windows 2000 any version can support over 4gb with PAE with a small registry entry and 2003 server enterprise 32 bit doesn't need any tweeking. only xp and later os has issue. but i think this discussion is pointless. btw its locked for good reason because of bad 32 bit drivers cause instability due to resource conflicts.

I seem to be getting a mixed response here. I'm going to look into all of the suggestions that have been posted so far.

For the naysayers, whether or not it is a fool's errand is of no concern to me 🤣 I just want to give it a shot. I won't be spending ridiculous amounts of money on it though.

This thread might be of interest to you.

Re: My first "retro" PC - overkill Win98/XP build

Several people have built machines like this already before. If you know what you are in for it can be a cool/fun project.

EDIT: Also this one

Re: Win98/XP multi-boot on "modern" P55 chipset (BUILD LOG)

Whats Ridiculous amounts of money?

sirnephilim wrote:

Storage: If you have a spare PCI-E x4 or even x1 slot, why not try an M.2 to PCI-E adapter? Potentially 10 times faster than a SATA SSD.

Standard M.2 drives are still SATA drives, just in a different form factor, so they aren't any faster. NVMe drives are what you're thinking of, and in a modern "home" system they make no measurable difference in load times, responsiveness or game performance (look up NVMe drive reviews with real world benchmarks, not synthetics). In retro systems they certainly wouldn't be noticeable or necessary, and in fact most pre-Ivy-Bridge systems cannot boot from NVMe drives, no matter how you attach them.

NVMe boot support didn't arrive until skylake. I doubt very much that you could even get XP to boot of an NVMe drive.

Windows 98 is capped at 133MB/s throughput on any storage medium anyhow.

Depending on the south bridge controller, as SATA SSD will work fine even without drivers (provided DMA is enabled). Some storage controllers require a RAID or SATA driver. I have also had a lot of success with using SATA to IDE adapters on high speed IDE buses.

I would recommend the Kingston Digital SSDNow V300 series. They are cheap and very reliable.

I know some people have got xp to boot from nvme on msfn forums.

Anyways I had a lot of success using these https://www.ebay.com/itm/mSATA-to-2-5-PATA-ID … ass!20151!US!-1

I used them in 2 laptops, i don't see any reason it wouldn't work on a destop with a 2.5 to 3.5 ide adapter. This is probably the best way to actually go becasue then you can use whatever mini sata ssd you wanted, and any size you wanted. But I have found that 64 GB mini sata ssds have been a good value and offer good compatibility.

No reason I couldn't use two different drives. Older OS's can't read ext4 filesystems anyway.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I seem to be getting a mixed response here. I'm going to look into all of the suggestions that have been posted so far.

For the naysayers, whether or not it is a fool's errand is of no concern to me 🤣 I just want to give it a shot. I won't be spending ridiculous amounts of money on it though.

Check my build topic, you'll find there my journey how I build PC like you're interested in, with obstacles that I had during it.

My first "retro" PC - overkill Win 98/XP build

Ozzuneoj wrote:

sirnephilim wrote:

Storage: If you have a spare PCI-E x4 or even x1 slot, why not try an M.2 to PCI-E adapter? Potentially 10 times faster than a SATA SSD.

Standard M.2 drives are still SATA drives, just in a different form factor, so they aren't any faster. NVMe drives are what you're thinking of, and in a modern "home" system they make no measurable difference in load times, responsiveness or game performance (look up NVMe drive reviews with real world benchmarks, not synthetics). In retro systems they certainly wouldn't be noticeable or necessary, and in fact most pre-Ivy-Bridge systems cannot boot from NVMe drives, no matter how you attach them.

The real important thing is never run a swap file from an SSD. Unless it's an SLC. But then you just paid a thousand bucks to run a swap file

keenmaster486 wrote:

I seem to be getting a mixed response here. I'm going to look into all of the suggestions that have been posted so far.

For the naysayers, whether or not it is a fool's errand is of no concern to me 🤣 I just want to give it a shot. I won't be spending ridiculous amounts of money on it though.

The only things you should care about in your retro or "retro" builds are feasibility, price, and rule of cool. Feasibility is easy if you have a bit of the knack; just come up with a workable concept and source the parts. Price, well, the retro scene is mostly a bunch of 40+ engineers and the like with disposable income so what's good for the "average" retro gamer might not be good for you. And most important the Rule of Cool. If the rig does what you want it to do, if you have fun building it, and if it deepens your love and knowledge of retro hardware, then who gives a flying fork() what anyone else thinks?

I am "only" putting together a 98/XP multi-boot system now and already need to make some compromises here and there. But so far it has been "worth it" for my needs. If you want all-in-one, be prepared to make a ton of compromises - usually regarding A/V quality and compatibility. Such build would, for me, be crossing the line of "worth it". Also be prepared to sink countless hours into the process because it wont "just work" 😀

The real important thing is never run a swap file from an SSD. Unless it's an SLC.

