My Athlon 64 build adventures:

Part 1: It always starts with an idea. I see Phil's youtube video where he makes a cheap win98 pc using Asus A8V deluxe motherboard and I remember that I had the same motherboard. I used to have a pc with the same motherboard back in 2005 or 2006. I had a Athlon 64 FX-60 with the motherboard back then. I get an idea since the motherboard has all win9x drivers and it is a dual core cpu, so if I could install fast enough graphics card to the motherboard perhaps I could try to build a system that is fully win98se compatible, could dual boot to winxp and be fast enough to run even crysis in winxp. The next day I go to my storage and bring back my old motherboard and the cpu.

I still have one unused case that I could put the system in from correct time period, but first I want to test if the motherboard actually works. I start looking for cooler for the cpu, but then I remember I used to have the system in one of those huge thermaltake tai-chi cases back then which had integrated water cooling, so I had no idea where the cooler that that comes with the cpu is. I am going to have to buy a new one. Luckily new socket 939 coolers are still being sold so I order Arctic Freezer 13 cooler that seems to have good enough specs for the high tdp of the cpu.

Part 2: Few days later the cooler arrives and I can start testing the motherboard and the cpu outside the case. I get my old nexus NX-4090 400W power supply which is the only power supply I have from the correct time period and old keytronic ps/2 keyboard. I install 2 256mb sticks of PC-3200 ddr ram and a random pci graphics card to test the motherboard and everything seems to work fine and even bios battery seems to be good. I connect a small IDE hard drive and optical drive and do test installation of win98se and everything is still working fine.

Next day I go get my Geforce 7800GS which is the fastest AGP card I have that also has unofficial win98se drivers and Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm 40Gb sata hard drive which I planned to use for win98se installation when the build is finished. I also get Diamond MX300 sound card that I had recently found on ebay cheap. I put all the parts in the case including the nexus power supply. I am starting to think that this is such an quick and easy system to build. After everything is connected and in the case it is time to test the system again. I press the power button and nothing happens, not even a sound...

Part 3: I go through the system and check again that everything is connected correctly. On the motherboard there is a green light that is on so the motherboard is getting some power. I get another motherboard next to the case and connect the power cables to it. Again nothing happens when I try to turn on the other motherboard. I have to admit that my nexus power supply is dead. It must have died exactly when I installed all the parts to the case and tried to turn on. After checking the power supply more closely, I realize that it only has 15A 12V rail so installing faster graphics card might have overloaded the rail.

Only thing I can do is to order a new power supply. At least a new power supply should be more reliable in the long run. I order a new Seasonic 520W power supply for 60 euros. Next week the power supply arrives and I have to remove the motherboard from the case to be able to get the old power supply out and new one in. Asus A8V deluxe motherboard has 4 sata ports. 2 of them are connected to the VIA southbridge and 2 of them are connected to Promise sata controller. I have always had problems with the Promise controller on this motherboard model that when in windows and using hard drives connected to it, there has been random freezes that can last up to 10 seconds, so I only wanted to use the sata ports connected to VIA southbridge with this build.

Part 4: After everything is back in the case and everything seems to work, it is time to install win98se on the hard drive. First problem I encounter is that win98se installer doesn't detect the hard drive connected to the VIA southbridge. I go back to bios and go through the sata settings there and realize that currently disabled promise sata controller is the only one that has settings to change it into IDE mode. I connect the hard drive to one of the promise sata ports and turn on the controller in ide mode in bios and now win98se installer can detect the hard drive. Win98se installation goes smoothly after this and after installing Via chipset and sata drivers, I change the hard drive from back to VIA sata port. Windows works fine after this also and it is time for the other drivers next...

Unofficial (82.69) graphics card drivers seem to install without problems. Next problem I encounter is with the MX300 sound card. Windows doesn't want to install any drivers for it. (Diamond MX300 and win98se problem.) I try different drivers, different pci slots, different pc... etc during next several days. Forcing windows to install drivers gives some sound, but I also get errors in the vortex control panel by doing so. I am forced to give up on trying to use the sound card since I want the system to have fully working sound card. Next I swith to a yamaha ymf724F-V sound card. This time drivers from vogonsdrivers install ok and I have sound. On board network drivers install without problems too. Everything seems to be fine in win98se...

Part 5: I get "Windows protection error" and a reboot when trying to shutdown the computer or "Restart in ms-dos mode". I pretty much immediately suspect that it is because of the unofficial graphics card drivers and I find out online that other people using them have had similar problem with the drivers but I didn't find any solution. I edit the msdos.sys to make the system go directly to dos instead of going directly windows gui and configure config.sys and autoexec bat for dos. Then I install the yamaha dos drivers. I get the fm music but no dma so no sound effects in games when testing doom, quake and commander keen 4. Since this isn't meant to be a dos build, I don't think that this is a big problem. At least I can even play dos games with adlib support if I want to.

