[Sfor]

I do have a HP DC7100 convertible minitower computer. It does have i915 ICH6 chipset with i82801FB IO controller. The board does have 4 SATA and 1 IDE connector. The BIOS allows to set "combined" mode, in which the OS is presented with a standard Primary/Secondary dual IDE controller architecture. The Windows 98 seems to be working fine in such a situation, but it has an access to just 2 SATA channels and the IDE controller. The remaining 2 SATA channels are disabled. Since the HP/Compaq BIOS naming is quite different from other releases, I can only suspect the "combined" is equal to "compatibility" mode.

The other from the "combined" BIOS setting adds a separate SATA controller. It appears, the Windows 98 fails to boot in such a case. It could be possible to go around the problem, by using DOS compatibility mode disk access, but it does not seem to be an efficient way.

So, I would like to know, why Windows 98 behaves as it does. Also, is there a way of getting the full potential of the 4 SATA channels?

[rloew]

Sfor, on 27 March 2012 - 01:43 AM, said:

I do have a HP DC7100 convertible minitower computer. It does have i915 ICH6 chipset with i82801FB IO controller. The board does have 4 SATA and 1 IDE connector. The BIOS allows to set "combined" mode, in which the OS is presented with a standard Primary/Secondary dual IDE controller architecture. The Windows 98 seems to be working fine in such a situation, but it has an access to just 2 SATA channels and the IDE controller. The remaining 2 SATA channels are disabled. Since the HP/Compaq BIOS naming is quite different from other releases, I can only suspect the "combined" is equal to "compatibility" mode.

The other from the "combined" BIOS setting adds a separate SATA controller. It appears, the Windows 98 fails to boot in such a case. It could be possible to go around the problem, by using DOS compatibility mode disk access, but it does not seem to be an efficient way.

So, I would like to know, why Windows 98 behaves as it does. Also, is there a way of getting the full potential of the 4 SATA channels?

Windows 98 does not properly support SATA controllers that do not appear as legacy controllers. I have a Patch that adds support for Native mode SATA controllers that should allow you to use all of the channels.

[go98]

Yeah, a native SATA patch would be great...how can we get it?

[dencorso]

At RLoew's Site, of course.

[MiKl]

dencorso, on 28 March 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

At RLoew's Site, of course.

Hmmm, with this patch Win98Se would not be running in ms-dos compatibility mode ??

[dencorso]

MiKl, on 30 March 2012 - 04:51 AM, said:

dencorso, on 28 March 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

At RLoew's Site, of course.

Hmmm, with this patch Win98Se would not be running in ms-dos compatibility mode ??

Of course *not*. To run in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode no driver is needed.