• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

WIN95 Intel 440BX chipset driver problem

C

clh333

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 22, 2015
Messages
1,443
Location
Cleveland, OH, USA
This is a board that came from an HP Pavilion system, has PII CPU and Intel 440BX chipset, 760 Mb memory. Has 2 ISA and 4 PCI slots. Installed Win95 4.00.950 C from CD and started addressing the missing drivers.

The board has an on-board ATI Rage chip but it was fuzzy and Win95 could not do more than VGA with it so I inserted a PCI Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PCI card and installed their driver. Sharper, faster and higher bit depth (800x600, 16M). Device manager still lists the ATI as Standard VGA Adapter, with an exclamation point (!), as well but for now that does not seem to present a problem since nothing is attached to it. There does not seem to be a way to disable it in BIOS. (PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0.B.)

Win95 did not install a USB driver by default but I found and installed one from the CD distro. Ran USBSUPP.EXE to install drivers; now each bootup I am prompted "Found New Hardware, PCI Universal Serial Bus". For now I cancel and the desktop loads, as I have no idea what to use as a driver.

Device manager also lists with a question mark (?) "Other Devices", under which are "PCI Bridge" and Unknown Device", whose parent is "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller". DM will not let me remove the Other Device so I ignore that. Found New Hardware no longer tries to install the PCI bridge as it did the first several times I booted. No other problems noted in DM, but DM does not list a USB hub, either.

Did some research and found that this behavior is often exhibited in Win95 installations and has to do with Win95 not recognizing the Intel 440X chipset. Mine has a 440BX chipset, according to ASUS who manufactured the board (ASUS P2B98-XV stamped on the board).

I found the Intel Chipset driver installation utility INFINST_ENU.EXE and tried to run it under Win95 (won't run from DOS). The self-extracting utility extracts files and launches the installer, which gets as far as the license screen. I accept the terms of the license and installation hangs there. When I cancel out of the installation a dialog tells me a remote procedure call failed.

I'd like to solve this problem but I'm stuck as to what to do next. I could wipe the disk and start over, but I'm not sure what good that would do me.

If anyone has any suggestions I would welcome your input. Thanks for your replies.

-CH-
 
Thank you for your reply. The short answer is that I'm building a "tweener". Modern systems know nothing about the older hardware; my newest has nothing but USB ports on the board.

This is basically a learning exercise or an experiment; I have other systems that I am running XP on. I realize there are other options but I wanted to stay as close to DOS as possible: I have a lot of programs that are DOS-based. For example, I just finished putting together a '586 VLB system running MS-DOS 6.22 / WFW 3.11 and am finishing off an IBM 5160 running PC DOS 3.3. Later on I may convert one of the XP systems to Win98, again just as an exercise. Maybe dual-boot with RedHat Linux 7 or 8.

That said, I have made some progress (after wiping the disk and starting over): It turns out that even the later version (C) of Win95 didn't do a very good job of identifying hardware, and this board incorporates some chips that were foreign to Win95's driver set. After installing the Diamond Stealth 2000 3D driver I have a much richer display palette and after locating and installing the Intel 440BX chipset driver I resolved the USB and PCI issues. That is to say, Windows Device Manager recognizes the hardware and has a driver installed to handle them.

I haven't yet communicated with a USB device although the Intel utility USBReady indicates the system is capable (has a functioning host and root). It may be that one of my USB flash drives will have to be formatted with an earlier FAT format; I don't know. I also have a functioning CDRW drive but have not as yet installed CD-burning software successfully; the installation complains about a ComCtl DLL version. And I have installed a TEAC FD-55 GFR (1.2 Mb) 5.25" drive as the system A: drive. The BIOS only recognizes one drive but I will try to find a way to add a 3.5-inch drive as well.

All TBD.

Thanks,

-CH-
 
There was a USB stack (driver) for DOS. Also you can use 3M or 800.COM drivers to use the unsupported by BIOS FDDs...
 
clh333 said:
I haven't yet communicated with a USB device although the Intel utility USBReady indicates the system is capable (has a functioning host and root). It may be that one of my USB flash drives will have to be formatted with an earlier FAT format; I don't know.
Click to expand...
You could try DOS-UMB and see how that works. After all, WIN95 is still based on DOS.

AFAIK, FAT-32 is what is used on USB flash drives by default.
 
Stone said:
You could try DOS-UMB and see how that works. After all, WIN95 is still based on DOS.

