senrew wrote:

Ok, next question.

Are there any games made for Win9x that will have speed issues with newer hardware or is that kind of thing a byproduct of past ages?

There are some yes. One that comes to mind is Shadows of the Empire, which will start to run too fast once you get up to 400MHz or so. It is somewhat rare though.

senrew wrote:

Do any of the later Voodoo cards have any specific incompatabilities with games that were written for the 2s? As for the second AGP card, I'm thinking a GeForce 6800ish. I have a soft spot for NV over ATI.

Unfortunately I'm no expert when it comes to the Voodoo series, but I think there are some ancient Glide games that only work on V1s, and some games that don't like V2s in active SLI mode. However, V2s seem to be the best choice for general overall (Glide) compatibility, when you consider the entire Voodoo range of cards.

Re: 6800, I've just had a thought. It's possible this card, although having official win98 drivers, may be geared up more for XP. It may be an idea to take a step back, and get a slightly older card. I think the Radeon would be a more appropriate choice. If you wanted to go nVidia, perhaps a Geforce 5950 Ultra? Also, there's always an AGP V5 to consider.

Lastly, it may be a good idea to mess about with hardware configuration profiles, to see how you get on with them. You could try this out now, with any PCI graphics card in conjunction with a more powerful AGP card - how about your MX card for instance?

Well, I can always stick the TNT2 in with the MX. They're both NV cards though, not sure how they'll like that.

I can mix the diamond stealth 3d pro 2000 with the MX...that'll be a good spread to see how they behave.

Of course, I'd need to build the rig first tough. My last desktop machine got fried by lightning so I am 100% laptop at the moment.

senrew wrote:

I can mix the diamond stealth 3d pro 2000 with the MX...that'll be a good spread to see how they behave.

Yes, try that combo. When I mix PCI with AGP, I steer clear of 2 of the "same brand" cards.

You'll have "fun" with hardware configuration profiles. 😈 🤣

Ok, I'm pretty set on my setup here.

Two more questions to finalize this setup.

Will an 8x AGP card work fine in a 4x slot? From what I've read, as long as I have the voltage keys matched, it will just function as a 4x card in that slot. Am I right?

I've been looking at the turtle beach sound cards. Is there a guide for which are preferred among the community here? I've had a couple votes for the santa cruz, but I'm not up on the part numbering scheme like I was with the soundblaster line.

Yeah AGP 4x slots will take anything 4x or faster (sometimes 2x too). I have a nice link in my signature that covers AGP compatibility in depth.

Only Turtle Beach card that I've used is their Vortex 1-based card called the A3Dxstream. Nice card but it only does 8 hardware 3D channels which is a limiter in newer games. Uses the same DOS driver as the Vortex 2 boards. It also has a daughtercard header that works in DOS.

Ok, Video card problem solved.

As for sound cards, the impression I'm getting is that the modern cards don't differ too much anymore the way they did in the DOS days. Any card as long as it's got the right feature set I'm looking for should suffice for windows gaming...right?

Or, did the Windows 98 era still have enough issues that sound wasn't yet commoditized the way it is now?

DOS sound card compatibility was problematic because there was no industry standard. The Win9x VXD driver model solved that.

You just want a card that has Win9x and probably XP drivers too, so you have options with it. Unfortunately Vortex cards don't work very well in XP. SBLive! is the best choice if you want wide OS flexibility. Vortex 2 is perhaps the best choice for Win9x-only.

Hi there, senrew, looks like we're after similar goal--building a pure Win9x gaming box. I posted this on my own thread just hours ago.

archsan wrote:

...you may find useful info from a surviving Win9x user-base on MSFN. Try this link for general Win9x hardware compatibility and this link for latest motherboards that support/have drivers for Win98. They have been my resource for configuring my 'final' Win9x system, so i recommend the site for anyone building a new PC for Win9x.

I'd like to dedicate a thread just for this purpose alone, but will make do with this post for now...

As for specifying any hardware requirements/specification, I think it's best to view things from the application side. In your case this is Win9x games (games for Windows 95/98/Me)-- and to breakdown them to more workable details:

Graphics APIs:
Direct3D 1-4 (early versions), but mostly are ver. 5, 6, 7, and 8
OpenGL 1.x
3dfx Glide (as said, there are Voodoo1 vs 2 vs Banshee/3/4/5 issue)
Speedy3D/Rredline (Rendition)
PowerSGL (PowerVR)

Sound APIs/extensions:
DirectSound
A3D 1.0, 2.0 (there is also 3.0 with Vortex2)
EAX 1-2, EAX 'AdvancedHD' 3.0 (i don't know of Win9x-only games that support EAX 4.0)

