I have one on my Matrox Marvel G400-TV, the only downside is that it blocks the neighboring PCI slot. It also has a limit of 1280x1024 output.

Fate smiled upon me today. I found an AOpen Pentium II system. It has a LX board in it, so i will put the SE440BX2 board in it but it is a perfect case for this project!!! It's beige, standard ATX, heavy duty steel, quality construction and looks great!

These are not my pics but this is what it looks like.

This is actually a mighty fine case for a retro system. Not the best case for air flow, but its got a place for a front intake. Populate it and make sure the PSU is acting as an exaust and you've gotta a case good enough even for a mid-end modern system. What I really liked about it was the placement of the AT connectors holes, the real speaker and support for full-length ISA cards. This would make it suitable even for older 386/486 systems (sans turbo button, and adapting the power button+ATX PSU). This case is very versatile.

Very nice. Looking forward to seeing how you go with this build 😀

I have one of those early ATX "Custom PC" Aopen cases. Love it, using it in a early pentium build.

Yeah I really like it, I don't think I could have done any better.

Found a Crucial (My absolute favorite brand of RAM) 128MB, PC-133, ECC, CL2, SDRAM DIMM. I thought it would be fitting for such a motherboard as the SE440BX-2. Let's face it, I can't be expected to play games 24-hours a day for years and have a cosmic ray possibly causing a bit flip in my RAM 😉 Now I might have to go SCSI too, probably not.

Might be overkill for this setup, but nVidia GeForce4 MX440-8X/MX460 is my choice. It's based on pre-GeForce 3 technology, the ultimate DX7 card.

GeForce 3 and later have slight compatibility issues in games like X-Wing Alliance, Final Fantasy VII/VIII, Falcon 4.0, No One Lives Forever, NFS: High Stakes/Porsche Unleashed, Darkstone.

Very interesting firage. What about drivers? Would I need to swap out different drivers for DirectX 5,6,7 games? The main reason I am going with the Matrox G400 is to avoid having to use different drivers that fix various issues in different games.

Hmm, no, I guess you can never quite get away with a single driver set for everything.

If I decide I need more graphics performance I will definitely look at this. Here is the difference in Quake3, pretty amazing.
Not 100% apples-to-apples comparison but pretty close.

GeForce MX440

Quake 3 Arena v1.17
Unknown CPU
1024x768x32
146 frames-per-second

Matrox G400

Quake 3 Test v1.08
Pentium III 600
1024x768x32
32 frames-per-second

Matrox G400 MAX

Quake 3 Test v1.08
Pentium III 600
1024x768x32
38 frames-per-second

Here is my list so far. I cannot seem to find the differences in DirectX 7.0 and 7.0a, any help on this? Everything looks to be coming together on paper pretty well, parts should start arriving soon.

I think this would have been a very nice system to have had in 1999.

Motherboard: Intel SE440BX-2

Released in late 1998, I believe by looking at manual

Hardware Revision:

754552-200 or later
754558-200 or later
A01450-200 or later

To support Coppermine CPU

BIOS:

P14 or greater (P17 latest revision)

To Support Coppermine CPU

Intel Chipset INF:

3.20.1008 (latest version to support 440BX chipset)

USB Drivers:

Universal USB Mass Storage Driver

CPU: Intel Pentium III 550E/256/100/1.65V Slot 1 (SL3XH)

Released October, 1999

RAM: Crucial 128MB, PC-133, CL2, ECC, SDRAM DIMM (Single Sided)

Video Card: Matrox Millennium G400 16MB SGRAM (AGP)

Released September 1999

Driver: 6.83.017

Sound Card: Turtle Beach Montego II (Dell OEM), Aureal Vortex 2 (PCI)

Released 1999, I believe by looking at the manual

Driver: Aureal AU8830 4.06.2041

Network: 3Com 3C905C-TX-M (PCI)

Released 1999, best guess

Case: AOpen CustomPC ATX Mid-Tower, beige

This particular case design is from 1998, I believe as it originally came with a Pentium II 333
The same steel case would have come with differing platic bezels according to year.

PSU: SeaSonic SS-300ES Bronze 300W

New manufacture

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003, 1TB (SATA)

Limited to 68,719,476,736 Bytes (64GB) with SeaTools

SATA to IDE adapter, the one Phil likes (JP103-5)

New manufacture

Optical Drive: DVD-ROM, beige (IDE)

Floppy Drive: 3.5", 1.44MB, beige

OS: Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition with no patches or updates
DirectX: 7.0 or 7.0a? Differences? Cannot search 7.0a on Vogons, only sees it as 7 0a

Very nice!

