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How to install Windows 98SE or ME on Dell Latitude D600


FantasyAcquiesce

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1 hour ago, ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ said:

I quickly determined it by looking here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude#D-Family

Ah, it looks like I made another mistake (darn it, I'm on a streak of mistakes). Didn't check closely enough if the D410's video driver was 98 friendly...
Actually there are drivers for the 900 series (910, 915, and 925) if I'm not mistaking https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/14713/Chipset-INF-Update-Utility-for-848-865-875-910-915-925-Chipset-Based-Intel-Desktop-Boards
Correct me if I'm wrong

As previously stated - There is NO Intel chipset support for the 900 series in Windows 98. None. You can download Intel drivers that say they do, but the .inf doesn't have the correct instructions, and the .cab files are invalid.

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3 hours ago, Dellfan said:

As previously stated - There is NO Intel chipset support for the 900 series in Windows 98. None. You can download Intel drivers that say they do, but the .inf doesn't have the correct instructions, and the .cab files are invalid.

Just what "instructions" does the 915 INF not have that, say, the 865 ones do? Intel's chipset drivers are essentially a set of glorified text files that only give proper names to their respective onboard devices. An OS can run just fine without these in any case. I don't remember anything being different about the 915 INF when I made my unofficial INF drivers for 9xx and later chipsets.

You are correct however that the download linked by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ does not support Windows 9x at all. This is a mistake made by Intel, either inadvertently or purposely. The last 9x compatible version is 6.3.0.1007 here. It does contain a 915 INF but 925 is not covered. Not sure about 910.

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15 hours ago, LoneCrusader said:

Just what "instructions" does the 915 INF not have that, say, the 865 ones do? Intel's chipset drivers are essentially a set of glorified text files that only give proper names to their respective onboard devices. An OS can run just fine without these in any case. I don't remember anything being different about the 915 INF when I made my unofficial INF drivers for 9xx and later chipsets.

You are correct however that the download linked by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ does not support Windows 9x at all. This is a mistake made by Intel, either inadvertently or purposely. The last 9x compatible version is 6.3.0.1007 here. It does contain a 915 INF but 925 is not covered. Not sure about 910.

The security catalogs in the Win98 folder for the 915 are not recognized as such (invalid), and the chipsets are not updated when installed. I've tried these .inf on some Dells like the D610, and I couldn't get the USB to work the way it was suppose to, among other things, even with the Unofficial Universal USB 2.0 Stack installed. I would welcome a chance to try the ones you've modified. :) It would be very cool to get the D610 working with Windows 98!

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1 hour ago, Dellfan said:

The security catalogs in the Win98 folder for the 915 are not recognized as such (invalid), and the chipsets are not updated when installed. I've tried these .inf on some Dells like the D610, and I couldn't get the USB to work the way it was suppose to, among other things, even with the Unofficial Universal USB 2.0 Stack installed. I would welcome a chance to try the ones you've modified. :) It would be very cool to get the D610 working with Windows 98!

I've never tried to actually run the installer on a 915 chipset system so I'm not familiar with the behavior there. I know it works on the 875 chipset despite it not being specifically named 9x compatible (although the 875 is not much different from the 865, which is named-supported).

You could try running the SETUP or extracting it to a folder and then manually use the 98SE Device Manager to update the driver for the "System Management BUS Controller"; pointing the driver dialog to ICH6CORE.INF and see what happens. 915.INF and 915M.INF will contain some of the devices as well.

The security catalogs are pretty useless in all honesty. Probably all they would do in this case is verify the checksum of the INF file against the original one created by Intel. These are also unnecessary to make an OS run on a given set of hardware. Having a "working" chipset driver does not guarantee that the OS will run any smoother. In my experience Windows 98SE starts to have problems with ICH6 (9xx) and later chipsets when trying to run using ACPI. Usually it is necessary to run SETUP using the "/p i" switches to disable ACPI and thus prevent various instabilities. It is possible the USB problems you saw were caused by ACPI as I have seen this on newer systems.

I have an HP ZD8000 laptop which uses the 915 chipset as well. I have had issues getting 9x to run properly on it but the main problem is the ATI Mobility Radeon X600 graphics chip rather than the motherboard chipset.

In any case my unofficial Windows 98SE chipset drivers for 9xx and later Intel systems are here.

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1 hour ago, dencorso said:

If you comment out or delete the line referring to the .cat in the .inf, then the driver ought to install.

There is no .inf file in the exe file LoneCrusader indicated. So we are back to my original statement. Would love to hear from someone who has made Windows 98 work fully on Intel 915GM. I have read posts on different forums going back more than 10 years, hasn't been done.

Edited by Dellfan
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1 hour ago, LoneCrusader said:

I've never tried to actually run the installer on a 915 chipset system so I'm not familiar with the behavior there. I know it works on the 875 chipset despite it not being specifically named 9x compatible (although the 875 is not much different from the 865, which is named-supported).

You could try running the SETUP or extracting it to a folder and then manually use the 98SE Device Manager to update the driver for the "System Management BUS Controller"; pointing the driver dialog to ICH6CORE.INF and see what happens. 915.INF and 915M.INF will contain some of the devices as well.

The security catalogs are pretty useless in all honesty. Probably all they would do in this case is verify the checksum of the INF file against the original one created by Intel. These are also unnecessary to make an OS run on a given set of hardware. Having a "working" chipset driver does not guarantee that the OS will run any smoother. In my experience Windows 98SE starts to have problems with ICH6 (9xx) and later chipsets when trying to run using ACPI. Usually it is necessary to run SETUP using the "/p i" switches to disable ACPI and thus prevent various instabilities. It is possible the USB problems you saw were caused by ACPI as I have seen this on newer systems.

