Well, say in a simple way, too fast, too new, too terrible!

As long as you plan to do some DOS stuff, firstly, choose a Intel's CPU under 266MHz, or an AMD's CPU not faster than 500MHz, and maybe a Cyrix/VIA's CPU up to 733Mhz(??), if you don't want to use some slowdown software or various patch files.

Secondly, still for dos gaming, please choose an ISA sound card. It'll save you a lot of meaningless time. If you insist to PCI, try sb live! series. Of course, a wavetable ( MIDI ) daughtercard is perfect.

And then, for dos gaming again, you need a opitcal drive at least provides the analog out, no matter CD or DVD drive, if you want to play the CD track correctly in the games( such as Quake ).

Then let's talk about the graphic card. Well, if you need the correct fog effect in some old 3D games, please focus on 3DFX and nVidia. Regarding the nVidia, ignore any GPU newer than FX series. On the nVidia side, the most balanced GPU IMO is GeForce4 series.
The FX series, well, it has good performance, but really confusing people. Some games are played well with one version of driver, and others just need another version. In my opinion, sadly, there's no perfect thing on FX series.
Actually, there's no perfect graphic card on DOS/Windows98 platform. No matter which card you choose, you'll still find some incompatible 3D games which have various problems.
So my suggestion is, keep two or three platfroms with different configurations to play different era games 😁

Regarding the memory thing, just keep in mind, the Windows98 doesn't natively support the harddisk larger than 128GB. And although the motherboard sometimes supports larger memory, however any memory larger than 256MB is actually meaningless.

So, have fun~

Agreed. Particualrly as you're new to this game *and* the hardware is not known-good, don't try to run before you can walk.

What you have there is an excellent Windows XP machine with my personal favorite Socket 939 platform. It's uniquely flexible with AGP and PCIe (without the nasty compromoses of the Via-based "AGP"+PCIe boards) allowing for all kinds of combinations. The Epox board is a solid nForce3 AGP board.

Now, it *can* run Windows 98, but as stated, that won't be simple. You'll need to patch the installer with SATA drivers, you'll need RAM patches if you want to run at >512MB (as you don't have smaller DIMMs than 1GB), you'll need USB patches. Now, none of that is impossble but it's more involved than just plug&play. Some of the video cards you have have Windows 98SE drivers, so it's possible. Same goes for the AC'97 audio (not the X-Fi) and onboard LAN. The smaller HDDs will work. That will give you an insanely fast Windows 98 computer with lackluster sound, which could be remedied with a simple Sound Blaster Live or Audigy (2), or Aureal 2 card if you want something more Win98-specific.

As for DOS... run a modern OS on this hardware and use DOSbox. Again, it can be done on bare metal, but with even more compromises and issues. Its an x86 CPU and the motherboard still has a PC-compatible BIOS so DOS will run. The FX-series was nVidia's last to offer good VESA SVGA BIOS support, so that's OK. There's a DOS SB emulation driver for AC'97 that will give you Sound Blaster 16 sound. But... you will face speed issues. DOS software talks directly to the hardware and that ia frequently speed-sensitive. No DOS programmer considered the possibility that their software would be run on >2GHz CPUs. In particular sound can get corrupted but you can also have visual glitches or the computer will just hang. Or the game just runs so fast there's no human way to play it. Then there's memory. DOS memory management is a (big) topic on its own. DOS can only directly access the first 640k of RAM so that 'conventional memory' area is key. Having to run a TSR driver for sound reduces that so some games will not be able to run, despite having literal Gigabytes free. Or will force you to say unload CDRom or even mouse drivers to do so. On the other side, too much memory is also a problem. A lot of DOS games run routines to check for free memory. They were not made with Gigabytes or even tens of Megabytes in mind - more than 16MB is basically useless in DOS - so frequently give incorrect results if you have too much memory, telling you you have insufficient memory and refusing to run. I've seen this happen with 64MB, let alone multiples of that. Now, you can limit the amount of available XMS in the memory manager needed for SBEMU, so it's possible, but requires tweaking. Storage is also an issue. You will need a DOS that supports FAT32 to be able to have partitions over 2GB in size. You could however run DOS entirely from CF-card, as unlike Windows it doesn't use a swap file that kills flash media. So yes, it's possible. But what do you get? A DOS install so fast a lot of games crash or glitch and a lot of the rest are unplayable.