Next day I decide to do bit more research about the windows protection error online and eventually I find a thread where someone tells he has found a way to fix the error by editing a driver file to bypass the error. After doing bit of hex editing, I can now do both exit to ms-dos mode and shutdown the computer without the error and reboot happening. After this I run 3dmark01se and 3dmark03 and a few directx games in win98se to make sure everything is working when it comes to graphics with the unofficial driver and everything is working. Now it is time to go through my hard drive pile and find a hard drive to install for windows xp. I find a maxtor maxline III 300Gb sata hard drive. That would have enough space for some winxp games. I install the hard drive to the system and press the power button and system turns on but suddenly thick smoke raises from the system...

Part 6: I quickly walk to the open side of the case and I see that the thick smoke is coming from area of the hard drive I just installed. I flip the power switch of the power supply and quickly take my dog outside to the backyard that she doesn't have to inhale the smoke. I come back inside and there is quite bit of smoke in the room and I open all the windows in at my place. Next it is time to check the damage. Circuit board on the hard drive I just installed is blackened and even the sata power connector of my power supply is half melted. I double check that the sata power connector was correctly inserted, but you can't put it the wrong way, so I can't find the reason there. There must have been a short circuit in the hard drive itself. After making sure that the sata power connector melting had not caused short circuit in the connector itself I turn the computer back on and luckily everything else still seems to work same as before installing the second hard drive.

I went back to searching my hard drive pile and I found a hitachi 160Gb sata hard drive. This time there wasn't any smoke, but the VIA sata bootrom gave an error during post that the hard drive can't be initialized. I wanted to make sure the hard drive worked, so I hot plugged it into my main pc. I formated the hard drive and everything worked fine there. I did some research online and it seems that the VIA southbridge isn't compatible with sata 2 hard drives. I also found out that there is hitachi feature tool dos program that allows to change the hard drive mode from sata 2 to sata 1 and I downloaded it and made boot floppy disk for it.

The promise controller on the Asus A8V deluxe detected the hard drive, but the hitachi program didn't detect it there, so I had to find a motherboard that would allow the program to detect it. After going through couple of motherboards, I finally found a motherboard that would allow me to change the hard drive to sata 1 mode using the program and that motherboard was Asus A8R32-MVP. After changing the mode the VIA bootrom initialized the hard drive fine and I was able to install winXP there fine while using sata drivers from a floppy disk. After that everything just worked in winXP and there were no more problems. Benchmarked the system again in winXP using 3dmark01se, 3dmark03 and 3dmark05.

Part 7: Next day I installed crysis in winXP to see if it worked. It worked fine, but loading times were really long with just 512Mb ram. It took over 5 minutes just to load the first level. I decided to switch to two apacer 512Mb modules to get 1Gb or ram and after that load times were less than 30 seconds. The game was reasonably playable considering the system. I got 25-30fps with 1024x786 with medium settings and around 60 fps with 800x600 and low settings. Since crysis runs, probably most other winxp games are going to run too. I also limited win98se ram to 512Mb using himemx because after installing 1Gb of ram the computer just rebooted again when loading win98se.

After couple of days I decided to try getting dos sound effects to work again. I tried another version of drivers from vogonsdrivers, but the result was the same. After further searching online, I happened to find a different version of dos driver on a Russian site and I decided to try install that one. For my surprise it detected Port:220, IRQ: 5 and DMA: 1 during boot. The previous drivers had all said DMA: Disabled during boot. After that I had sound effects in dos. I tested doom, quake and duke3d and all had sound effects and worked fine with those sound blaster settings. I was happy I was able to get that work too and with that working the build was finished for now.

I ended up with a decent pc that gives off a faint aroma of burned plastic to remind me of everything I experienced during this build. I was suppose to be a very simple build with reasonably modern parts but things often don't go as you expect. I think it can run quite wide range of games like most games in dos, win98se and winXP. I am sure there are exceptions like games that don't like emm386 loaded, games that are speed sensitive and games that don't like the newer GeForce graphics card in win98se.

Parts in this build:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60
Asus A8V deluze (rev 2.0)
Nvidia Geforce 7800GS AGP 256Mb
Pair of Apacer 512Mb DDR Modules PC-3200 CL2.5
Yamaha YMF-724F-V sound card (A301-G50)
Seasonic 520W S12II-520 ATX power supply.
Seagate Barracuda 40Gb ST340014AS
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160Gb HDS721616PLA380
Panasonic 3.5 inch floppy drive
Plextor PX-708A optical drive.
Arctic Freezer 13 CPU cooler.
Unknown case with QC stamp from 2004

Future plans:

Possibly get 2Gb of ram for winxp if I find a good pair of 1Gb DDR modules.
Possibly replace the power supply with something from correct period if I find a good one.
Install a second sound card for windows only use.