Hardware Others Windows 98SE + MSI K8MM-V?

[Latiodile]

Temporary sorta solution found, SATA seems to consistently brick the system, i have to use IDE, and if i want an SSD i'll need a CF/SD to IDE adapter with this particular motherboard
i got it to boot, setup and install all the important drivers using an ancient 40gb IDE hard drive

the SATA/IDE issue is no longer my problem, now my problem is i'm not getting full graphics acceleration, i'm only getting a score of about 2000 in 3dmark 2000, and i get SEVERE input lag in some games, as well as extremely low performance, even at 480p

Spoiler: original post

i'm losing my mind, i've been at this for nearly 12 hours now, and every attempt i've had has resulted in an unbootable system. does anyone have any experience with the via k8m800 chipset, and/or preferrably experience with this particular motherboard?

the official msi drivers from their support page don't work, the 5.09A drivers that i was recommended to use on vogons results in a hang at the boot screen, or taking an extremely long time to boot, 30+ minutes

the list of symptoms i'm trying to fix are;
a phantom floppy disk that shows up despite the entire floppy controller being disabled
the performance status saying that drive A and C are using ms-dos compatability mode, and there's an overall "compatability-mode paging enabled" which is apparently causing severe performance problems
every time i install the chipset driver the pc just goes haywire, if i install the usb driver, all usb stops working
both in bios ide and raid mode, the disk fails to show up in device manager, not letting me enable DMA
the system constantly freezing up or hanging when i do something like look at an image, insert a cd or do really anything
AGP texture acceleration apparently being disabled, with no way of enabling it in the bios or windows
device manager also says the "standard dual pci ide controller" gives an error code 11 because it causes the system to hang so windows auto enabled AWD

the particular specs i have are an MSI K8MM-V with a VIA k8m800 chipset, here's the data sheet in case the specific chips it has are important it's running bios version 1.9
windows 98 is installed on a 120gb sata SSD, directly connected to the motherboard, which should be fine since the via VT8237R+ supports it, with a DVD-RW drive connected via IDE
gpu (if at all important) is an all in wonder radeon 8500DV and 512mb ram

after i'm done taking a stress nap i should boot into memtest and double check that my ram is fine, but that requires me to burn a CD for it since i don't have a floppy drive and this board can't boot from USB

 

[SylverReZ]

the particular specs i have are an MSI K8MM-V with a VIA k8m800 chipset, here's the data sheet in case the specific chips it has are important it's running bios version 1.9
windows 98 is installed on a 120gb sata SSD, directly connected to the motherboard, which should be fine since the via VT8237R+ supports it, with a DVD-RW drive connected via IDE
gpu (if at all important) is an all in wonder radeon 8500DV and 512mb ram

after i'm done taking a stress nap i should boot into memtest and double check that my ram is fine, but that requires me to burn a CD for it since i don't have a floppy drive and this board can't boot from USB

Have you ever tried changing over the SSD for something like a CF to IDE adapter? I've heard those work quite well with retro computers.

 

[Latiodile]

Have you ever tried changing over the SSD for something like a CF to IDE adapter? I've heard those work quite well with retro computers.

the only CF to IDE adapter i have is for 1.8" ZIF IDE drives and i don't have a converter for full IDE, i also have an SD to IDE adapter, but it's for laptop form IDE only, and again, no adapter

 

[tech3475]

There's a couple of different driver packages here, one specifically recommended for Win9x depending on the boards age:
http://download.viatech.com/DriverDownloadSubmitAjaxSvl

Do you have any issues with other OS's like 2000 or XP? I ask purely to isolate other potential failure points e.g. hardware failure.

There is also a newer BIOS available.

 

[Latiodile]

There's a couple of different driver packages here, one specifically recommended for Win9x depending on the boards age:
http://download.viatech.com/DriverDownloadSubmitAjaxSvl

Do you have any issues with other OS's like 2000 or XP? I ask purely to isolate other potential failure points e.g. hardware failure.

