Which chipset drivers did you install?

None because there arent any I think (its a newish P55 mobo). If I remember correctly I was able to install USB drivers before anything else on a more period correct mobo before - but my memory is not perfect.

I really doubt that there are no chipset drivers.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/suppo … 3/software.html

retardware wrote:

I really doubt that there are no chipset drivers.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/suppo … 3/software.html

Thanks, I have yet to inspect this resource fully but so far I only found stuff for 5 series chipset for Win2k+, not to mention P55 wasnt specifically listed there. But I am not very familiar with this so I may be looking at the wrong places so I will give it more time and effort. And that Win2k stuff will not load, neither EXE or INF packages, I have tried that just in case. I have also tried this (link) which is for a completely different chipset, it actually installed, but did not help anything regarding USB support. I am running out of options so I just tried whatever I thought I could try.

Also... the USB mouse and keyboard just work when I boot into a 100% fresh Windows 98SE under Safe Mode. Perhaps the BIOS/mobo has a hand in that? This made me pretty confident that there must be a way to make this permanent, somehow.

I am open to any ideas because I can easily re-deploy a fresh installation in under a minute with multi-boot manager.

duga3 wrote:

Thanks, I have yet to inspect this resource fully but so far I only found stuff for 5 series chipset for Win2k+, not to mention […]
Show full quote

retardware wrote:

I really doubt that there are no chipset drivers.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/suppo … 3/software.html

Thanks, I have yet to inspect this resource fully but so far I only found stuff for 5 series chipset for Win2k+, not to mention P55 wasnt specifically listed there. But I am not very familiar with this so I may be looking at the wrong places so I will give it more time and effort. And that Win2k stuff will not load, neither EXE or INF packages, I have tried that just in case. I have also tried this (link) which is for a completely different chipset, it actually installed, but did not help anything regarding USB support. I am running out of options so I just tried whatever I thought I could try.

Also... the USB mouse and keyboard just work when I boot into a 100% fresh Windows 98SE under Safe Mode. Perhaps the BIOS/mobo has a hand in that? This made me pretty confident that there must be a way to make this permanent, somehow.

I am open to any ideas because I can easily re-deploy a fresh installation in under a minute with multi-boot manager.

If you have USB emulation enabled in the BIOS I think this would make sense - the BIOS would be telling Windows 98 that those devices are PS2 or something like that.

kalm_traveler wrote:

If you have USB emulation enabled in the BIOS I think this would make sense - the BIOS would be telling Windows 98 that those devices are PS2 or something like that.

Yes, that would make sense, but I can only speculate due to my inexperience with these things.

By the way, when I DISABLED "BIOS EHCI hand-off" in BIOS then the USB mouse kinda worked in normal (not safe mode) boot. But keyboard was not working at all and mouse was laggy, you had to like 4-click on icons to open them etc. Definitely not usable solution though.

Anyways... I think I got it (USB mouse+kb) almost working now (there is some mouse acceleration and its very bad).

Below are ALL necessary steps I had to go through after fresh Windows 98SE installation and RLoew RAM patch:

#1

Here are all my USB settings in BIOS and how I set them:

Legacy USB Support = ENABLED
USB Function = ENABLED
USB 2.0 Controller Mode = HiSpeed (its not possible to adjust this option in this BIOS)
BIOS EHCI hand-off = ENABLED (If this would be set to DISABLED then it would always freeze during step #5 below)

#2

In Device Manager remove 3 unrecognized things, 1 is Unknown Device and the other two are PCI/USB something something (PCI Universal Serial Bus?).

#3

Restart (very important here!) and skip through all the new device popups by spamming ESC until you get to desktop

#4

Install nusb36e.exe (I think it must be v36 minimum because it contains drivers taken/edited from Win2k drivers packages, not sure)

#5

Restart and go through all the new device popups by spamming ENTER until it AUTO-installs everything and you get to desktop. BIOS EHCI hand-off must be set to ENABLE otherwise this step will freeze/crash.

#6

Restart one last time.

Thats it. I can now see "Intel 5 series/3400 series chipset family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3B3C" in the Device Manager and a few other USB related devices.

I am also tempted to update to the latest BIOS because the changelog for the latest BIOS update says "USB Detection Improvements". Not sure what exactly that would mean for my case but I might try it later.

So the current state is:

- Keyboard: okay
- Mouse: clicking okay, movement is very very bad, some sort of acceleration going on
- Mass storage (flash drives): seems okay at first glance
- Boot time is about 10 seconds longer now, during this extra time it shows black screen with blinking cursor (no white rabbits though)

Okay, mass storage is working fine, transferring files worked.

