• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Win98 Extended Memory

DougM

DougM

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2023
Messages
117
So I was put on a data recovery mission recently where I needed to pull the data off an IDE drive. Remarkably simple, I happened to have an old Intel Atom motherboard with an IDE connector on it and Win98 booted right up! Or it almost did.

First I was able to add another SATA drive to it with Win10 and then boot to that drive and it showed the IDE drive and all data was transferred over. So job complete I was curious if I could get Win98 to boot.

1707530186140.png

This is what's interesting. First it says, "Testing Extended Memory: OK
1707530246769.png

but then it came up and said, "Not enough extended memory available to run Windows"

1707530299394.png
the machine's got 4G of memory but I seem to recall from those days that there was a difference between "extended memory" and "Extended Memory"

Does anyone remember off the top of their head what the trick was? I checked around in the BIOS and there is no option to assign memory segments to different configurations.

This isn't terribly important, so please don't spend a lot of time on it. I just thought it would be cool to boot up the drive.

Thanks,
 
Windows 98 does not like having more than 512MB without some patches. So that error message might actually be the opposite of the real problem.
 
Well, I *almost* succeeded. I put HIMEMX in and edited the config.sys and it booted up and started loading drivers for the various motherboard devices. But eventually when it tired of that it rebooted and hung back at the initial DOS window. So some obscure incompatibility with hardware that was manufactured 20 years later. Imagine that.

At that point I decided I have more pressing matters to attend to and put it back on the shelf.

But that's the success story here, that I had a motherboard that could actually read the drive. And the motherboard was sitting in a box waiting to go to PC Recycle.

Which brings me back to the hoarder's dilemma.

The other thing that bugs me is that before this drive landed on my desk it was taken to one of those Nerd Squad places where they charged $50 to tell her that it couldn't be recovered. Yet when I attached it it spun right up and was available immediately. I'm not sure whether to leave a bunch of bad reviews for the Nerd Squad or start my own business.

Thank you for your help,
 
If you'd like, I can pass along copies of my CONFIG.SYS and SYSTEM.INI files that work on a P4 with 4 GB of RAM.
You really have to modify that SYSTEM.INI or the whole thing goes to hell.
 
Chuck(G) said:
If you'd like, I can pass along copies of my CONFIG.SYS and SYSTEM.INI files that work on a P4 with 4 GB of RAM.
You really have to modify that SYSTEM.INI or the whole thing goes to hell.
Click to expand...
Thanks Chuck, but it was really just an idle tangent that I'm wise to no longer chase :)
 
Oookay, here's the config.sys (edited a bit; the real one is quite long as it uses the MENU feature):
Code: 
DEVICE=C:\XMS\HIMEM\HIMEMX.EXE /NUMHANDLES=64
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=50
LASTDRIVE=Z
BUFFERS=17

and the autoexec.bat:
Code: 
@ECHO OFF
REM - BY WINDOWS SETUP - LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD0000
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\USR;C:\USR\RAR;C:\HXRT;C:\MASM611\BIN;C:\MTCP
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY
LH C:\USR\DOSLFN
LH C:\HXRT\HXLDR32
SET TEMPDRIVE=S
SET TEMPSIZE=2048000000
C:\XMS\XMSDISK\XMSDSK %TEMPDRIVE%: %TEMPSIZE% /Y /T
SET TEMP=%TEMPDRIVE%:\TEMP
SET TMP=%TEMP%
MD %TEMP%
Note that I use Hiren's HXRT as well as DOSLFN--I've edited the MSDOS.SYS file to start up in MSDOS cli mode.
Finally, the pertinent portion of SYSTEM.INI:
Code: 
[386Enh]
MaxPhysPage=40000
ebios=*ebios
woafont=dosapp.fon
mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd
device=*dynapage
device=*vcd
device=*vpd
device=*int13
device=*enable
keyboard=*vkd
display=*vdd,*vflatd
device=convmem.vxd
minsps=16
EMMExclude=C000-CFFF
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top