Hi,

I'm now working on my (affordable) Dream Win98-Retro-PC. I also got an Win7 and WinXP "Retro" PC and I plan to build an DOS and maybe a Win95 PC too, so the target should be to get the best performance and compability for games from 1995-2001 (Win95 to WinXP era) or atleast 1997-2001.

Back in the days I've used first a Pentium 2 166MHZ, later an AMD K6III 450 + Voodoo3 2000 and after that an Athlon XP 1700+ & Geforce 2 Ti.

Only some parts of the Atlon XP PC survived, so I tried to get them working first. I found an...
- DFI AD70-SR SocketA mainboard with KT266 chipset
- 2x 256MB DDR 266 DIMMs
- Athlon XP 1700+ CPU
- stock heatsink
- Palit XpertVision Radeon X850 XT 256MB AGP graphiccard with zalman heatsink mod
- noname PCI-SATA-Controller
- 1x Gbit PCI-LAN card (TP-LINK TG-3269 Rev 2.0)
- 2x 100Mbit PCI-LAN cards
- CD Drive,
- 2x CD burner
- DVD drive
- DVD burner
- Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 soundcard
- Soundblaster CT4810
- my old blue Chieftec Dragon bigtower
- around 25 HDDs from 8 to 500GB.

At first I wanted to use the old motherboard, CPU, RAM, Terratec soundcard, graphiccard, Gbit-LAN card and CD-Burner. Only a PSU and floppy drive was missing.

So I searched the neighborhood and found someone who wanted to sell a working computer for 30€. I bought it because it has the same Chieftec case I used back in the days, but instead of a blue bigtower it was in black (more my taste today), sound-insulated and just an midi tower and not that damn gigantic that it wont fit under a table.
Also it got the Seasonic 400W PSU and a black floppy drive I needed. The 80GB HDD was also nice, because I didn't know if one of my old HDDs is still working.
I put all together and started the pc, but is doesn't booted. I tried to remove everything not essential for operation, but it still didn't worked. So I thought maybe my old mainboard isn't working anymore. The PC I just bought got an Socket A mainboard with an Duron CPU but it wasn't compatible with my old Athlon XP and RAM (200MHz FSB).

So I was looking for a new mainboard. I found someone who was selling an complete but not working computer for 25€ with an 1333MHz Athlon and a Soundblaster Live! 5.1 Platinum soundcard. PhilsLab said that the Soundblaster Live 5.1 is the best Win98 soundcard and it was even the rare and biggest 500€ version with frontpanel and remote. So I needed to buy it, whatever else might be in that PC.
I disassabled it at home and I found a MSI K7T266 PRO2-RU mainboard, 2x 512MB DDR 266MHz CL2 Kingston RAM and a firewire pci-card. Thats twice the RAM I got before, it is CL2 instead of my CL2,5 DIMMs and the mainboard is even better then my old mainboard. It got all the stuff like RAID but it also got USB2 and its also from late 2001, so it fits perfect in the timeline. 😀
The Case, probably defect PSU, white floppy drive, 100Mbit lancard, cd burner and a Palit GeForce4 MX440 I dont need.

I also got a spare 120GB SSD so I bought a IDE-to-SATA-adapter but that was totally unreliable. A new one on the way.
And now I got 6 CD/DVD drives but all are white...so I bought a black IDE DVD Burner for 2€.
And I got an 17" CRT for free.

I tried to use the Gbit LAN card, but as soon as I insert it, the PC wont start, so I removed it...I could use one of the 100Mbit cards but I can't find drivers and Gbit LAN cards from 2001 are hard to find.

The PC was booting now and I installed Win98, all Updates, community patches, drivers etc.

The BIOS battery was dead so I bought a new one and replaced it. But I got into another problem.
Now the mainboard wasn't able to identify the CPU. At boot it labels the CPU as a Athlon 1333 and not as a Athlon XP 1700+ like before. I tried to change the setting like multiplicator, FSB etc but as soon as I opened that part of the BIOS the PC freeze. I googled and stumbled on someone who had the same problem and the problem was a unstable PSU. I looked at the specs of my PSU again and saw that the 400W Seasonic PSU got most of its power on the 12V rail but Mainboards of that time mostly use 5V because the P4-Connector was just used 1 year later. So I was looking for a power supply with more then much more then 20A on the 5V Rail. I looked online but no new PSU has nearly enought 5V power if you don't want to buy a PSU with 850W or more. Fortunately I looked into my WinXP PC and found an 400W "Be Quiet! BQT P4-400W-SW1,3" PSU with 40A on the 5V rail and it's core2duo and 8800GTS dont need much 5V power, so I just switched both PSUs and all was working fine. I was then able to change the FSB from 100 to 133 MHz without freezes and that fixed the problem with the CPU.

So what I got in the end is:
Mainboard: MSI K7T266 PRO2-RU with RAID, USB2 and support for Athlon XPs um to 2100+ (from 2001)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (AX1700DMT3C) but a 1800+ (AX1800DMT3C) is on the way (fastest Athlon before WinXP release) (from 2001)
GPU: Palit XpertVision Radeon X850 XT 256MB AGP (from 2005/2006)(not working...driver problems...maybe I should buy a Geforce Ti 4200 or 4600 even if they didn't fit in the timeline)
Soundcard: Soundblaster Live! 5.1 Platinum (SB0060 + SB001OC) from 2001
Case: Chieftec Dragon DX-01BD-U-OP Midi tower (black, silenced)
PSU: BeQuiet BQT P4 400W-S1,3
drives:
-80GB HDD (Maxtor 4D080H4 from 2002)
-120GB SSD (not working now, but new IDE-to-SATA-adapter (the one Phil recommended) is on the way)
-black 3,5" floppy drive (NEC FD1231H from 2006)
-black DVD burnner (Lite-On DH-20A4P06C from 2009)

What I need next is a new graphiccard, a new Gbit lan card, a keyboard + mouse, stereo speaker and a better monitor...but that trinitron CRTs I used in my childhood are sooooo expensive...I can't afford them.