New Motherboard & Old Hard Drives

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 08:34:58 -0500, Longfellow <> wrote:

 >I've been using a Tyan Tsunami 1830s with a P3 850, a 440BX chipset,
 >and a Maxtor 40G hard drive with Win98 on it. If I get a P4
 >motherboard, will I simply be able to install my HD on it and boot up,
 >or will I have to reformat the HD and reload everything.

Things could get very messy. One question which needs to be answered
before you start is: is your current mbrd BIOS recognized by Win98 as
supporting ACPI? The new one will and the Device Manager tree would be
drastically altered by it.

You could always start a fresh install of Win98 into a separate folder from
the current one and see how that goes - easy to back out of it without
losing your current drive structure if things get nasty. There is
absolutely no need to reformat any drives or partitions... if your current
BIOS supports the 40GB drive without an "overlay".

If you want to try to keep your current Win98 folder, registry, installed
apps etc., here's one way which I've used:

First you'll have to get any .INF driver definitions for the new chipset.

1) Make sure you have a CD-ROM driver in CONFIG.SYS *and* that MSCDEX is
loaded in AUTOEXEC.BAT. This is necessary since during the transfer to the
new mbrd, you'll lose access to the CD-ROM drive from the Win98 protected
mode driver.

2) In Win98 System Properties/Hardware Profiles make a copy of your current
configuration - call it Dummy or some such name and rename the current
config to say Oldconfig

3) Hook the drive to the new system and boot it. You'll get a msg asking
which config to boot to (Oldconfig or Dummy) - choose "None of the Above".
This will cause the Win98 boot process to create a new "Original
Configuration" with the new hardware, leaving the Oldconfig untouched (more
or less anyway).

4) The creation of the new hardware config is going to require lots of
rebooting to load drivers and you're probably going to have to make
decisions on whether to replace a newer driver with one from the Win98 CD.
At the end, you should be able to delete the Oldconfig and Dummy
configurations.

I've done migrations through three generations of mbrds using the above
procedure (though not to a very recent mbrd) and there is often the odd
hiccup along the way but it usually works with some tweaking. I'd also add
that if this is not Win98SE, it's probably not worthwhile even trying.
Win98 (First Edition) is broken and not worth the effort.

I'd also add that I agree with others who say it would probably be better
to get Windows 2000 or XP and just dump Win98. You should be able to
install into a fresh Windows folder without damaging any of your current
data on the drive.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New Motherboard & Old Hard Drives 

My thanks to everyone, especially George, for the replies. I've been
using Win 98 for sometime now and haven't had any problems at all with
its stability or speed, perhaps because I use my computer mainly for
word processing and websurfing. However, given what's been said here,
I'm considering upgrading to Windows Second Edition or Windows 2000,
considering I've heard that XP still has a lot of bugs to work out.

My next question is "Will I be able to use my Maxtor 40G ATA drives
with the faster bus speeds of newer motherboards, with the built-in
SATA Raid devices some of these motherboards have, or with add-on SATA
raid cards?

I was also wondering which middle-of-the road motherboards with and
without RAID give the best bang-for-the-buck?

Thanks in advance for the additional info


On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 18:06:16 -0500, George Macdonald
<fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:

 >On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 08:34:58 -0500, Longfellow <> wrote:
 >
  >>I've been using a Tyan Tsunami 1830s with a P3 850, a 440BX chipset,
  >>and a Maxtor 40G hard drive with Win98 on it. If I get a P4
  >>motherboard, will I simply be able to install my HD on it and boot up,
  >>or will I have to reformat the HD and reload everything.
 >
 >Things could get very messy. One question which needs to be answered
 >before you start is: is your current mbrd BIOS recognized by Win98 as
 >supporting ACPI? The new one will and the Device Manager tree would be
 >drastically altered by it.
 >
 >You could always start a fresh install of Win98 into a separate folder from
 >the current one and see how that goes - easy to back out of it without
 >losing your current drive structure if things get nasty. There is
 >absolutely no need to reformat any drives or partitions... if your current
 >BIOS supports the 40GB drive without an "overlay".
 >
 >If you want to try to keep your current Win98 folder, registry, installed
 >apps etc., here's one way which I've used:
 >
 >First you'll have to get any .INF driver definitions for the new chipset.
 >
 >1) Make sure you have a CD-ROM driver in CONFIG.SYS *and* that MSCDEX is
 >loaded in AUTOEXEC.BAT. This is necessary since during the transfer to the
 >new mbrd, you'll lose access to the CD-ROM drive from the Win98 protected
 >mode driver.
 >
 >2) In Win98 System Properties/Hardware Profiles make a copy of your current
 >configuration - call it Dummy or some such name and rename the current
 >config to say Oldconfig
 >
 >3) Hook the drive to the new system and boot it. You'll get a msg asking
 >which config to boot to (Oldconfig or Dummy) - choose "None of the Above".
 >This will cause the Win98 boot process to create a new "Original
 >Configuration" with the new hardware, leaving the Oldconfig untouched (more
 >or less anyway).
 >
 >4) The creation of the new hardware config is going to require lots of
 >rebooting to load drivers and you're probably going to have to make
 >decisions on whether to replace a newer driver with one from the Win98 CD.
 >At the end, you should be able to delete the Oldconfig and Dummy
 >configurations.
 >
 >I've done migrations through three generations of mbrds using the above
 >procedure (though not to a very recent mbrd) and there is often the odd
 >hiccup along the way but it usually works with some tweaking. I'd also add
 >that if this is not Win98SE, it's probably not worthwhile even trying.
 >Win98 (First Edition) is broken and not worth the effort.
 >
 >I'd also add that I agree with others who say it would probably be better
 >to get Windows 2000 or XP and just dump Win98. You should be able to
 >install into a fresh Windows folder without damaging any of your current
 >data on the drive.
 >
 >Rgds, George Macdonald
 >
 >"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New Motherboard & Old Hard Drives 

Longfellow <> wrote:

 >
 > My next question is "Will I be able to use my Maxtor 40G ATA drives
 > with the faster bus speeds of newer motherboards,

I'm using an old 3.2 gig drive on my "web machine" with an XP2100+ athlon so
that 40G drive shouldn't be any problem!

--

Stacey<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New Motherboard & Old Hard Drives 

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:08:08 -0500, Longfellow <> wrote:

 >My thanks to everyone, especially George, for the replies. I've been
 >using Win 98 for sometime now and haven't had any problems at all with
 >its stability or speed, perhaps because I use my computer mainly for
 >word processing and websurfing. However, given what's been said here,
 >I'm considering upgrading to Windows Second Edition or Windows 2000,
 >considering I've heard that XP still has a lot of bugs to work out.

AFAIK if you throw out all the XP eye-candy and run it with the "Classic"
settings the bug load is not any worse though the security Hot-Fixes have
been a PITA. Personally I'd go for Win2K right now but it's not that big a
deal to me... over XP.

 >My next question is "Will I be able to use my Maxtor 40G ATA drives
 >with the faster bus speeds of newer motherboards, with the built-in
 >SATA Raid devices some of these motherboards have, or with add-on SATA
 >raid cards?

I believe that any current mbrd with SATA will still have an ATA-100/133
IDE interface which will allow your drive to perform at its best.

 >I was also wondering which middle-of-the road motherboards with and
 >without RAID give the best bang-for-the-buck?

There're so many integrated options that it's hard to decide for someone
else - it depends what bells 'n' whistles you want. I'd been using Asus
almost exclusively for years but recently I've had good luck with MSI for
mbrds.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: New Motherboard & Old Hard Drives