As you're a beginner, do yourself a favour and learn the basics on more-or-less period correct combinations. First run software on hardware it was designed to support. Learn DOS on a system with ISA cards, learn Windows 98 on hardware with official drivers and manuals for it. Conversely, test unproven hardware with software you know will run it without fiddling. Once you're familiar with that and have hardware you know you can reliy upon, you can choose to push the envelope.

Four small observations:
1) Get yourself a smaller amount of RAM. You should be able to find a 256 meg DDR1 (or 2x128) module somewhere (I managed to find a 256 DDR2...), and that means you don't need to worry about the Win98 patches for too much RAM, etc.
2) The X-Fi is way, way too new for DOS/Win98/etc.
3) Out of all the video cards you listed, the FX5600 is probably your best bet...
4) Stick to PATA, especially as you already have a decent set of PATA hardware.

With that selection of components you'll have some challenge getting an actual win 98 and DOS installation working without glitches and problems. i'm sure it can be done though.

also, is this truly the aim? are you genuinely wanting to experience the win 98 and DOS operating systems?

if its more that you have games you would like to play then the quickest path from here to playing would be to put together something suitably compatible from your collection of components. Then install windows XP (or 7, it would work with 7), then get the late 90's games you want to play and install them - where there are issues there are (in most cases) workarounds, often no more than a patch and sometimes just setting compatibility mode works fine. for the DOS games use dosbox. As bonus you can also play almost any early to mid 2000's windows game too

I know this defeats the idea of having a 90/dos machine to some extent, but if its the experience of playing the games you are after then it can be achieved fairly well on a (more) modern machine.

As mentioned before, stick below 512 MB RAM and don't use an HDD that is above 128 GB. Otherwise, you will be needing third-party patches. For sound, I suggest getting an SB Audigy 2 which has some DOS support and works with SBEMU.

Regarding video card, either the GeForce FX 5600 or Radeon 9600 XT. The Radeon is more adequate with what you have but the GeForce FX has better DOS compatibility. Avoid the GeForce 6800 GT due to the poor quality of late ForceWare drivers for Windows 9x, that card is better suited for NT-based Windows.

Honestly though, if you can, better look for something like a Slot 1 or Socket 370 platform (preferably with ISA slots) which may fulfill your purpose. DOSBox should run on modern hardware easily anyway given that it is an emulator.

"also, is this truly the aim? are you genuinely wanting to experience the win 98 and DOS operating systems?"
I guess its a 40+ year old crisis or something. I want to re-live my pentium 100/K6-2/P2 days, fiddeling with the autoexec.bat and so on. But i dont really remeber much... just that putting stuff in the correct order made everything work? =)

ok, ill buy smaller ram, looks like they are supercheap on ebay.
Ill be on a lookout for cheap soundcards with 'some' support...

Ill might play some games, maybe some classics that i never played back then. But i guess getting it to work is the real "fun".
Yes i know i can play them in emulators... But i just want a real machine and i want it cheap. 😉

So if i understod everything correct, this is an ok starting point:
EPoX EP-9NDA3J
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
LEADTEK FX5600 256MB AGP
AC97
2x128MB RAM

(Guess i can build a XP machine also then, later, if i want to. yey!)

