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eSATA Card Drivers for Windows 98


Dave-H

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M$ are really desperate to bury Win9x and everything related to it. Think for a second: why is there no Windows 9? Why did they jump from 8.x to 10?

I'm sure that MS doesn't feel any need to bury 9x any deeper than it already is. I'm sure that MS feels that it *already has* buried 9x about as deep as it can go at least 8 years ago.

Regarding the jump from win-8 to win-10, the best speculation so far (and this comes from someone inside MS) is that there is a lot of software that looks at OS version string and if it sees "9" then it immediately assumes Windows 95 or 98.

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I'm sure that MS doesn't feel any need to bury 9x any deeper than it already is. I'm sure that MS feels that it *already has* buried 9x about as deep as it can go at least 8 years ago.

Regarding the jump from win-8 to win-10, the best speculation so far (and this comes from someone inside MS) is that there is a lot of software that looks at OS version string and if it sees "9" then it immediately assumes Windows 95 or 98.

 

Well, someone inside M$ should know, not speculate.  :angel  But then again we, from the outside, might see things as they are, not as someone - even on the inside - would be told to. ;)

 

As for the burial, maybe M$ are afraid of ghosts... because sometimes they rise and haunt the bad people... :whistle:

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Getting back on topic, I forgot to ask about something else.

 

One good thing about having a SATA card which works in Windows 98 is the fact that I thought that potentially I could use a SATA SSD to replace my old SCSI system drive.

 

I already have a couple of NTFS SSDs in the system, used for Windows 8.1.

They are connected to the SATA connectors on the motherboard, which Windows 98 can't see as there are no AHCI drivers for Windows 98.

 

There is an internal SATA connection on the new PCI card though, which Windows 98 should be able to see.

Unfortunately, when I got the card and read the documentation, above the Windows 98 install instructions it says -

 

"SATA drives attached to the SATA/eSATA PCI Host Controller can not be used as boot drives for Windows 98/98SE/ME."

 

Why would this be, is it because Windows 98 won't be able to see the drive until Windows has already started?

 

I did try booting into DOS while a NTFS drive was connected to the eSATA connector, and was surprised to find that fdisk appeared to see it, because it queried that it was an NTFS drive.

I couldn't get it to display any partition information at all, because as soon as I tried to select a drive the program hung.

 

The drive certainly appears in the BIOS, so is there any fundamental reason why DOS (and therefore Windows 98) shouldn't be able to see it on startup and boot from it?

:)

 

 

 

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If you have a SATA drive that you can temporarily copy any existing data to somewhere safe, I suppose you can format it as FAT or FAT32 and see if DOS can read and write to it.  If so, then, if you can select that drive as a boot source and you are able to copy a bootable DOS source to it, see what happens.  If you are able to boot to DOS using the drive then I would think you could install Win 98 to it as well.

 

Sometimes it is faster to answer a question by just trying it.

 

Cheers and Regards

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There are two kinds of possible "issues".

  1. the BIOS (and consequently the DOS) may not be able to "see" the SATA disk connected through the card
  2. the Windows 9x/Me (please read the underlying DOS) CANNOT boot from *anything* but active partition of first disk

 

So, if the BIOS can overcome the #1, it is possible that you will need *something else* (like grub4dos) to remap drives in order to evercome the #2 or you will need to have anyway the DOS boot from the internal disk and have the Windows 9x/Me installed to another volume (on the SATA card connected device).

 

jaclaz

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The BIOS sees the hard drive connected to the eSATA port OK on boot, it gives a readout of the device parameters.

I'm sure it would do the same with a drive connected to the internal SATA port.

I'm getting a new 1TB drive tomorrow, so I might try formatting it temporarily as FAT32 and see if DOS and fdisk can see it.

:)

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Getting back on topic, I forgot to ask about something else.

One good thing about having a SATA card which works in Windows 98 is the fact that I thought that potentially I could use a SATA SSD to replace my old SCSI system drive.

I already have a couple of NTFS SSDs in the system, used for Windows 8.1.

They are connected to the SATA connectors on the motherboard, which Windows 98 can't see as there are no AHCI drivers for Windows 98.

There is an internal SATA connection on the new PCI card though, which Windows 98 should be able to see.

Unfortunately, when I got the card and read the documentation, above the Windows 98 install instructions it says -

"SATA drives attached to the SATA/eSATA PCI Host Controller can not be used as boot drives for Windows 98/98SE/ME."

Why would this be, is it because Windows 98 won't be able to see the drive until Windows has already started?

I did try booting into DOS while a NTFS drive was connected to the eSATA connector, and was surprised to find that fdisk appeared to see it, because it queried that it was an NTFS drive.

I couldn't get it to display any partition information at all, because as soon as I tried to select a drive the program hung.

The drive certainly appears in the BIOS, so is there any fundamental reason why DOS (and therefore Windows 98) shouldn't be able to see it on startup and boot from it?

:)

I see little reason to think that you cannot boot from the Card. It is possible that their Driver has a limitation but mine doesn't. I would give it a try. I have seen only two Cards that cannot. One was AHCI only. The other was RAID only.

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