AFAIK, FAT-32 is what is used on USB flash drives by default.
Click to expand...
DOS-UMB - what for??? win95 is not based on dos, it co-exists and loads under dos, but is not based on dos.
 
Is there a specific reason you want Win95 on that system? Win98SE was released enough after the 440BX that it should have a full range of drivers and much improved USB support.
 
george said:
DOS-UMB - what for??? win95 is not based on dos, it co-exists and loads under dos, but is not based on dos.
Click to expand...
Really?

Then how would you reconcile these two statements?

1) Keeping MS-DOS in memory allows Windows 95 to use DOS device drivers when suitable Windows drivers are unavailable.

2) As a consequence of being DOS-based, Windows 95 has to keep internal DOS data structures synchronized with those of Windows 95.

Win95 as well as WIN98 run on DOS 7, no ifs, ands or buts.
 
Stone said:
Really?

Then how would you reconcile these two statements?

1) Keeping MS-DOS in memory allows Windows 95 to use DOS device drivers when suitable Windows drivers are unavailable.

2) As a consequence of being DOS-based, Windows 95 has to keep internal DOS data structures synchronized with those of Windows 95.

Win95 as well as WIN98 run on DOS 7, no ifs, ands or buts.
Click to expand...
Wikipedia ;) Everybody writes whatever they want. I am joking (maybe). But does this mean if windows uses sometimes something it is based upon it?
 
Last edited:
HP had some interesting variants of the ASUS P2B board that you wouldn't expect. For example, I've got a board from a P2 Pavillion that's labeled "P2B-VT". You'd think that it'd be a 440BX board just like the regular P2B, but it's not--it uses a VIA chipset. So, if you haven't yet, you may want to check the support chips with your own eyeballs. :)
 
Stone said:
Or maybe you're the joke? :)
Click to expand...

Actually, you are the one that is flooding topics with useless incompetent advices quite often ;) I noticed that several years ago. I've seen a lot of code including windows/dos co-existence to know which OS is dominant and which is simply there for wikipedia writers to say it is based upon but in fact it is almost only used as bootloader. Have you ever written a simple driver not for windows but only for DOS? You can't even be a good joke!
 
Thank you all for your suggestions.

This project is an outgrowth of my original plan to retrieve my archive of CP/M, DOS and early Win software, much of which is on 5.25 disks. Programs such as Dunfield's ImageDisk and Sydex' 22Disk are handy for reading these disks but later Windows versions do not allow direct access to the FDC by these programs, according to their documentation.

You could attribute my desire to establish Win95 on this system to curiosity, persistence, masochism or pure cussedness - or maybe equal parts of all. I find it illustrative to see where the boundaries changed as hardware and software development occurred.

For example, I have a copy of Nero OEM 6 that I used to use, but the PDF says it is designed for P3 or higher, 500 MHz; my PII is about 350. There are other differences as well: I tried installing an earlier version of Nero and it complained about the DLL COMCTL32. The version I got from the Win95 distro was 4.70, so I found a 5.X version and substituted that. Windows complained as soon as it ran across that DLL and shut down. Reverting to 4.7 I succeeded in installing Nero 3.0.2.0. It runs but it knows nothing about the Artec WRR-52Z CDRW that is on the machine. The other alternative, a SCSI Yamaha is similarly beyond this era.

No doubt either could work but the program needs to know under what parameters and I haven't yet figured out how to determine them or present them to the program so that it can understand them. I suspect that there is a way to read the ID string from the drive's firmware. It will be interesting to find out how that is accomplished.

Similarly, I now have a working USB port, but the next hurdle is to find a driver for the USB flash drive. I stuck a drive in one of the board's ports and Windows found new hardware but neither it nor I had an idea what to use as a driver. In the process I have learned that there are separate drivers for the host, the root hub and, apparently, the flash drive itself. You don't learn that from watching Windows' message "Windows has found new hardware and is installing software for your device."

I may, of course, run up against my limits or Win95's; at that point it may be time to see what Win98 can do for me. So many versions, so little time...

Thanks again,

-CH-
 
clh333 said:
Similarly, I now have a working USB port, but the next hurdle is to find a driver for the USB flash drive. I stuck a drive in one of the board's ports and Windows found new hardware but neither it nor I had an idea what to use as a driver.
Click to expand...
I am assuming you didn't try the DOS-USB method yet. If you get that running you could try booting Win95 without the GUI to a DOS prompt while loading the DOS-UMB drivers from the config.sys. Then, when you run WIN95 from that prompt you just might get lucky. This is speculation on my part as I've never tried this so you'd have to tell us if it works this way.