That board still has no ISA slots so if you are intending on doing real dos gaming, rather than emulation or dos-in-windows it really isn't ideal.

hbsbh81 wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:58:

"also, is this truly the aim? are you genuinely wanting to experience the win 98 and DOS operating systems?" I guess its a 40+ y […]
Show full quote

"also, is this truly the aim? are you genuinely wanting to experience the win 98 and DOS operating systems?"
I guess its a 40+ year old crisis or something. I want to re-live my pentium 100/K6-2/P2 days, fiddeling with the autoexec.bat and so on. But i dont really remeber much... just that putting stuff in the correct order made everything work? =)

ok, ill buy smaller ram, looks like they are supercheap on ebay.
Ill be on a lookout for cheap soundcards with 'some' support...

Ill might play some games, maybe some classics that i never played back then. But i guess getting it to work is the real "fun".
Yes i know i can play them in emulators... But i just want a real machine and i want it cheap. 😉

So if i understod everything correct, this is an ok starting point:
EPoX EP-9NDA3J
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
LEADTEK FX5600 256MB AGP
AC97
2x128MB RAM

(Guess i can build a XP machine also then, later, if i want to. yey!)

Real machine and cheap is a combination that doesn't really work these days. Unless you manage to find someone throwing out their old stuff who doesn't care to look up ebay prices , or you happen to be extremely patient and only go for very good deals but that can take a while.

I guess either go for some emulation options like sbemu to minimise the cost or select the cheapest components possible but option 2 might compromise compatibility with certain games ie not having an isa sound blaster or a 3dfx card and instead having some off brand solution, which is why emulation is not a bad idea and gives the most bang for the buck.

AppleSauce wrote on 2024-05-10, 00:20:

hbsbh81 wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:58:

"also, is this truly the aim? are you genuinely wanting to experience the win 98 and DOS operating systems?" I guess its a 40+ y […]
Show full quote

"also, is this truly the aim? are you genuinely wanting to experience the win 98 and DOS operating systems?"
I guess its a 40+ year old crisis or something. I want to re-live my pentium 100/K6-2/P2 days, fiddeling with the autoexec.bat and so on. But i dont really remeber much... just that putting stuff in the correct order made everything work? =)

ok, ill buy smaller ram, looks like they are supercheap on ebay.
Ill be on a lookout for cheap soundcards with 'some' support...

Ill might play some games, maybe some classics that i never played back then. But i guess getting it to work is the real "fun".
Yes i know i can play them in emulators... But i just want a real machine and i want it cheap. 😉

So if i understod everything correct, this is an ok starting point:
EPoX EP-9NDA3J
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
LEADTEK FX5600 256MB AGP
AC97
2x128MB RAM

(Guess i can build a XP machine also then, later, if i want to. yey!)

Real machine and cheap is a combination that doesn't really work these days. Unless you manage to find someone throwing out their old stuff who doesn't care to look up ebay prices , or you happen to be extremely patient and only go for very good deals but that can take a while.

I guess either go for some emulation options like sbemu to minimise the cost or select the cheapest components possible but option 2 might compromise compatibility with certain games ie not having an isa sound blaster or a 3dfx card and instead having some off brand solution, which is why emulation is not a bad idea and gives the most bang for the buck.

Thin clients are another option. Some of them will run DOS and Windows 98 natively and can be found for fairly cheap. Now, they have some limitations, as you're not going to fit a Voodoo into them or a Sound Blaster 16. Nonetheless, I think they are a great option for someone looking for a little more than emulation. They can also be tucked away in a drawer when you're not using them.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-05-10, 00:28:

Thin clients are another option. Some of them will run DOS and Windows 98 natively and can be found for fairly cheap. Now, they have some limitations, as you're not going to fit a Voodoo into them or a Sound Blaster 16. Nonetheless, I think they are a great option for someone looking for a little more than emulation. They can also be tucked away in a drawer when you're not using them.

Which of the good thin clients are still plentiful? When I looked on eBay a while back, it seemed like the most frequently-talked-about thin clients for DOS/98SE were basically unobtainium...

