Re: New PC doesn't like Win98

John B Smith wrote:
When I graduated to XPpro, circa 2002?, I found that my flatbed
scanner wouldn't work. My solution was to make a small Win98 partition
on my 2nd hard drive and select to boot from that one when I wanted to
use my scanner. Sometimes if got cranky and some guru advised me to
changed the <vcache> section of system.ini to
MaxFile Cache = 512000
I forget what the value originally was. The fix worked like a charm on
my MSI mb with a P4 cpu.
New machine is an Abit IP35 Pro XE with an E8400 cpu. I hoped to do
the same Win98 deal. I imaged the Win98 partition onto the boot
partion of the 2nd hard drive. When booted it stopped, complained
about "insufficient memory to initialize Windows" (machine has 4gig
RAM) While I was copying down the verbage of the message the pc
shutdown. I guess memory or cpu was hanging in a loop and getting too
hot? I tried increasing that MaxFile Cache value again, but no help. I
think DOS may only be able to handle 512000 anyway, and DOS is still
in control of boot at that point (maybe). Anyway... anyone have any
experience with trying to use Win98 on a hot new pc? I'm also a little
suspicious of my use of a disk image, rather than trying to install
Win98 all over again on the new partition, which is kind of a pain.

Win98 has two setting for dealing with memory problems, in system.ini.
MaxPhysPage=20000 would snip the excess physical memory, from the
view of Win98. The number is hexidecimal for that one, and the 20000
value equates to 512MB. The Vcache/Maxfilecache is the second one that
people are more familiar with.

MaxPhysPage comes in handy, when more than 1GB of physical memory is present.

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus/msg/d12aea8b57ce5c06?dmode=source

In addition, with the Intel chipset, you would likely need to go into
the BIOS, and set the Southbridge ports to a Legacy or Compatible
mode, in order to boot from them. That mode causes the disk
interfaces to show up in the I/O space (rather than PCI space) and
use IRQ14 and IRQ15. Only four disks on the Southbridge, could
be used that way. Depending on how you install WinXP, it may mean
having to visit the BIOS over and over again (switching from
Native to Compatible, or whatever term Abit uses for those
modes).

(PDF page 11, capsule summary of what Intel does. Win98 only has
a driver for Legacy mode)

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/manuals/252671.htm

Paul
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: New PC doesnt like Win98
    ... scanner wouldn't work. ... My solution was to make a small Win98 partition ... I imaged the Win98 partition onto the boot ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: New PC doesnt like Win98
    ... scanner wouldn't work. ... My solution was to make a small Win98 partition ... I imaged the Win98 partition onto the boot ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: New PC doesnt like Win98
    ... scanner wouldn't work. ... My solution was to make a small Win98 partition ... I imaged the Win98 partition onto the boot ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: New PC doesnt like Win98
    ... scanner wouldn't work. ... My solution was to make a small Win98 partition ... I imaged the Win98 partition onto the boot ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)