To answer some of your questions

1. That looks like a stock heatsink to me. It should be fine unless you plan on OC'ing it, but for extra assurance I'd get something with a fan on it. 😉

2. Theoretically FAT32 tops out at 2TB or something like that, but the Win98 version of FDISK doesn't support drives larger than 63GB give or take. As for Win98 itself, the limit is probably more like 137GB. Go for 63GB or less and you should be good.

3. No idea. Probably 137GB though.

4. Carmageddon is the DOS glide benchmark, IMO, though there are probably more demanding DOS glide games out there. Good luck getting the GoG.com version to work though. Just a thought though, maybe try copying over the installed files from the GoG version, then make a copy of "game.dat" (found in the game directory) and rename it to "game.cue", then burn it (while keeping it in the same directory) so you have a music/dummy install disc. I was examining "game.gog" and "game.dat" a while ago and found out that they were actually just renamed bin/cue files.

5. Unreal Tournament supports all of the 3D APIs you mentioned, and it even has a decent software renderer if you want to test the CPU's raw horsepower. 😁

6. Unreal Gold/Tournament, Quake I/II/III, old Blizzard games, some Build Engine stuff, Warlords III: Darklords Rising (worth it if you can find a copy! 😁), Magic The Gathering: Shandalar... ok this has pretty much devolved into a laundry list of my favorite late '90s PC games. 🤣

7. Like I mentioned above, Carmageddon MIGHT work if you play around with the files a bit. I'm fairly certain that most of the purely hard drive-installable stuff should work without any hitches though.

Thanks for the input!

I used the Western Digital Data Life Tools from the "Ultimate CD" and it prepared the drive (I tried a 600GB SATA drive through a SATA<>IDE adapter) for W98SE. 128GB is indeed the limit and the software mentions this. I now also know why there is talk about 137, it's the way drive manufacturers use 1000 as conversion rate, whereas it really should be 1024.

The 64GB SSD behaved "strange". So I'll check this out later and see what the issue us.

I ran into some resource issues and had to swap cards and then ran into an issue with looping sound 🙁 Reinstalling Windows again and hoping it will go away 😀

I will check out the games you suggested once everything is working.

Oh, another question:

The CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT in the root folder, are these the ones to use for booting into MS-DOS mode? Or are there separate ones...

I can't tell you much with regards to your questions. I'm a bit surprised you chose a Slot 1 solution instead of Super 7 though! 😜
1:The CPU should be fine. It also depends on how fast or slow the PSU fan moves of course. Is it Katmai (which is most likely) or a Coppermine?
The easiest way to distinguish between a Katmai and a Coppermine for Slot 1 is to see how much cache it has. Katmai has 512kb while Coppermine uses 256kb. Katmai's @ 500Mhz produce about 37W while a Coppermine @ 500Mhz produces only 16W (less then half!). Anyway, even if it's a Katmai, you shouldn't have too much trouble unless your PSU fan moves really little air.
2 and 3: What mr_bigmouth said 😁
The largest harddrive your motherboard can support really depends on what board you exactly use. Sometimes theres a BIOS update available to make it see larger harddrives.
5:256MB should be more then enough for 98SE. It's even more then enough for ME, but in this case I think 98SE is the better choice because of it's more widespread use and it's better 3rd party support in the form of unofficial service packs.
6:Definitely cover Unreal and QuakeII! 😁

Wow I'm finding this build frustrating 😢

The Audigy LS and AudioPCI both have this weird stuttering / distorted sound in RTCW. A Vortex 2 on the other hand and the plain Sound Blaster 16 work fine though. Are there any BIOS settings one needs to be aware off with PCI Sound Cards?

I find Windows 98 quite frustrating to be honest. Is this just how it is?

After removing the Voodoo 2 out of my system, all the games kept looking for it. I thought you could just choose between the Geforce and the Voodoo 2? Or is this not really the case.

I'm doing my third clean install, now with just the Geforce and Audigy. If this also gives me issues I'm going to throw it out the window 😵

Oh, I chose the Slot 1 system because it's easier to source and not as hard to work with. While a SS7 would be better, it's much harder to source and they can be challenging with Windows.

Tetrium wrote:

I can't tell you much with regards to your questions. I'm a bit surprised you chose a Slot 1 solution instead of Super 7 though! […]
Show full quote

I can't tell you much with regards to your questions. I'm a bit surprised you chose a Slot 1 solution instead of Super 7 though! 😜
1:The CPU should be fine. It also depends on how fast or slow the PSU fan moves of course. Is it Katmai (which is most likely) or a Coppermine?
The easiest way to distinguish between a Katmai and a Coppermine for Slot 1 is to see how much cache it has. Katmai has 512kb while Coppermine uses 256kb. Katmai's @ 500Mhz produce about 37W while a Coppermine @ 500Mhz produces only 16W (less then half!). Anyway, even if it's a Katmai, you shouldn't have too much trouble unless your PSU fan moves really little air.
2 and 3: What mr_bigmouth said 😁
The largest harddrive your motherboard can support really depends on what board you exactly use. Sometimes theres a BIOS update available to make it see larger harddrives.
5:256MB should be more then enough for 98SE. It's even more then enough for ME, but in this case I think 98SE is the better choice because of it's more widespread use and it's better 3rd party support in the form of unofficial service packs.
6:Definitely cover Unreal and QuakeII! 😁

Yup it's a P3 with Katmai core. It gets warm to the tough, but nothing serious, so should be ok!

