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I actually have 2 questions,

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by americanflyer1

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I have built a Soyo PC with the SY-P4IS2 and now as I am setting it up to run I have run Into a problem with the memory modules I have not working for me.I was told that these would work by Soyo and the Online Retailer I bought them from I got 3 1GB PC133 Memory ECC REG. and Buffered by Legacy.Which now I have learned that they do not work in my PC and that I really need is the Same 3 1GB Memory PC133 non registered & unbuffered.I found some made by Simple Tech Premium for 234.99,the others were 149.99 from Outpost.com ,I need to trade what I have for what I need but outpost does not carry 1GB Mem.Modules anymore and I am not sure if Tiger Direct would take them in trade maybe some other company would or I could sell them somewhere online.Help Please.My other question is about the hard drive I bought from outpost a Western Digital 200GB hard drive.I was going to gradually make this my C drive but to get started I put 2 60GB Hard Drives in as C & D both Maxtors,as I using 1 of them as the C drive in my old computer but while setting up with C & D as IDE and the 200GB as an ATA Drive,but the PC would not boot up,and finally got a message Saying this Computer cannot use the C Drive due to no MS-DOS in the drive and that one of the more severe Viruses was in that drive,then I tried using the old D drive and got the same message but some of the MS-DOS was still in this drive.I then put the 200GB Hard Drive as C and then got the Message that the C drive had only 127GB,I do understand that this can happen with Certain Windows Versions but did not see 98se as one of them? Now do I need another 200GB hard drive or a better ATA pci Card at 133 intead of 100 and possibly one designed as a Raid ATA PCI Card this motherboard does have Raid Capability in the form of a chip but using this as a PCI mounted would probably use the onboard Raid?

3 replies

by thechas

First of all, you are trying to use way to much hardware for W98 to deal with.

The version of Fdisk that comes with W98 is limited to 132GB hard drives.

You can download a newer version of Fdisk from a link at www.bootdisk.com
Or from Microsoft.

Then, you have WAY too much RAM for W98.
There is a well documented bug in the Windows 9X code where Windows can come to a complete halt with more than 511MB of RAM.
I limit ALL of my 9X boxes to 384 MB of RAM.
Further, benchmark tests show W98 has the fastest operation with 196MB of RAM.

If you want / need 3GB of system RAM, you need to install either Windows 2000 or XP.

To use the full capacity of your 200GB drive, your simplest option is to install Windows XP SP1.
Even the original release of XP has the 132GB drive limit.

If you want to stay with W98, don't use hard drives larger than 120GB.
Install 3 128MB DIMMs (384MB)

You may be able to trick W98 into using the 200GB drive with Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Tools.
This needs to be installed on the boot drive to work.
Any drive that was setup by Data Lifeguard Tools cannot be read in another system unless the tools are installed on the boot drive.
There is even a special sequence that you need to follow to boot from a floppy when the hard drive has been configured with DLG.

As far as selling 3 DIMMs, your best option would be e-bay.

Chas

by americanflyer1

Thank You for being so straight forward with your answer,I would not have gotten so screwed up if others had answered me as You have.I have written Soyo Technical 5 times with no answers,and I have learned not to listen to so called techs at Retail stores unless they can show me proof that they are certified.My plan was to use the 2 60GB Drives for now and then the 200GB when I get XP and Download the SP1.One thing I have always seemed to get by with is overdriving the Memory when I started the Soyo after changing the Memory to something that would work I had a 512mb,and 2 256mb memory modules.I probably will for now get 2 more 512mb modules,fix the 60GB Hard Drives(get rid of the virus),then reload the MS-DOS so I can keep as many of the programs I had as possible.Thank You again for a fast and correct answer,brokenwings.

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