There is also a newer BIOS available.

that link leads to an empty page that just says "we are sorry there is no driver for the selected type"

i haven't tested 2000 or XP yet since i've been so dedicated on getting this to work, i've also used the official VIA drivers directly from their site and it seems to be extremely hit or miss
also according to other boards using similar chipsets, specifically an ASUS board, using the newest bios isn't always the best idea as far as compatability goes

 

[tech3475]

that link leads to an empty page that just says "we are sorry there is no driver for the selected type"

i haven't tested 2000 or XP yet since i've been so dedicated on getting this to work, i've also used the official VIA drivers directly from their site and it seems to be extremely hit or miss
also according to other boards using similar chipsets, specifically an ASUS board, using the newest bios isn't always the best idea as far as compatability goes

Just realised you updated the OP, personally, I use a SanDisk SSD via an IDE2SATA adapter which seems fine. Obviously not the best performance, but still better than the loud IDE HDD that was in there.

I had originally written this, I'll still keep it in case anyone else finds it useful:

As for the driver link, try this link, althought you just said you tried the latest driver (presume 4.35 and 5.24A) :
http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

I also wouldn't ever discount bios updates/reflashing to fix issues on old mobos, as things like bit rot can happen (experienced it first hand).

I also said to install 200/XP purely for testing purposes, because if it worked with those it suggest software issues as opposed to potential hardware ones e.g. capacitor plague.

Your topic actually reminded me of this video:

 

[Latiodile]

Just realised you updated the OP, personally, I use a SanDisk SSD via an IDE2SATA adapter which seems fine. Obviously not the best performance, but still better than the loud IDE HDD that was in there.

I had originally written this, I'll still keep it in case anyone else finds it useful:

As for the driver link, try this link, althought you just said you tried the latest driver (presume 4.35 and 5.24A) :
http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

I also wouldn't ever discount bios updates/reflashing to fix issues on old mobos, as things like bit rot can happen (experienced it first hand).

I also said to install 200/XP purely for testing purposes, because if it worked with those it suggest software issues as opposed to potential hardware ones e.g. capacitor plague.

Your topic actually reminded me of this video:

yeah i tried version 5.24A, it ended up instantly canceling saying it was "interrupted" for some reason, i've started to encounter another issue now that i've got things set up, and that's that for some reason performance is severely lacking, like, i'm getting only like 5fps in stuff like midtown madness and gta 3 at 480p, with awful terrible grainy picture quality, sadly it's absolutely impossible to figure out though thanks to modern google being completely useless and nobody benchmarks old games on old cards for some reason, i doubt the radeon 8500 should be running this poorly

if i had another IDE hard drive and enough patience i'd try XP but i'm so burned out from constant problems in this project over the past 24 hours that i put it to the side for now, i'm especially bummed to find out that like most of my AGP graphics cards are dead as well, including a backup radeon 9250 and the geforce mx400 i wanted to use

i flashed the bios to 1.A to see if it solved the performance problems, there was no difference

 

[tech3475]

yeah i tried version 5.24A, it ended up instantly canceling saying it was "interrupted" for some reason, i've started to encounter another issue now that i've got things set up, and that's that for some reason performance is severely lacking, like, i'm getting only like 5fps in stuff like midtown madness and gta 3 at 480p, with awful terrible grainy picture quality, sadly it's absolutely impossible to figure out though thanks to modern google being completely useless and nobody benchmarks old games on old cards for some reason, i doubt the radeon 8500 should be running this poorly

if i had another IDE hard drive and enough patience i'd try XP but i'm so burned out from constant problems in this project over the past 24 hours that i put it to the side for now, i'm especially bummed to find out that like most of my AGP graphics cards are dead as well, including a backup radeon 9250 and the geforce mx400 i wanted to use

i flashed the bios to 1.A to see if it solved the performance problems, there was no difference

I'd check the capacitors, I've had three AGP GPUs of early to mid 2000s vintage suffer from 'capacitor plague'.

One time at school even nearly an entire room had faulty motherboards due to this issue.

 

[Latiodile]

I'd check the capacitors, I've had three AGP GPUs of early to mid 2000s vintage suffer from 'capacitor plague'.

One time at school even nearly an entire room had faulty motherboards due to this issue.

I'll have to look into it, but at first glance they seem fine.... sadly the MX400 is all SMD caps so those are far less fun

 

[Magsor]

May I ask why you want to run win98? Win XP will run much better on your hardware an it does everything 98 can do.