Liking your storage solution 😀

Also liking your CL2 SDRAM. II found that pretty much all decent CL3 PC133 sticks, support CL2 at 100 MHz. But I haven't seen many CL2 PC133 sticks, although the ones I use, run happily at CL2 (basically overclocking). Wouldn't mind having proper CL2 SDRAM though.

So Crucial is a brand to look out for?

I have used Crucial since the 90's and never looked back. It's Microns retail RAM. One of a few, if not only, that makes the RAM chips, PCB's and assembles them. They have great support as well.

Edit: Back when the big OEM's used all quality parts you would find Micron RAM inside.

look for these on the label

squareguy wrote:

DirectX: 7.0 or 7.0a? Differences?

ftp://ftp.physik.hu-berlin.de/pub/useful/dx7a … XF/dxreadme.txt - differences.

Thanks Gamecollector!

Speaking of DirectInput... I am thinking about a PS/2 optical mouse and an PS/2 IBM M, or clone, keyboard.

squareguy wrote:

I have used Crucial since the 90's and never looked back. It's Microns retail RAM. One of a few, if not only, that makes the RAM chips, PCB's and assembles them. They have great support as well.

Edit: Back when the big OEM's used all quality parts you would find Micron RAM inside.

Cool, thanks for the tip. Found quite a few CL2 SDRAM modules. Good to know.

squareguy wrote:

Thanks Gamecollector!

Speaking of DirectInput... I am thinking about a PS/2 optical mouse and an PS/2 IBM M, or clone, keyboard.

I found USB mice much better for gaming. I've heard that you can boost the PS/2 polling rate, but I found a Logitech MX518 or similar gaming mouse perfect for a Windows 98 Box. Much smoother than PS/2 mice.

Keyboard you can also go USB, just make sure USB and USB keyboard is enabled in BIOS 😀

squareguy wrote:

Here is my list so far. I cannot seem to find the differences in DirectX 7.0 and 7.0a, any help on this? Everything looks to b […]
Show full quote

Here is my list so far. I cannot seem to find the differences in DirectX 7.0 and 7.0a, any help on this? Everything looks to be coming together on paper pretty well, parts should start arriving soon.

I think this would have been a very nice system to have had in 1999.

Motherboard: Intel SE440BX-2

Released in late 1998, I believe by looking at manual

Hardware Revision:

754552-200 or later
754558-200 or later
A01450-200 or later

To support Coppermine CPU

BIOS:

P14 or greater (P17 latest revision)

To Support Coppermine CPU

Intel Chipset INF:

3.20.1008 (latest version to support 440BX chipset)

USB Drivers:

Universal USB Mass Storage Driver

CPU: Intel Pentium III 550E/256/100/1.65V Slot 1 (SL3XH)

Released October, 1999

RAM: Crucial 128MB, PC-133, CL2, ECC, SDRAM DIMM (Single Sided)

Video Card: Matrox Millennium G400 16MB SGRAM (AGP)

Released September 1999

Driver: 6.83.017

Sound Card: Turtle Beach Montego II (Dell OEM), Aureal Vortex 2 (PCI)

Released 1999, I believe by looking at the manual

Driver: Aureal AU8830 4.06.2041

Network: 3Com 3C905C-TX-M (PCI)

Released 1999, best guess

Case: AOpen CustomPC ATX Mid-Tower, beige

This particular case design is from 1998, I believe as it originally came with a Pentium II 333
The same steel case would have come with differing platic bezels according to year.

PSU: SeaSonic SS-300ES Bronze 300W

New manufacture

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003, 1TB (SATA)

Limited to 68,719,476,736 Bytes (64GB) with SeaTools

SATA to IDE adapter, the one Phil likes (JP103-5)

New manufacture

Optical Drive: DVD-ROM, beige (IDE)

Floppy Drive: 3.5", 1.44MB, beige

OS: Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition with no patches or updates
DirectX: 7.0 or 7.0a? Differences? Cannot search 7.0a on Vogons, only sees it as 7 0a

Really a nice and decent build. I like it.
If you can get hands on one or possible two V2, then I think the gfx system is the best you can do.
The only thing that holds me back from getting V2's are the price.
Even though I have a V2-Sli cable and a couple of loopback cables in the box'o hardware.