Virtual Win98

I would like to share my experience, how I installed Windows 98SE on a relatively modern PC.
The configuration of my PC, on which I achieved a positive result: Core i7-4770 processor, B85 motherboard with PCI slot via PCI bridge, 16GB RAM, GeForce 960 video card, 16G SSD. I will not give detailed instructions for installing Windows 98SE - only key points.
There are 2 other SSDs on my PC under Windows XP and 7, so I have SATA configured in BIOS in AHCI mode (not IDE). Surprisingly, Windows 98SE installed in AHCI mode without any problems, as if on an old IDE HDD, but Windows XP/2003 will never install in AHCI mode without a special driver. But on the other hand, Windows 98SE will not just install if the PC has more than 512 MB of RAM installed, so after the first installation stage, after the first reboot, you need to boot in command mode (I have Norton Commander launched in autoexec.bat) and replace the HIMEM memory manager with the patched one .SYS, VCACHE.VXD and VMM.VXD. The patch is called "Patch_win98se_for_full_memory_access.Multi (rus)". I always have a blue screen pop up during hardware diagnostics 1 time, but after a reboot, the installation continues to the end without any problems.
After installation, I first installed the KernelEx-4.5.2 kernel patch, and then went to the Add Device Manager and decided to try adding a PCI bus.
Immediately after that, various PCI-to-PCI Bridges began to be detected, Asus Xonar DGX, which was in the PCI slot, and other devices were discovered:
Next, you need to configure the video card. I bought a GeForce 7300 on a PCI-e slot - everything worked fine despite many reports that Windows 98 does not work with video cards on a PCI-e slot (but you can just install the VBEMP 9x Project driver - universal for any video cards.

davidrons,

You sir are a dedicated systems tweaker. It blows me away that Win98SE is installed on a drive in AHCI mode!

I am hoping for a VM solution here as I already have a dedicated win98 laptop. (Dual boot with Windows 2000)

The goal is to have a single field service laptop that can deal with legacy systems, including Sensor Classic.

Thanks for sharing. Keep on rocking!

davidrons,

You sir are a dedicated systems tweaker. It blows me away that Win98SE is installed on a drive in AHCI mode!

I am hoping for a VM solution here as I already have a dedicated win98 laptop. (Dual boot with Windows 2000)

The goal is to have a single field service laptop that can deal with legacy systems, including Sensor Classic.

Thanks for sharing. Keep on rocking!