If you change the MSDOS.SYS to look something like this you will get a DOS prompt from WIN95/98 from which you can then type WIN if/when you want to run either 95 or 98.

Code: 
[COLOR=#000000]   [Paths][/COLOR]   
   WinDir=C:\WINDOWS
   WinBootDir=C:\WINDOWS
   HostWinBootDrv=C

   [Options]
   BootMulti=1
   BootGUI=0
   Network=1
   Logo=0 [COLOR=#000000]   
   LoadTop=0[/COLOR]

BootGUI=0 and Logo=0 are the operative lines here; the ones you need to change in order to boot to a DOS prompt.
 
I would strongly recommend Win98SE if you're going to use Windows 9x. It's a much more mature product with a somewhat different driver structure and more device support. A P2 board would be perfect.
 
Stone said:
If you change the MSDOS.SYS to look something like this you will get a DOS prompt from WIN95/98.
Click to expand...

Yes, I had modified MSDOS.sys. It's worth mentioning that this is a protected file in the root of the C: drive.

It is necessary to reboot into MS-DOS (if all you get is Windows on startup), and change the attributes from hidden, read-only, system in order to edit it. However, it is a text file so Notepad or Edit will do to modify it.

No, I haven't tried the DOS-USB approach yet.

Thanks for your suggestions.

-CH-
 
Chuck(G) said:
A P2 board would be perfect.
Click to expand...

As I recall this board started out life running Win98. I think eventually it will return to the mother ship; it's just that it was handy for experimentation. The '586 system doesn't have any on-board USB, for example, and only has VLB or ISA slots; not too many ISA USB boards around.

Was thinking it would be a fun project to build one around a PIC chip.


Thanks for your suggestion.

-CH-
 
Stone said:
As previously stated I know it works quite well from DOS and I've never tried to run WIN95 or WIN98 after loading the DOS-USB drivers. Looks like that's gonna be your task. :)
Click to expand...

I tried, unsuccessfully, to implement USB in DOS by installing the drivers you and Chuck referenced. I found the drivers and loaded them from CONFIG.SYS but even though I had my USB device - a 1 Gb flash or "thumb" drive - in the USB slot at power-up I received a driver error stating that the "target device not found". DOS did not assign an extra drive letter or report any change to the system.

After several attempts with DOS I decided to see whether Win95 would detect the drivers and use them properly. I removed the flash drive and rebooted, with the DOS USB drivers still in place. On startup Win95 presented a dialog saying one of the new drivers would slow the system and asked if I wanted more information. I closed the dialog and came to the desktop as usual. Windows 95 did not recognize the flash drive upon insertion. When I checked Device Manager I saw that the USB controller and PCI controller had the "!" next to them.

I went back to DOS and remarked everything to do with DOS USB drivers and rebooted. When I restarted Win95 there was no complaint about the drivers, and when I inserted the flash drive again this time Windows found a new device and prompted for a driver. I had found a driver that purported to be for Win95 devices here and this time I submitted that as the driver. The driver installed and I was left with a new drive, H: at the end of the process.

The flash drive I was using was a generic, maybe from MicroCenter, but it appeared not to have any contents. Sure enough when I checked it on another machine I found it to be empty. I created a few generic files on the other machine and plugged it back into the Win95 machine. This time I got drive H: represented in Explorer as a removable disk and its contents were accessible from Win95.

I checked the Device manager and found that the "!" were gone from the PCI and USB controllers, and that a third device, USB Port, had been added under the USB device heading. Pictures attached.

So it looks like I will be able to transfer large quantities of data from one Windows machine to another using the flash drive, which for me was the objective. There are some unanswered questions, however.
I don't know why I was unable to get DOS to recognize the falsh drive, but perhaps the DOS driver is looking for another type of drive such as USB HDD. The driver documentation mentions that it can handle USB ZIP drives and so forth, but maybe flash drives require another technique. I also don't know -yet - if there is an upper limit to the size of the flash drive that Win95 can address. And it looks like you get one or the other, DOS or Win95, to load their USB drivers, but not both. As long as one works I'm happy.

What worked for me then was to install Win95 OS extensions for USB, Intel 440BX chipset drivers and this third-party USB driver for flash drives.

Thank you to everyone who contributed their suggestions. And yes, Chuck, Win98 SE would have been much easier, I'm sure.

-CH-

A.jpg B.jpg C.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top