I recommend a newer board/CPU combo like the VIA K8x800-based mobo (AGP) + AMD K8/9-generation for a boost in raw power. As you seems to like P3 more than P4, i'd suggest a Core 2 Duo if you want to go Intel (only single core will be used for Win98 though), you can find a recommendation for Win98-compatible motherboard on the second link above. This is especially if you like to go for newer things and max out the performance of (most) Win9x games. And you may also use newer SATA drives (with a few issues to address, please read the first link)

On graphics, i'd recommend a Geforce FX series. I read that an FX5600/5800 has DX7/8 hardware, while on FX 5700/5900 and ATI 9600/9700/9800, DX7/8 units are 'rerouted' to their DX9 units. I can't confirm yet if it won't cause any problem with older DX 7-8 games (i've used a Radeon 8500 for Win98 before).

The Geforce FX series is also recommended over 6 series by Zeckensack for glidewrapper, because of its hardware support for 8-bit palletized texture. Another plus for a retro Win9x machine, i suppose. NVidia, at least in the past, usually has better OpenGL drivers than ATI (CMIIW), so it's another plus. (don't get me wrong--i actually really like ATI cards--9700 in particular)

Adding a V1 or V2 (with workarounds for older glide games) is always an easy option. As for the other renderers, usually there is a Glide version or D3D/OpenGL version of the game. It's up to you to decide if you want support for the other minor renderers.

😦

On sound, i think you can't go wrong with any Vortex2 cards which will give you nice A3D surround (i'll go for a card conforming to the reference layout though like MX300 or Aureal's SQ series) or an Audigy card (1/2 only, not 4) for EAX. Why not install both--if one caused problem to the other, just disable it temporarily in the Device Manager.

Whatever the result is in the end, please share with us how it goes for you. Good luck, friend... 😉

btw, as suggested in another thread, Audigy 2 works in Windows 9x. I just set that up last night. It never even occurred to me that A2 might have 9x drivers! Installed right off the CD.

gerwin wrote:

For windows 9X gaming I would also consider the praised Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soundcard. That is well designed soundcard with quality components.

I'm messing about with one now. It's inside an Abit KT7A board. I've noticed that when some music (and also some sound effects) begins to play, quite often you hear some "choppiness" and "stuttering". I've tried the soundcard in 2 PCI slots so far. The only other card I have in the system is an MX 440 AGP graphics card. Any ideas as to why this is happening please?

Everybody likes to rip on Creative, but yeah other PCI sound cards have problems too. I think it comes down to PCI bus congestion and latency issues. I think that it's safe to blame 3D cards for part of it because they like to tweak the bus latency timer so they have more time to work on their thing.

Get a PCI latency tweaker and crank down the bus time limits on each device. I've fixed problems by doing that. 64 clks should be good. The video card will sometimes be like 256 or even 512 clks.

Is there a guide anywhere for the Audigy series? Or just recommendations?

I don't really get what you're asking for, but these may give you a start, if you got lost in google... 😁

A review which clearly says it has out-of-the-box support for Windows 98SE.

If you're looking for good examples of EAX, find titles that support EAX AdvancedHD--a good example is JK2: Jedi Outcast with a specific Audigy patch (i don't have a link, you have to search it yourself).

You may even use it (Audigy1/2) for DOS...

eck wrote:

Yes, the Audigy 2 ZS can be made to work with the SBLive/Audigy 1 DOSDRV folder drivers in MS-DOS Mode. […]
Show full quote

Yes, the Audigy 2 ZS can be made to work with the SBLive/Audigy 1 DOSDRV folder drivers in MS-DOS Mode.

Imagine my surprise when I set it up and it actually worked! I had been frustrated the last couple of years with my 400FSB Socket A boards from both Via and SiS chipsets that didn't allow non-maskable interrupts so the SBEINIT.COM, even though initializing, would not be able to process audio through the hardware.

My Epox EP-8KRAIPRO, I've discovered, does work with it.

The Audigy 2 ZS needs an extra AUDIGY12.EXE (I think it stands for Audigy 1 to 2) line added after SBEINIT.COM. The 2 files I downloaded some time ago from a site that had it will adjust the driver to use the Audigy 2 hardware layout. It's different than the SBLive. ...

Read more on his post here.

If you decide on Audigy 2 ZS, please pay attention this post onward (same page as above) for best Win98 drivers.

Hope these help. 😀

Yep, that's what I was looking for. Thanks.

@archsan, good post. 😀

retro games 100 wrote:

good post. 😀

FWD to those MSFN guys, they rock! I just happened to know the keywords to google it out 😁

I've never used my ol' Audigy for DOS myself so i may give it a try too.