I have an HP ZD8000 laptop which uses the 915 chipset as well. I have had issues getting 9x to run properly on it but the main problem is the ATI Mobility Radeon X600 graphics chip rather than the motherboard chipset.

In any case my unofficial Windows 98SE chipset drivers for 9xx and later Intel systems are here.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/radeonaiw-98me has the Windows 98 drivers for ATI Mobility Radeon X600.

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4 hours ago, Dellfan said:

There is no .inf file in the exe file LoneCrusader indicated. So we are back to my original statement. Would love to hear from someone who has made Windows 98 work fully on Intel 915GM. I have read posts on different forums going back more than 10 years, hasn't been done.

:huh:

Are you sure you know what you're doing? Of course there are INF files in the package! You can't just play around looking at the file with 7-Zip or whatever, you have to run it to extract them. Examine the "Command Line Flag Options" in the README if you need a command to extract it without installing it. :rolleyes:

3 hours ago, Dellfan said:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/radeonaiw-98me has the Windows 98 drivers for ATI Mobility Radeon X600.

No. Those Catalyst drivers support standard X600 devices, not Mobility X600 devices. There is a difference. They have been reported to work with Mobility devices in a couple of cases but these reports are isolated and not regularly reproducible.

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1 hour ago, Dellfan said:

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Nice. Thought we were sharing information. Good day.

You are the one who came in here acting as if you knew more about the subject than anyone else. If you have supposedly tried to get the package working then it is assumed that you have actually run it or know how to extract it properly. Apparently not, based on your statements.

On Monday, January 02, 2017 at 9:42 PM, Dellfan said:

As previously stated - There is NO Intel chipset support for the 900 series in Windows 98. None.

This is simply false, yet you were quite adamant about it. The support may be limited but it does exist.

8 hours ago, Dellfan said:

There is no .inf file in the exe file LoneCrusader indicated.

Another obviously false statement. If there were no INF files in the package it wouldn't work for any of the 8xx series chipsets either!

8 hours ago, Dellfan said:

So we are back to my original statement.

This. Again, acting as if you know more about the subject than those who are trying to help you.

I apologize if you were offended, but implying that I don't know what I am talking about when I try to give you information or implying that I am purposely misleading you is not very polite either.

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Well I'm sorry if you thought I was implying anything other than what was stated. I did not state that you don't know what you are talking about, nor did I say anything about being mislead. Don't know where you got that from, but neither was I the first who got snarky. Maybe you thought I was talking about your modded files. I was not. Perhaps you are used to replying only to comments taken out of context. Not trying to start a flame war here. Yes, I have run these files, and I have folders with the extracted files. I was strictly referring to the 900 series files, not the 800 series. The 900 series were the ONLY files I referred to. I am looking for files with enough support to provide a fully working Windows 98 system under Intel 900 series chipsets. I still stand by my previous statement - Would love to hear from someone who has made Windows 98 work fully on Intel 915GM. I have read posts on different forums going back more than 10 years, hasn't been done. I've read those who have used Scitech drivers, virtual machines, etc. generally with follow-up posts about how much WASN'T working after the fact. People been working on these issues since the time when Windows 98 was STILL being supported by Microsoft. I guess that since even with your modded drivers that you're not seeing 100% success, it ain't gonna happen. Maybe I'll just set up these Dell D610s I have as Linux machines or Hackintoshes. Thanks for your input.

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Most of the issues with 98 on a 915 or later chipset can't be fixed or helped by just having INF files. As I said the INF files only give proper names to the "generic" devices already installed by the OS during SETUP. Sometimes they will eliminate unknown devices such as "PCI System Management Bus" but all the INF does is give it a name - it doesn't load any files or set any configuration data for the device. Note that no .SYS, .VXD, .PDR, .MPD, or other actual "driver" files are contained in any of the Intel chipset packages. The only device in these INF's that actually causes a file to be loaded is the "LPC Controller" which is a legacy bridge providing compatibility with older BUS'es such as ISA. The LPC Controller entries cause ISAPNP.VXD to be loaded, but this file is already present and loaded to begin with.

The real "compatibility" issue with 9xx and later chipsets under Windows 9x lies in how the motherboard BIOS is set up; what options it has and how it manages the system. For example I have an Intel-branded Intel-BIOS 965 chipset board that has some issues when trying to run 9x. However a Gigabyte-branded AWARD-BIOS 965 chipset board works fine. Now as we both know laptop BIOS'es are always "proprietary" as intended by their manufacturers and usually severely limit the options available to the end-user, this presents a problem when one wants to use the laptop in any fashion different from the one intended by the manufacturer. These proprietary BIOS'es tend to cause various conflicts, especially when running Windows 98 with ACPI enabled. Also, a big hurdle to compatibility with laptops using the 915 and later chipsets is the various other integrated devices. The ATI Mobility Radeon graphics chips are obviously problematic in some configurations (I've seen reports of the Dell version of this chip working with 9x but the HP version in my ZD8000 does not. It won't even work with VBE9X.) and I don't know if any available NVidia-based Mobile cards work any better, and in any case they are usually not user-replaceable. I believe I have actually found 9x drivers (not tested them all yet) for every single device in my ZD8000 except the video. SciTech Display Doctor does work on it, but I can't set the screen's native resolution of 1440x900 without it trying to go into some kind of "panning" mode, and when SDD is installed it breaks Plug & Play which means USB Flash Drives don't work when connected. Anyone who knows how to fix this problem with SDD please chime in...

I have attached the 915 Chipset/ICH6 files extracted from the package I linked previously. This is the extent of Intel's support of the 915 Chipset under 98SE/ME. My unofficial INF's can be used to identify any other 9xx devices on the 915 laptops should they not be covered by the official files.

ICH6INF.ZIP

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