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-10, 00:41:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-05-10, 00:28:

Thin clients are another option. Some of them will run DOS and Windows 98 natively and can be found for fairly cheap. Now, they have some limitations, as you're not going to fit a Voodoo into them or a Sound Blaster 16. Nonetheless, I think they are a great option for someone looking for a little more than emulation. They can also be tucked away in a drawer when you're not using them.

Which of the good thin clients are still plentiful? When I looked on eBay a while back, it seemed like the most frequently-talked-about thin clients for DOS/98SE were basically unobtainium...

The Wyse CX0 can still be bought for cheap. It's a fun little DOS machine and you can get sound working with SBEMU. It has its drawbacks, as there isn't GPU driver support for Windows 98 and it doesn't have a parallel or serial port. While it might not be an HP T5710, it's still a great one to start with.

Status:
I ordered a ESS Solo-1 on ebay, which will hopefully give me what i want?! It was about 30€ with delivery so not supercheap, but ill take a chance. If i remember correctly there was an ESS soundcard in my P100 so maybe it will be the sound i was looking for. 😉
So im waiting for that and the RAM.
In the meantime i have reduced the speed of CPU to 1000mhz in bios. Still a bit to powerfull, but its something at least.
There was settings that should take me down to 800mhz, but then it wouldnt boot. I guess i have to fiddle around a bit more and see if i can get it working.

Can someone explain what the HT option does with these old systems? i can choose like 1x,2x,3x,4x or auto.
Does it only have to do with the memory only?

hbsbh81 wrote on 2024-05-10, 09:57:

Status:
I ordered a ESS Solo-1 on ebay, which will hopefully give me what i want?! It was about 30€ with delivery so not supercheap, but ill take a chance.

That's pretty steep for one of those, but it is one of the most compatible PCI sound cards. However unless your board supports one of a number of exotic DMA compatibility modes (which I'm pretty sure it doesn't), it requires a TSR driver in memory, just like SBEmu does, so doesn't add anything over using integrated sound. What exactly do you want that you do expect this card to deliver that AC'97 wouldn't?

If i remember correctly there was an ESS soundcard in my P100 so maybe it will be the sound i was looking for. 😉

Highly unlikely. P100 is a CPU from early 1994 and the ESS Solo-1 is from late 1997. Back in 1994, sound cards were all ISA, as DOS (which was the default then) didn't play nice with PCI. You almost certainly had an ESS 688 or (if bought in 1995) 1688 or 1868 chips. Same basic innards, but ISA interface instead of PCI, which made all the difference.

So im waiting for that and the RAM.
In the meantime i have reduced the speed of CPU to 1000mhz in bios. Still a bit to powerfull, but its something at least.
There was settings that should take me down to 800mhz, but then it wouldnt boot. I guess i have to fiddle around a bit more and see if i can get it working.

That should be fine for Win98SE. Still too fast for a lot of DOS stuf though. Disable L1 and L2 ("Internal" and "External" in some BIOSs) cache for much more of a slowdown.

Can someone explain what the HT option does with these old systems? i can choose like 1x,2x,3x,4x or auto. Does it only have to do with the memory only?

That's not old, that's one of the new features. It's about the Hypertransport interconnect between CPU and chipset used by Athlon64 CPUs. Check specs of your CPU to see what is supported. Don't go higher than that. You could try to lower it to lower performance, but tbh I'd doubt this would introduce a significant bottleneck.

"That's pretty steep for one of those, but it is one of the most compatible PCI sound cards. However unless your board supports one of a number of exotic DMA compatibility modes (which I'm pretty sure it doesn't), it requires a TSR driver in memory, just like SBEmu does, so doesn't add anything over using integrated sound. What exactly do you want that you do expect this card to deliver that AC'97 wouldn't?"
Darn, ok, we'll see how it goes.

"You almost certainly had an ESS 688 or (if bought in 1995) 1688 or 1868 chips."
Probably, ESS audiodrive or something like that and it might have been integrated into the motherboard.

Athlon 64 underclocking below 1000 MHz

That solved the problem. CPU now at 800mhz, it was related to the HT setting.