Up to 1500 Mbps (150 MB/s)". Are there any tools to clear up whether it's really SATA II and what the actual transfer rate is?

In any case, the card is great, I have bought 4 of them. Working with external HDDs inside my Thermaltake enclosures and Kingwin EZ-Dock EZD-2535 docking stations is substantially faster when they are connected via eSATA cables to the Vantec card than when they are connected via USB cables to a USB 2.0 cardbus card.

Eventually I will get for my dual-core desktop a PCI to Cardbus PCMCIA adapter card, so that I can use the Vantec eSATA and other Cardbus/PCMCIA cards (e.g. my old SCSI PCMCIA card, etc) on my desktop. Any recommendations for Win98-compatible PCI to Cardbus PCMCIA adapter cards with 2 (or 4?) Cardbus/PCMCIA slots? The ASUS P5PE-VM motherboard inside my dual-core desktop has one major limitation: it has only 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot. Maybe my desktop can use more cards in this way.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 23 April 2011 - 10:33 AM

[rloew]

wsxedcrfv, on 23 April 2011 - 07:26 AM, said:

rloew, on 22 April 2011 - 11:12 PM, said:

So far I have used SATA 1.0 and 2.0 Controllers and Drives without problems. The only SATA 3.0 Card I have has an AHCI only Controller, which cannot be used with Windows 9x.

When it comes to PCI SATA cards, I think they will always be SATA-1, and (for the moment) if you stick with a 2-port SATA card for a win-98 system then it will work fine with the drivers that are publicly available. (my 4-port PCI sata controller does work under win-98, but only in PIO mode - not DMA/UDMA mode - I'm still working on fixing that).

The Rocket RAID 1720 claims to be a SATA 2 PCI Card.
My Patch should be able to handle your 4-Port SATA Controller properly.

Quote

SATA-2 expansion cards only come (I believe) as PCIe cards (not sure which type - x1 or x4). Perhaps Rlowe can elaborate on the win-98 driver situation for those types of buses. I would think that the vast majority of single-OS win-98 computers operated by msfn members do not have the shorter PCIe slots (assuming they have any PCIe slots in the first place) and hence the usefulness of trying to find a solution to SATA-2 functionality for win-98 is limited to a very small audience.

My Patch supports the JMicron PCI-E SATA 2 Cards I have tested. A short PCI-E Slot is not needed, you can put an X1 or X4 in a long slot.
As older motherboards get harder to find a greater percentage of Windows 9x users will want solutions.

Quote

I would also think that any motherboard that has the shorter PCIe slots (x1 and x4 slot types) would also have on-board SATA-2 controller. Perhaps Rlowe is saying that he has gotten those on-board SATA-2 controllers to work under win-98. If so - have they been verified to operate in DMA / UDMA mode under win-98?

Yes and Yes.
The Computer I am writing this on has both sizes of PCI-E Slots and Motherboard Based SATA 2 Controllers. It is currently running on 4 2TB SATA Hard Drives.

Quote

SATA-3 support under win-98 is even more a non-issue. SATA-3 probably has to be integrated as part of the motherboard (are there any SATA-3 PCIe cards?). Anyone with a SATA-3 motherboard trying to run windows 98 on it probably has bigger issues to overcome - like basic chipset driver support.

The Rocket 620 PCI-E SATA 3 is or was included with the Western Digital 3TB Hard Drives.
Unfortunately, they used an AHCI only Controller. This causes Windows 9x to crash before any driver can be installed, so even Compatability Mode doesn't work.

This post has been edited by rloew: 23 April 2011 - 02:49 PM

[dencorso]

The complete catalog of RLoew's patches and related products is available here.
Among them, in the Prerelease and Beta Softwre, is the freeware CDFS patch to make Win 9x show the correct size for DVDs, which I consider precious.

@ RLoew: BTW, what about SATA CD/DVD drives? Does Win 9x/ME support them natively? Is a patch needed? Did you test any?

[rloew]

dencorso, on 23 April 2011 - 05:32 PM, said:

@ RLoew: BTW, what about SATA CD/DVD drives? Does Win 9x/ME support them natively? Is a patch needed? Did you test any?

Windows 9x supports SATA CD/DVD drives in the same way it supports SATA Hard Drives. My Patch is needed under the same circumstances.
Add-on Card Firmware and/or Third Party Software may or may not support CD/DVD Drives.
I just tested my JMicron PCI-E SATA 2 Card with my Patch and it works.

[LoneCrusader]

dencorso, on 23 April 2011 - 05:32 PM, said:

@ RLoew: BTW, what about SATA CD/DVD drives? Does Win 9x/ME support them natively? Is a patch needed? Did you test any?

rloew, on 23 April 2011 - 06:59 PM, said:

Windows 9x supports SATA CD/DVD drives in the same way it supports SATA Hard Drives. My Patch is needed under the same circumstances.

To further this discussion, have you tested any Blu-Ray drives? Since the subject was broached back in my Bootable DVD thread, I have considered experimenting with Blu-Ray drives and Windows 98. I first searched for IDE Blu-Ray drives, and some do exist, but they seem to be extremely rare. So, I decided that I would probably have to use a SATA drive with a SATA to IDE adapter or the SATA patch, depending on the system. I recently purchased one of these drives, but I have not had any time to devote to experimenting or my projects lately.

[rloew]

LoneCrusader, on 24 April 2011 - 12:09 PM, said:

dencorso, on 23 April 2011 - 05:32 PM, said:

@ RLoew: BTW, what about SATA CD/DVD drives? Does Win 9x/ME support them natively? Is a patch needed? Did you test any?

rloew, on 23 April 2011 - 06:59 PM, said:

Windows 9x supports SATA CD/DVD drives in the same way it supports SATA Hard Drives. My Patch is needed under the same circumstances.

To further this discussion, have you tested any Blu-Ray drives? Since the subject was broached back in my Bootable DVD thread, I have considered experimenting with Blu-Ray drives and Windows 98. I first searched for IDE Blu-Ray drives, and some do exist, but they seem to be extremely rare. So, I decided that I would probably have to use a SATA drive with a SATA to IDE adapter or the SATA patch, depending on the system. I recently purchased one of these drives, but I have not had any time to devote to experimenting or my projects lately.

I have a SATA Blu-Ray Writer in my Main Computer. It is connected to SATA Port 5 so it is interfaced through the Second Legacy Port (170H) not the Native Mode SATA Controller. It behaves like any CD or DVD Drive. I haven't tested the Blu-Ray functions yet.