About HDD formatting. Make C: partition smaller - around 5GB. This should work fine.

What OS will you install? Motherboard would be great for NT or even W2K.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try breaking the disk up into smaller partitions.

kixs wrote:

What OS will you install? Motherboard would be great for NT or even W2K.

I was going to install Win98SE, for muh games... But now that you mention it, NT4 Server might be fun. I could host services on it, and even plug it in to my retro network gear:

That might end up being too much like my day job though (IT Operations). 😀

DOS/Windows 9X won't use the second CPU. So why build dual socket computer for Win9X? 😉 At least do a dual boot machine - Win9X + NT4.

Just had to comment on your Cisco gear I have 2 huge tote boxes full of 2500 and 2600 series routers, 1900 series switches and fast hub 400s. I love collecting old cisco gear. As for your system definitely dual boot ether NT4 or 2000 with 98 to make use of the extra ram and second cpu but that should be a great machine once she's done.

kixs wrote:

DOS/Windows 9X won't use the second CPU. So why build dual socket computer for Win9X? 😉 At least do a dual boot machine - Win9X + NT4.

Good call, I had totally forgot about the system limitations for Win98! You've convinced me, I'll definitely make this a dual boot NT4/Win98 machine. 😀

Is there a simple guide to dual booting on older IDE (or even SCSI) machines? I've only ever done it on newer computers, that have the luxury of 'boot order' menus, and 'one-time boot' menus. I can't find any of these options in the Award 6.0 BIOS that's on this motherboard. Maybe I've been spoiled by new computers?

chrismeyer6 wrote:

Just had to comment on your Cisco gear I have 2 huge tote boxes full of 2500 and 2600 series routers, 1900 series switches and fast hub 400s. I love collecting old cisco gear.

My school was throwing those out, so couldn't resist. 😀
More recently, my work decommissioned a bunch of G1 ISRs, 2960s, and 3750's, which is what I use for studying these days. They even threw out a half height rack for me to put them in.

Back to the build: Look what fell out of an old server...

Should go every nicely with the Adaptec SCSI controller that's on the motherboard. Provided it still works!

Is there a simple guide to dual booting on older IDE (or even SCSI) machines?

Usually disks doesn't matter (if you have one disk, use more partitions. If more disks use one for every system - it's easier to do Ghost images). But generally you first install DOS (Win9X) and then install WinNT/2k/xp. WinNT setup will create boot menu. Otherwise there are always 3rd party boot menus/programs.

I found this old Tweak 3D guide for doing the dual boot.

I've currently made the FAT16 & 32 partitions, and I'm installing Windows 98 on to the bigger FAT32 partition. God damn Win98 takes ages to install! On a VM it only takes 10 to 15 minutes; on this machine its been going for the last 5 hours, and It's only 79% done copying the files. 😵

Also, if there's any newbies like me reading this: After setup checks the disks, if you get "packed file is corrupt", or if it just hangs on "copying files", then copy the installation media from the CD to the HDD, and run setup.exe from the HDD:

A:\>c:
C:\>md win98
C:\>copy d:\win98\*.* c:\win98
C:\>cd win98
C:\WIN98\>setup

I was pulling my hair out trying to get setup to work. I tried two different disk images, burnt multiple copies etc. This was the only thing that worked. So lesson learned, don't even bother trying to run setup from the CD. 😀

Multi-boot with Win98SE, NT4, W2K, and XP and all using the NTLDR. The Ultimate Multi-Boot Windows Benching Machine

I see you have onboard SCSI. I suggest using a SCSI HDD and not IDE. Usually onboard SCSI controllers support larger hard drives.
I bought a dual PII 400 system back in 1998 with onboard SCSI. It was a really stable and expensive work horse. Those early Ultra2 LVD drives were really noisy, even when brand new.

phosgene wrote:

... CPU: 2x Intel Pentium II 300MHz SL2HA Processors RAM: 4x 256MB PC133 DIMMs ... […]
Show full quote

...
CPU: 2x Intel Pentium II 300MHz SL2HA Processors
RAM: 4x 256MB PC133 DIMMs
...