That's very far from reality.

sirnephilim wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

sirnephilim wrote:

Storage: If you have a spare PCI-E x4 or even x1 slot, why not try an M.2 to PCI-E adapter? Potentially 10 times faster than a SATA SSD.

Standard M.2 drives are still SATA drives, just in a different form factor, so they aren't any faster. NVMe drives are what you're thinking of, and in a modern "home" system they make no measurable difference in load times, responsiveness or game performance (look up NVMe drive reviews with real world benchmarks, not synthetics). In retro systems they certainly wouldn't be noticeable or necessary, and in fact most pre-Ivy-Bridge systems cannot boot from NVMe drives, no matter how you attach them.

The real important thing is never run a swap file from an SSD. Unless it's an SLC. But then you just paid a thousand bucks to run a swap file

That isn't true either.

I've never moved the swap file from an SSD and every SSD I've used is still in active duty and has no less than 90% of its write endurance remaining according to SMART. That includes the 64GB Crucial C300 I bought for $150 back in 2010 (in constant use since then) and the second hand Samsung SM841 (840 Pro rebadge) I bought used on eBay in 2014.

SSDs are exactly the kind of thing you want your swap file on because of the improvement in random read\write speed versus a hard drive. You'd have to deliberately do things that thrashed the swap file (with an insufficient amount or RAM) for it to hurt the life of your SSD... and then would you want to suffer with running all that from a spinning drive?

Newer drives have less endurance per cell but the price per GB of high speed flash is dropping so fast it doesn't really matter.

i think he is saying you don't run a swap file at all, which is feasible if you have enough ram. he is still wrong though.

keenmaster486 wrote:

This might be fun, but I don't know how feasible it is. […]
Show full quote

This might be fun, but I don't know how feasible it is.

When I was a kid I used to experiment a lot with Pentium 4 hardware, and became well acquainted with the difficulties involved in trying to run DOS on newer hardware.

What I am wondering is, if I have the right motherboard, could it be done?

Here's what I want to try to do:

• Has speed of at least a Core 2 Duo, want to go as fast as I can with this concept though
• Support at least 4 GB RAM
• Fast storage - at least SATA SSD
• Can run modern Linux acceptably
• Can run modern Windows (Win7) acceptably
• Can also run old OS's acceptably (DOS, Win 3.1, Win9x)

Here are some problems I anticipate:

• DOS compatibility: VGA/EGA/CGA graphics, surprisingly not too much of a problem even with latest video cards. Sound compatibility will require an ISA slot, or at least a PCI to ISA bridge? Does that exist? Or maybe there is a PCI card that has enough compatibility to work for the most part.
• Windows 3.1, Win9x, WinXP - video and sound also. Sound is not a big issue as there are plenty of PCI cards that would work. Video is another problem; perhaps if I got my hands on a PCI Voodoo 3 3000 or TNT2 or something though, that would solve the issue.
• Storage - Windows XP might be the only problem here. You can add SATA drivers during the installation process, I know that much.
• Speed issues in DOS, Win9x. Not too worried about this. I know there are patches I can use for that sort of thing, and none of my favorite DOS games or programs are speed-dependent.

Here are my initial thoughts on the hardware I might use:

• Motherboard: This is the big question. Not just any will work; ideally it should support at least a Core 2 Duo and have an ISA slot, but does this even exist? If I decide to forego the ISA slot, is there such a thing as a PCI to ISA adapter and do they work in DOS? This is really only for the sound card.
• CPU: Should be at least a Core 2 Duo but I would like quad-core or better if possible.
• Graphics card: Good enough for modern stuff, lightweight games, etc. -- for DOS/Win31/Win9x I think I will need a separate graphics card! Perhaps in a free PCI slot I could but a Voodoo3 or something
• Sound card: Either an ISA card if the MB I use has a slot, or a PCI card. Is there such a thing as a PCI card that has enough DOS compatibility to work properly with most games?
• Network card: I have an Intel PCI gigabit NIC that I'm pretty sure has drivers for every OS on my list. Otherwise just a 3C905 or something will serve my purposes well.
• Keyboard + mouse: USB; I assume the chipset will make virtual legacy PS/2 devices for the old OS's

I know there have been similar projects in the past but I cannot find them anywhere.

Any thoughts?

The closest thing to a one-rig-rules-all that I ever came to was a late Pentium III system (the one in my sig). That system will run everything from the lowliest early DOS games to semi-modern games. I did give up on genuine DOS-sound and went with SoundBlaster-emulation for this system though. If you wanted a system with more reach towards mid-to-late 2000's - you could go up from 1 GHz to, in theory, a 1.5 GHz PIII or an Athlon XP/P4 at 2 GHz and still retain backwards compatibility. Latest video cards to properly support PCI/AGP-bus and with drivers for Windows 9x would probably be GeForce 4 / Radeon 9800-series. Any games you could/would run on those chips would be happy with 512 MB to 1 gigabyte of RAM so I doubt pushing for 2-4GB makes much sense. Windows 2K/XP could support that much, but you'd lose DOS.