I have installed VBE9x (http://www.navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbe9x.htm) and switched to true color 1600x1200, works fine but it had zero influence on the mouse issue. It actually showed that its probably not mouse acceleration but regular mouse input lag. The mouse is old Genius optical mouse and I have tried one other mouse and its the same. The input lag is around 100ms if I swipe slowly over small distance and becomes a 300ms lag if I swipe fast and long. The lag basically increases if I swipe more pixels/second.

Generally the graphics are laggy (dragging windows is a slideshow). I was hoping VBE9x would solve that until I get a compatible card with official nvidia drivers for W98.

But VBE9x fixed visual artifacts (after manically clicking and dragging on desktop for example) that are probably common before one installs a proper display driver.

Bottom line, graphics and mouse are laggy. Now I am not sure if its one problem or two. I have not used VBE9x before so I would be interested to learn if its normally that laggy (I have a grass-fed geforce 960 in there)?

Installing NVIDIA drivers fixed the USB mouse (or rather graphics) lag so all is good regarding USB now 😀

But the system is not very stable (frequent freezes) and I didnt get a chance to try any game yet. So I have attempted to reinstall W98 from scratch with the "setup /p i" option in case it would help with stability. Unfortunately the installation freezes immediately when the installer attempts to copy Windows files during step 7 or so (after you setup Region/Time and recovery diskette settings). The blue side on the right side of the setup is then empty, just a blue background. Regular "setup" command does not work either now (which worked perfectly before). If I load the old W98 installation backup it works normally. This is gonna take a while...

If I had to guess I would say the motherboard is cactus.

what?

kolderman wrote:

If I had to guess I would say the motherboard is cactus.

oeuvre wrote:

what?

New one on me too. Definition #2.
I would assume etymology from "caca" but who knows. *shrug*
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cactus

https://youtu.be/HyqzJTNcygE

^^

I can confirm that mobo is definitely not cactus, please stay on the carpet guys.

I have 100% narrowed it down to the GPU (Quadro FX1300). The Windows 98SE installation would always freeze/hang on the copying files step with it, no matter what I tried.

If I use my trusty GTX960, the installation works fine, albeit with visual artifacting making things hard to read.

I have tried "setup /p i" and even "setup /p j" but found it impossible to manage/install devices/drivers because it would always freeze/hang. Similar problems are present with the regular "setup" command as well but only sometimes so if one tries it a few times, it goes through eventually. Due to that I am using "setup" version for the time being (I make partition snapshots after each milestone, "Boot It Bare Metal" boot manager is amazing btw).

So the current config in the order of installation is:

1) Win98SE with "setup" command using GTX960. Plug and Play is Disabled in BIOS.
2) RLoew RAM patch
3) nusb36e
4) Switching to "PCI/PCIE" boot priority in BIOS and then plugging the video cable from GTX960 to FX1300
5) 66.94 nvidia drivers
6) DirectX 8.2 redistributable from Sep 2002

The USB mouse/kb seems fine in Windows (but its probably not). When I fire up Q3A demo the FPS drops to around 30 the moment I start to move the mouse around or even if I use left/right arrow keys on keyboard. If I do not move, the FPS is fine. So it seems like its still not working perfectly 😒

Also of note is when I am copying files from USB mass storage to the disk, the copying works for maybe 2 seconds and then freezes/hangs for like 5-10 seconds, this happens over and over.

Correction, keyboard seems to be okay now (no FPS dips from pressing keys), I have not changed anything so no idea how that is possible. But the USB mouse still drops the game from hundreds of FPS to about 30 when I move it around. Similar situation in NOLF too so its not just Q3A.

I have also tested the polling rate of the USB mouse and it is 125Hz btw.

I have now swapped the generic USB Genius optical mouse with a gaming oriented USB Logitech G700s and IT JUST WORKS!!!!

Mouserate tester now reports whopping 1000Hz polling rate (exactly as it should for this particular mouse) and there are no FPS dips in games when moving the mouse around.

Everything is buttery smooth. Q3A at 150Hz monitor refresh rate is a blast. I might need to get something faster than FX1300 for games like this though, FPS in Q3A dips below refresh rate occasionally, maybe for a split second, but its very much noticeable.

I dont think this will help with the USB mass storage hangups/slowdowns though - but I dont really care about that. (edit: did not help)

Next up is trying to make Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830) work with this PC. (edit: works!)

I would consider the original issue as solved (for my needs) so mods can close this thread now.

I have also created a dedicated build log for this, in case anyone would like to follow it and for me to serve as a reference. You can find it here:

Win98/XP multi-boot on "modern" P55 chipset (BUILD LOG)

Thanks everyone for your help!