 

[Latiodile]

May I ask why you want to run win98? Win XP will run much better on your hardware an it does everything 98 can do.

xp in fact cannot do everything i want it to do

example:

this is one of many games i have that have either completely broken graphics, or do not launch at all on XP, this (separate) PC can run crysis and skyrim just fine so it's not the hardware lol

 

[SylverReZ]

View attachment 415303

Nice polygons.

 

[Magsor]

What game is this please? ill try to run it in dosbox that would be my last resort. There is no proof it would work with your setup on win98. Back in the day a lot of games were made for the 3dfx voodoo2 specifically. That is why you can also use glide wrapper in windows XP or more modern windows. Also you can consider installing linux and with wine(proton?) I think a lot of these old games work nicely but I am not a linux user.

 

[Latiodile]

What game is this please? ill try to run it in dosbox that would be my last resort. There is no proof it would work with your setup on win98. Back in the day a lot of games were made for the 3dfx voodoo2 specifically. That is why you can also use glide wrapper in windows XP or more modern windows. Also you can consider installing linux and with wine(proton?) I think a lot of these old games work nicely but I am not a linux user.

"speed busters" it's a fairly obscure game, it's not a 3dfx game, and neither are most of the others i intend on playing
but a couple of others that don't run properly on XP are streets of simcity, an extremely obscure game called "muscle car 76" and nascar 1999 edition, the pc port of sonic CD and sonic 3 (i know there's "fixed" versions of these but i want to mess around with the original versions), among a bunch of other "game compilation" discs
if i were to try to fix a game to get it to run on modern pc's it'd defeat the purpose of wanting an old pc, why even have a windows xp pc at that point?
i've also had absolutely horrible luck getting any older games to work on proton/wine, it's like it's more suited for newer games than super old ones, and glide has far too mixed compatibility for my liking

 

[Dungeonseeker]

Haven't tested it myself but https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2020/04/windows-9598me-sataachi-driver.html

Post automatically merged: Jan 21, 2024

i've also had absolutely horrible luck getting any older games to work on proton/wine, it's like it's more suited for newer games than super old ones

Yes this is true but most problems are fixable with enough time and effort and TBF its not exactly the fault of WINE, games from this era had all sorts of bundled libraries and extensions to do things that DX could already do and in those cases you have to manually track down the redistributable/dll and install it into the prefix manually. Honestly though, its not worth the time and effort to fix WINE when even my laptop with 86Box can emulate a Pentium Pro 200 MMX ODP with a Voodoo 3 which is perfect for 95 to 99ish era games. Also fun fact, some crazy lunatic has written a full 3d acceleration stack for QEMU that works with 95/98/ME and from my testing it works great.... except for the times it doesn't. Its pretty hit or miss, you can choose between 3DFX/OGL/DX8/DX9 when launching games but for a good chunk of games it just doesn't work. It is still a WIP though and its cool that it even exists at all.

 

[Latiodile]

Yes this is true but most problems are fixable with enough time and effort and TBF its not exactly the fault of WINE, games from this era had all sorts of bundled libraries and extensions to do things that DX could already do and in those cases you have to manually track down the redistributable/dll and install it into the prefix manually. Honestly though, its not worth the time and effort to fix WINE when even my laptop with 86Box can emulate a Pentium Pro 200 MMX ODP with a Voodoo 3 which is perfect for 95 to 99ish era games. Also fun fact, some crazy lunatic has written a full 3d acceleration stack for QEMU that works with 95/98/ME and from my testing it works great.... except for the times it doesn't. Its pretty hit or miss, you can choose between 3DFX/OGL/DX8/DX9 when launching games but for a good chunk of games it just doesn't work. It is still a WIP though and its cool that it even exists at all.

messing with wine prefixes and fixing API dependencies doesn't sound like a fun time, especially coming off the back of dealing with windows 98's infamous instability
i remember trying to mess around with lutris to install midtown madness, it crashed lutris so hard it ended up softlocking the entire system

the games i'm trying to play are from that weird 1997-1999 era where it was after 3dfx and there were other 3d accelerators around but still incompatible with XP because of... incompetent devs i guess idk, stuff too new to run on something like a pentium MMX or anything 86box/PCem can provide. Debating wether or not i should use ME since i really don't need the dos support