Originally posted by: tmbsundar
Pls suggest me if it is worth the effort to get the gcdrom.sys and all that needed to make it work...Since my aim is stability of SW in the client's place...I am confused now if going with Win 98 might be riskier than XP in this new PC?
Its very unlikely that DOS drivers for the DVD drive will be your only significant hurdle to running 9x on this hardware.
Your best bet for a "new" (and available) motherboard would be VIA chipset such as PT880 Pro/Ultra, P4M800 Pro, P4M890, P4M900, K8M800, and K8M890. ASRock has this VIA PT880 Pro/Ultra board that is excellent for builds with legacy needs:
<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4CoreDual-SATA2">4CoreDual-SATA2
</a>
Also, its predecessor only differs in the Southbridge used (VT8237A v. VT8237S):
4CoreDual-VSTA
Both received BIOS updates as recently as March 2008, though probably will receive a final BIOS soon (if not already). When used with more mature hardware (i.e. not the latest generation), both boards are very stable.
VIA has recent 98/ME drivers for the core chipset functionality; AGP, SATA, IDE/ATA, LAN, and USB. Drivers will be lacking for HD Audio and PCI Express interface, which I suspect you don't care much about, anyway. And of course, 98SE can't support dual or quad core processors. Everything else is supported by 98SE and relevant updates/patches from MS, which you can obtain in
one stand-alone update developed by a third-party.
The only caveat for SATA is that you may need to set the SATA controller in BIOS to RAID mode to install 98SE, even if not using RAID. You can still setup non-RAID disks through the RAID BIOS, but I'm not certain of the procedure. If not using SATA drives, then its a non-issue.
As for other VIA chipsets mentioned, there may be additional limitations to consider:
-P4M800 Pro and K8M800 support AGP 8x/4x interface for graphics cards and 98/ME drivers are also available for the IGP in both chipsets.
-K8M890 and P4M890 do
not support AGP cards, leaving only conventional PCI video cards or the IGP as viable options for 98/ME (VIA has 98/ME drivers for P4M890 and K8M890 IGP).
-P4M900 does not support AGP and does
not have 98/ME drivers for the P4M900 IGP, leaving conventional PCI video card as the only option there.
However, since all use the same Southbridge(s) as the ASRock PT880 board, 98/ME drivers for integrated SATA, IDE/ATA, LAN, and USB are available from VIA (unless the device is provided by another chip vendor such as Realtek).
Depending on availability in your region, other "new" options could be:
PC CHIPS M848A V5.0 Socket A/462 SiS 746FX ATX (I've used a few of these with no problems)
ASRock K8S8X Socket 754 SIS 755 ATX
You might be able to find the
ECS 755-A2 (a.k.a. PC CHIPS M870 V2.0) in stock somewhere, which also use the SIS 755 chipset.
If you can't find anything else, I still have a 755-A2/M870V2 new in box I'd be willing to part with, as well as CPUs and RAM to go with it.