Past P4/Athlon, Windows 9x (= DOS) isn't much good. The system can't support the new CPUs, cannot address the RAM, lacks support for large volumes etc. etc. If you go with Core- or i-series CPUs, you may as well be running your DOS-games with DOSBox (not a bad idea, either). But if you do that, you might as well disregard all the previous stuff and just build a modern rig without the artificial limitations set by your quest, so... yeah.

Currently rolling with an Athlon XP setup myself.

There are some games that will simply not work, that are timing sensitive. Highway Hunter and Traffic Department 2192 give all sorts of trouble because the CPU is too fast, even when turned all the way down to 5x100mhz. Turning off the cache doesn't cause them to work fully. TD will hang at the status screen. HH crashes for me after the intro.

Most games work great though. There aren't many I can't play. I'm using a motherboard that is KT133A with an ISA slot (not too many of these around though), and the SB16 works on it well. Sound cards work way better in general than on the P4+ISA boards.

If I was going to do an all in one machine for real, I would go lower. A PII or K6 machine using a motherboard with more particular cache options, maybe. There aren't many games I care about that are so old that they effectively require a 4.77mhz box, to say the least.

Warlord wrote:

i think he is saying you don't run a swap file at all, which is feasible if you have enough ram. he is still wrong though.

NVMe would be possible if it passed along the appropriate BIOS bootcode. Never tried it, so don't know if it exists or not. (Essentially, does the adapter just create a bridge to the PCI-E bus or does it host the device and supply bootcode? Or do variants exist for each?)

And yes, possible to run swap files from an SSD, it's not a good idea even if your drive has wear leveling. Each SSD has a lifespan measured in total bytes written and this factors wear leveling into that number. Granted on a WinDOS 9x machine the amount of data used or transferred diminishes immensely compared to modern Windows, it's still there. Plus RAM being as cheap as it is, you're often far better off maxing out physical RAM simply for speed's sake. Either way swap files aren't necessary or highly recommended.

Oddly enough I did note one funny thing in my 486 build... the 256KiB of cache on the motherboard transfers at around 30MiB/sec, around USB 2.0 speed factoring overhead. Blazingly fast at the time I'm sure, but kind of hilarious now. Which goes to say that an NVMe would be ridiculously overpowered on an older machine even if it could be made to work.

SaxxonPike wrote:

Currently rolling with an Athlon XP setup myself. […]
Show full quote

Currently rolling with an Athlon XP setup myself.

There are some games that will simply not work, that are timing sensitive. Highway Hunter and Traffic Department 2192 give all sorts of trouble because the CPU is too fast, even when turned all the way down to 5x100mhz. Turning off the cache doesn't cause them to work fully. TD will hang at the status screen. HH crashes for me after the intro.

Most games work great though. There aren't many I can't play. I'm using a motherboard that is KT133A with an ISA slot (not too many of these around though), and the SB16 works on it well. Sound cards work way better in general than on the P4+ISA boards.

If I was going to do an all in one machine for real, I would go lower. A PII or K6 machine using a motherboard with more particular cache options, maybe. There aren't many games I care about that are so old that they effectively require a 4.77mhz box, to say the least.

That was my experience at the time as well. Some stuff requires an 8088, 8086, 286, etc. ad nauseam. Mostly anything made for 386 or later has some kind of throttling though even then there are some gotchas - one spot in the game where it's insta-death to be running too fast. (I remember one in a Space Quest game where it was impossible to get through a maze in time.) This is kind of obvious since the 386 was when you started seeing radically different clock speeds for the same processor type. That said, the games that work in an Athlon XP in 9x would also likely work on a Core 2 on 9x provided you could get all the hardware working.

sirnephilim wrote:

Warlord wrote:

i think he is saying you don't run a swap file at all, which is feasible if you have enough ram. he is still wrong though.

And yes, possible to run swap files from an SSD, it's not a good idea even if your drive has wear leveling. Each SSD has a lifespan measured in total bytes written and this factors wear leveling into that number. Granted on a WinDOS 9x machine the amount of data used or transferred diminishes immensely compared to modern Windows, it's still there. Plus RAM being as cheap as it is, you're often far better off maxing out physical RAM simply for speed's sake. Either way swap .

The write cycles are measured in the millions, even on a cheap TLC drive. And when the cells do degrade, the firmeware controller will recruit reserve capacity, or it will simply report less capacity on the drive. That, and a new 120gb SSD cost 20$.

It is not that you wrong, it's just that it barely matters.

Also, any form of flash strorage (CF, SD) will degrade in the same way or worse. This is not a problem unique to SSDs. It doesn't really matter though, because almost all the time a flash storage is faster and more reliable than mechanical hard drives anyway.