98 SE for older hardware?

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I have a thought concerning 98SE as an operating system, to get my MOTU 324 card running.

The machine I'm running is:
-QDI KuDoz 7X/600 motherboard, AMD Athlon 3200+ cpu, VIA KT600 / Southbridge 8235
-512 MB DDR
-200 FSB
-Windows XP, tweaked for audio

I'm told, and it stands to reason in part, that if I ran 98SE I'd have a better time getting it to work / be recognized in my system. But it's also become clear through not only MOTU tech-support, but other users, that my VIA is not compatible with the MOTU 324's drivers. I've tried the VIA 4-in-1 update, as well as patches written by other users for a 'fix',; nothing works.
MOTU also says that any motherboard back to 2 years old will not support the 324 PCI card. So, all that said,...

I'm looking for a system option that will support the MOTU, without moving back to a less powerful system. Is there an Intel motherboard that will support the AMD cpu I'm using? Or would anyone recommend moving over to Intel completely, and going with 98SE? I really believe that 98SE might be the answer for an OS.

Any wisdom out there? Thanks much for your time and thought.

Bonus Question: Who's got a fun, derogatory name for the MOTU 1224?
 
Look around for an nForce2 or nForce3 (chipset) board that will use your Athlon processor.

Look into ABit, EpoX, ASUS, etc. I have excellent luck with ABit and EpoX boards.

The EPoX 8RDA3+ PRO is available now on Newegg for $69. It looks like it will run your processor and existing memory, and uses the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset.

Run this board by the MOTU folks first. As I understand MOTU, it is primarily a Mac oriented product, and WinTel support is secondary. When I was looking at MOTU, it had such terrible and widespread complaints from WinTel users that I passed it by.

[ edit ]

Win98 is not the solution. Use WinXP with the above hardware, then apply the XP Tweaks to remove eye candy and unnecessary services.
 
98SE not it, eh? Allright then, I'll run this nice definitive hardware list of yours by the good folks at MOTU. Thanks much! Another step toward "Inner PC" (get it?).

I would never have bought one of these new- too much bread for a soundcard, for my purposes. But the price was competitive with the Delta 1010LT, which is standing by as my "run to" option! Anyway, at this point I'd recommend any PC user to look eslewhere too! Too much trouble!
 
bgavin said:
The EPoX 8RDA3+ PRO is available now on Newegg for $69. It looks like it will run your processor and existing memory, and uses the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset.

Run this board by the MOTU folks first. As I understand MOTU, it is primarily a Mac oriented product, and WinTel support is secondary. When I was looking at MOTU, it had such terrible and widespread complaints from WinTel users that I passed it by.
Click to expand...

I checked out the 'board. The one spec I have a doubt about (as if I know anything at all) is the P ATA rate of 100. I'm using a P ATA HD with a 133 transfer rate (and 7200rpms). I'd like to stay with the higher ATA rate. This would represent a problem, yes?
 
If you have ATA-133 it is probably a Maxtor drive. That marketing thing never caught on, and the vast majority of drives are ATA-100.

I doubt you can measure the difference, let alone feel it. And that assumes the drive does indeed maintain a full transfer rate of 133... more likely it hits that in a burst rate. The drive will operate fine on the ATA-100 bus.

This board will let you keep your existing hardware, while getting rid of the VIA chipset and its associated problems. Get the board blessed by MOTU first. Then get rid of that damn VIA board.

I run Aardvark Q10 interfaces on my nForce2 DAW, with an Athlon-XP processor. I have zero stability problems with it, once I figured out my situation was totally incompatible with XP/SP2 and v7.13 Q10 drivers. I went back to SP1 and the bugs disappeared.

Unlike Aardvark, MOTU is still in business, so they should be able to answer your question. Unless they are so Mac-centric they don't care. At that point, get a Mac, or give up MOTU.
 
Allright, all understood. One thing that I've now learned from MOTU (they wrote back) is that the PCI slots on mainboards back to two years old are generally supplying 3.3v to whatever cards are plugged into them. The 324 PCI card requires a 5v power supply- and there's the caveat. I no longer am so sure it's anything but that- ok maybe it's the VIA too... but the power requirement seems like a clincher.

Evidently if I want to use the 324 card I have to find a motherboard with this 5v spec. Oh- and the guy who sold me the 1224 never got a registration code. Evidently this has passed through a few hands!
 
Yep, that will do it. Look for mainboards that have a PCI 2.1 spec, the newer (as of march 2002) PCI 2.31 spec no longer supports 5V PCI cards so I would guess that you may want to Ebay that thing since you may be stuck running an old P3
 
altitude909 said:
Yep, that will do it. Look for mainboards that have a PCI 2.1 spec, the newer (as of march 2002) PCI 2.31 spec no longer supports 5V PCI cards so I would guess that you may want to Ebay that thing since you may be stuck running an old P3
Click to expand...

Quickie opinion: EWS 88MT Terratec... looks like a good thing. Anyone?
 
system requirements
Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0, 200MHz MMX Pentium, 32Mb RAM, PCI 2.1 compliant slot.


Dont see 2000 or XP there so you may want to make sure it will work with a modern machine
 
That's it. 2.1 PCI spec is no good. Allright, thanks for the heads-up!

There is actually a driver for XP. Hmmm...
 
Last edited:
Sloom,
Some of the relatively new motherboards are 5 volt tolerant even though they run on the newer standard 3.3v. My year and a half old ECS 865Pe is one such intel board.It will say whether it can handle 5 volt PCI cards in the motherboards documentation.
Keith
 
I'll check my documentation. Thanks, Kieth, that would be fun if this ended right there!
 
I bought the Terratec EWS88MT, and am keeping XP. Got it worked out- and thank you very much to all you cats who've chimed in here! I've been all over the the 'net getting this together, and something has come of it- so... thanks! I couldn't have done it without the forward generosity and good spirit of everyone around here on the forum who saw fit to pitch in.

There... now I'm ready for my Grammy speech. Peace.
 
altitude909 said:
system requirements
Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0, 200MHz MMX Pentium, 32Mb RAM, PCI 2.1 compliant slot.


Dont see 2000 or XP there so you may want to make sure it will work with a modern machine
Click to expand...

By the way altitude- there are some newer updates for the Terratec card, they're just "hidden" in the site. I did look into all this, man, I looked into everything like 5 times! :)

But thanks for the advice coming from solid ground, dude. :cool:
 
My brother got burned like that. He had an older Lexicon card (when they still made PCI cards) that would only work on 98 (no 2k or XP support at all, so no drivers).
 
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