Driver Issues: Windows 98 SE

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freeman725

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Feb 7, 2014
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I'm having major driver issues with trying to get this windows 98 retro gaming box up and running. It's an eMachines w3400 that I slapped together with spare parts. Specs are:

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 754
Some rebranded MSI Motherboard with an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 NB Chipset and the SB400 to the south.
1 GB Geil DDR 400 Ram

The main thing I'm having problems with is the PCI Bus subsystem. I'm guessing this has something to do with installing the southbridge drivers (which fail to install with some kind of failure to write a dll file to the temp directory that the installer auto creates) but I'm not sure. All I know is it's causing my components not to work and all kinds of IRQ conflicts.

I did manage to get it connected to the internet hoping for some reason that windows update might work. Of course it doesn't. I've tried numerous original and 3rd party drivers to try and get this thing up to snuff to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
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ex_bubblehead

ex_bubblehead

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Aug 24, 2012
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....I did manage to get it connected to the internet hoping for some reason that windows update might work. Of course it doesn't....
Click to expand...
Microsoft turned the v4 servers (serving updates for 95, 98, ME, 2000) off 2 or so years ago, so unless you've got the updates backed up somewhere, you're SOL in that department.

Nothing prior to XP was ever supported on that system, good luck finding drivers of any kind.
 
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freeman725

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Feb 7, 2014
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I've actually found a lot. Lot's of people have made unofficial service packs for 98. I've found all the drivers I need except for the PCI Bus system. I've come to find out that it's handled by the northbridge. The drivers I have for the north bridge chip are old catalyst drivers (version 6.x) but it only seems to install the driver for the onboard video which isn't helping me.
 
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freeman725

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Feb 7, 2014
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Well, the problem with that is the old catalyst drivers are a self installer and the southbridge drivers have nothing as far as the PCI Bus subsystem. I was kinda hoping someone could do some better detective work than me. As it is it's been a two day affair now and I'm running out of ideas.

It seems that under XP the os would detect and automatically install drivers for those components, but, under 98 the northbridge drivers will only install the software for the onboard video and nothing else.
 
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freeman725

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Feb 7, 2014
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Thanks for the info. The WDM Driver package is for tv tuner cards. I seem to have made some sort of a breakthrough on the southbridge drivers. Instead of it erroring out on hardware detection, it actually gets to the point on installing the smbus driver but then it says the install cant continue and to restart the computer. Any ideas?

It seems that there are irq conflicts going on. Right now all the basic windows drivers are installed for the ide controller and sata controller. Can't get 98 to accept the ati drivers for some reason. I'm going to remove the wireless card (wont work in 98 anyway) and see if I can free up some irq's.
 
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freeman725

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Feb 7, 2014
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I've pretty much decided to hold off on this until I can raise the funds to build a native x86 based computer. I have my eye on a GeForce 2 GTS 32 Mb a Tualatin 1.4 GHz and an Intel 815 based motherboard. I think that should suffice.
 
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