Allow me to present the specs of one of my boxen, currently named "Voodoo":
Pentium Tillamook 266 @ 300Mhz (mobile->desktop from HK)
VA-503+ Motherboard (epic board, IMHO, only downside is AGP2x only)
VIA MVP3 chipset (FU, I like VIA chipsets and have had a good experience with them)
512MB SDRAM (hell yeah! 😁)
ATI Rage 3D Pro AGP (probably will replace soon)
Voodoo 2 (Creative), 8MB iirc
3Com 3c509 100mbit NIC (PCI)
Promise 133TX IDE controller (PCI) (to get ATA133 on this UDMA33 board)
SB16-compatible ISA card (Vibra16-based, iirc, will prob. replace with proper SB16)
The machine has on-board USB, probably worth noting as a "feature" or "card" - works, too.
Windows 98SE with KernelEx, NUSB, etc.

This is one of those really confused boards that has an AT keyboard connector, a PS/2 mouse header, SIMM sockets and DIMM slots (choose, not mix), ISA/PCI/AGP, and early USB on-board. To top it all off, it has both AT and ATX power headers to choose from. I love these crazy boards that aren't quite ATX but are really close.

The board is Super Socket 7, and it supports up to a 124Mhz FSB (unfortunately the Pentium I have wouldn't boot with anything beyond spec, 66 or 75Mhz iirc, or Id've gotten it to 400Mhz or some such nutty thing - if there's any advice in that area I'd like it).

Anyway you'd expect this box to be a shining example of great Win9x hardware, right? It's era-appropriate, all of the hardware has drivers, it's got lots of RAM, but not "too much" (odd to have to say that, but it's 9x, and without the limitation patches..), and the CPU is a well-supported Pentium - though even faster than most. However, the machine doesn't feel very fast.

I don't know what is good to benchmark a machine like this with, so I don't have benchmark numbers to throw at ya, but if you make a suggestion of what to use I'd be glad to. The box just feels sluggish - not snappy and responsive as I'd expect a box like this to be.

I'm thinking that I'll either do 98Lite on there and switch to the 95 shell, or just outright switch to 95 - I'd really rather know why it's not as snappy as it should be, though, so if you could help me that'd be great.

Another problem - it's not a fully stable machine. Anything running 9x will have occasional crashes, I'm sure, but it seems like any time I use this one for more than an hour or two I end up crashing at least a program if not the OS. I suspect it's the third party updates and such, or I've just forgotten how "crashy" 98SE can be - I seem to remember it only crashing once a day or so when I used it on my main desktop last (back in 2002 I think was when I switched to XP finally from it). It could also be my overclock, but I doubt it - it's 266->300, on a chip that was designed to have less cooling than it has. Do you think I might need to find where to up the voltage on it even after such a small OC? Anyway I suppose to test if it's the CPU that's causing the crashes I should run some sort of stability test... what's good for a Pentium box, Prime95?

Edit: Think the slowness could be an IRQ-sharing problem? I.e., too many high-throughput items sharing? That's something I hadn't even thought of the whole time I've built/used this box - it's just such a non-issue with modern hardware that I'd forgotten that it was important on older PCI.

Edit 2: I was trying to find a manual for my board, and in that search ended up hunting down the current VIA driver site (it's http://www.via.com.tw/en/support/drivers.jsp) - on there I decided to download all of the applicable drivers for my board under any OS up to XP (since with a K3-450 or K2-550 it could run it alright, maybe even my P1-300, who knows). Thought I'd mention my findings so others don't have to scrounge around on the 'nets for it. There are a few old drivers and patches that aren't available on this page, but it has most of them. If you can't find something feel free to PM me (yes, this means you nerd in the year 2043 or so who can't find that RAID performance patch driver or etc.). For archival purposes my current email is yushatak<at>gmail.com - should be active indefinitely, but at the least it'd be a breadcrumb to find me in the distant future should you need the drivers I'm archiving now.