The Pentium II "Klamath" doesn't cache more than 512MB of RAM, so you might end up with bad performance exceeding 512MB. 😢

Kamerat wrote:

The Pentium II "Klamath" doesn't cache more than 512MB of RAM, so you might end up with bad performance exceeding 512MB.

Oh man I actually figured out my mistake tonight, and rushed back to this thread to profess my idiocy, but you got in first! 😀

You are right of course. I was sitting here thinking: "Why did Windows take so long to install? Why does this computer run like shit? Why does the CPU utilisation shoot up to 100% just by opening a single Explorer window?" Then I read the wiki article about Klamath RAM limitation.

I think I may end up getting later model Deschutes processors, so that I can max out the RAM this motherboard. For now I'm "just" running 512MB.

feipoa wrote:

I see you have onboard SCSI. I suggest using a SCSI HDD and not IDE. Usually onboard SCSI controllers support larger hard drives.
I bought a dual PII 400 system back in 1998 with onboard SCSI. It was a really stable and expensive work horse. Those early Ultra2 LVD drives were really noisy, even when brand new.

That's the plan, I have a 10k SCSI drive I would like to use. At this stage, I've decided to run Win98SE and Win2k, dual boot.

Not familiar with your motherboard but depending on the VRM you can probably go up to at least 600Mhz Katmai
WIn2k will play just about all your Win9x games, and is a lot more stable But I usually do install Win98 as well for Dos support and those few games that don't like Win2k at all.
As mentioned above, just install Win98 and then NT/2k Windows will set up the menu.
I'm not sure but I think C:\ has to be formatted as Fat16 if your duel booting with NT. 2K I know doesn't care

Progress! 😁

Those 300MHz Klamath processors are hot hot hot!

I haven't posted for a while because I've been fussing over video cards: 😦

I started with a Diamond Stealth 64, which works to start with; but when I try and bump the resolution up to 1280x1024 it outputs a video signal neither my Dell nor HP LCD monitors will recognise (they're both 1280x1024 60Hz screens). Trying to set the refresh rate to match the actual refresh rate of the screens also results in an unrecognisable signal.

I wasn't keen on that card anyway. So, wanting to test the AGP slot I dug my HIS Riva TNT2 M64 out of storage. I have to say that the VGA output on this card is absolutely awful. The output was all fuzzy even after setting the correct refresh rate. I tried different VGA cables, different monitors, but nothing helped. I felt like I was going cross-eyed looking at the screen. Maybe I just have a dud card or something? Anyway, back to the quest...

After doing some research, lots of people said that the VGA output is really nice on the Matrox cards, so I ordered a G400 off Ebay. Well the G400 arrived today, and god damn! This has to be the most crisp VGA output I've ever seen. If you put this side by side with a DVI output I'd have a hard time telling the difference. It even looks great after connecting the Voodoo2 in line, so needless to say I'm very stoked. 😁

chinny22 wrote:

I'm not sure but I think C:\ has to be formatted as Fat16 if your duel booting with NT. 2K I know doesn't care

This is true. NT4 doesn't recognise FAT32 and Win98 doesn't recognise NTFS, so you do need a FAT16 C:\ drive. I played around with a FAT16 C:\ a Win98 FAT32 D:\ and an NT4 NTFS E:\ drive, which works fine, but it was a bit too messy for me.

In the end I decided to keep it simple with three FAT32 partitions: Win98 C:\, Win2K D:\, and DATA E:\ where I keep all my drivers in case I need to reformat the two OS partitions. I decided not to use Win2K with NTFS in order make copying files between partitions easy.

The Ultra-Wide SCSI drive is also going like a champ. Slightly faster boot times than the IDE drive I was using before. Very pleasing clickity clack noises as the head tracks over the disk.

I'm currently waiting for my second Voodoo2 to arrive, and the nice new shiny case, which may not be to everyone's taste, but I think it'll be cool.

Cheers.

Oh, I forgot to mention! I had a very hilarious head scratching session trying to get the SCSI hard disk to work. 😁

The previous owner of the motherboard decided to spice things up a bit by setting SCSI controller's ID to 0, and set the "start unit command" of IDs 0 through to 7 as "no", giving a "device connected but not ready" error.

Not knowing any better I enabled the start unit command for ID 1, thinking that must be the disk, and went to partition it and install Windows. When I get to the drivers part of the Windows installation it can't find the CDROM drive. Lo and behold, the SCSI controller has gotten confused and mounted the hard disk on all IDs 1 through to 15. So three partitions, times 15 logical disks, equals 45 drives; and there's only 26 letters in the alphabet...

Don't ask me why it didn't do that in fdisk.

Hahaha oh man. So lesson learned: The default ID for an Adaptec SCSI controller is 7, and a Fujitsu SCSI hard drive is ID 0 with no jumpers.

phosgene wrote:

NT4 doesn't recognise FAT32 and Win98 doesn't recognise NTFS, so you do need a FAT16 C:\ drive. I played around with a FAT16 C:\ a Win98 FAT32 D:\ and an NT4 NTFS E:\ drive, which works fine, but it was a bit too messy for me.

In the end I decided to keep it simple with three FAT32 partitions: Win98 C:\, Win2K D:\, and DATA E:\ where I keep all my drivers in case I need to reformat the two OS partitions. I decided not to use Win2K with NTFS in order make copying files between partitions easy.

Did you read this thread? It will do exactly what you want and as elagent as you like. NT4 can read FAT32 partitions with additional software, e.g. like FastFat32 or NT4FAT32. Although I beleive NT4 is limited to about 7.8 GB for the primary partition where system folder is located.

feipoa wrote:

Multi-boot with Win98SE, NT4, W2K, and XP and all using the NTLDR. The Ultimate Multi-Boot Windows Benching Machine

feipoa wrote:

Did you read this thread? It will do exactly what you want and as elagent as you like. NT4 can read FAT32 partitions with additional software, e.g. like FastFat32 or NT4FAT32. Although I beleive NT4 is limited to about 7.8 GB for the primary partition where system folder is located.

I did read that thread you linked me to, and I appreciate the advice, but I'm not super invested in the idea of running NT4. I just wanted an OS that could take full advantage of the hardware, which Windows 2000 does, in addition to supporting FAT32 out of the box. So I'm quite happy with the Win98/2K dual boot setup that I have now.

Oh ok. W2K should run well enough on a PII 300. Below a P200, or there bouts, NT4 feels more suitable from a speed perspective.

W2K seems to perform quite well at this stage, but it is a work in progress. I may revisit NT4 if run into any performance issues with W2K. 😀

is it me, or do 333mhz chips just not exist?

phosgene wrote:

<snip> I started with a Diamond Stealth 64, which works to start with; but when I try and bump the resolution up to 1280x1024 it […]
Show full quote

<snip>
I started with a Diamond Stealth 64, which works to start with; but when I try and bump the resolution up to 1280x1024 it outputs a video signal neither my Dell nor HP LCD monitors will recognise (they're both 1280x1024 60Hz screens). Trying to set the refresh rate to match the actual refresh rate of the screens also results in an unrecognisable signal.

I wasn't keen on that card anyway. So, wanting to test the AGP slot I dug my HIS Riva TNT2 M64 out of storage. I have to say that the VGA output on this card is absolutely awful. The output was all fuzzy even after setting the correct refresh rate. I tried different VGA cables, different monitors, but nothing helped. I felt like I was going cross-eyed looking at the screen. Maybe I just have a dud card or something? Anyway, back to the quest...

After doing some research, lots of people said that the VGA output is really nice on the Matrox cards, so I ordered a G400 off Ebay. Well the G400 arrived today, and god damn! This has to be the most crisp VGA output I've ever seen. If you put this side by side with a DVI output I'd have a hard time telling the difference. It even looks great after connecting the Voodoo2 in line, so needless to say I'm very stoked. 😁

<snip>

That G400 is also pretty skookum as a roughly period-correct card for Direct3D games. Faster than the M64, actually. IIRC, the G400 MAX is around the same performance level as the TNT2 Ultra, plus it has EMBM for shinies.

Also - while it's not remotely period-correct, that 64-bit PCI slot could let you have gigabit ethernet or Firewire 800 at full speed. Firewire's fun for a lark, and kinda useful.