The latest BIOS adds support for drives up to 128MB. So that's quite a lot of storage and so far the SATA<>IDE adapter has worked fine. HDD access it very fast, it's really the CPU that's holding things up now 😀

Cool, will stick with 256MB.

I'll answer some of your questions, maybe sidelining a bit here and there based on my own experience with 440BX and P3s in general:
1) You should install Powerstrip to select which video card you want to select in game. However, some games allow you to select which card you want to use without this utility, i.e. the NFS series up to NFS: PU I think. Some others I can't remember off the top of my head.

2) The CPU sans fan should be fine, since P3s don't require that much cooling and you've got a version with a beefy heatsink.

3) Windos 98 is a virus and pain in the buttocks in itself, and WILL make you have suicidal tendencies upon prolonged exposure to it's shitty self. But you need it cause this is a retro gaming rig. Win 2000 or XP just doesn't have the same coolness to it, as it's too easy and reliable. 😜

4) 256mb is enough, 128 a bit on the low side. Up to 512mb is OK though not needed.

5) ss7 is a bit weak for later games, you'll have bottlenecking with Unreal, HL, Kingpin etc. Games from 2000 will tank with it. Though it's an interesting platform.

6) If it was mine, I'd cover Kingpin: Life of Crime, NFS series from 2 to 5, HL1, Rayman2, Star Wars Pod Racer, and some Impressions city building games.

If it is full featured external controller 48bit LBA driver should work.

sgt76 wrote:

3) Windos 98 is a virus and pain in the buttocks in itself, and WILL make you have suicidal tendencies upon prolonged exposure to it's shitty self.

Just don't connect to internet.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

After removing the Voodoo 2 out of my system, all the games kept looking for it. I thought you could just choose between the Geforce and the Voodoo 2? Or is this not really the case.

So iiuc, you just remove the V2 without uninstalling it's drivers? If that's the case, then I'd say games would still look for the V2 since it's drivers are still installed. Why not just leave the V2 installed while switching to the GF? Will the GF not work otherwise?

Tetrium wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

After removing the Voodoo 2 out of my system, all the games kept looking for it. I thought you could just choose between the Geforce and the Voodoo 2? Or is this not really the case.

So iiuc, you just remove the V2 without uninstalling it's drivers? If that's the case, then I'd say games would still look for the V2 since it's drivers are still installed. Why not just leave the V2 installed while switching to the GF? Will the GF not work otherwise?

I didn't seen an uninstall option.

I have these reference drivers, you unzip them and through device manager, point to the drivers.

Unless I'm supposed to uninstall it through device manager?

Just about to test a fresh install of just the Geforce 440 + Audigy...

I have enough, at least for today 😒

Put the Voodoo 2 in, installed the drivers, reboot and it worked for a while. Tried the Wing Commander Prophecy demo, got an error then the system crapped out. Forced it off and restarted and was greeted with a message that the display device doesn't have enough available resources...

I don't think it's supposed to be this hard, so maybe the mainboard is dodgy. I did a memtest, so the RAM appears to be fine. But you just never know with these old parts...

I'm not sure I want to do a tutorial if this is so hard. Might just regroup tomorrow and do a video on D-Fend reloaded, MUNT, Bassmidi. You know stuff that actually works 😀

PS: Here is the Sound stutter issue in RTCW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb2LSJ9bUxo&feature=youtu.be

Lowering the details seems to fix it, but not really, as the issue returns when quitting.

No, I have a 98se partition of 184 gigs without having to patch anything. Get hb 9.9 and use the integrated bartpe based XP and format your drive with GUIformat.exe 😀 it will bypass your motherboard's limit.

btw: to the one who said your motherboard has to support it, me and a friend have a Pentium mmx 166 @266 rig which has a limitation of 8192 mb per drive but currently has two 40 gb drives working at their full capacity perfectly: One of them is for the OS + installing games and the other is for storing images of my cd games 😁

Try my trick mentioned above, (almost always works) or directly format your hdd from another pc 🤣

As I said earlier, HDD is not the problem, works fine.

Anyway, I'm not trying the same parts in another board: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/MS-6368.html#/?div=BIOS

Will see if I get the same problems or not.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Lowering the details seems to fix it, but not really, as the issue returns when quitting.

Try higher s_mixahead

Well I've thrown in the towl 😒 😢 😵

That other board was just as painful. Maybe I have the wrong drivers (latest), some weird hardware conflict or just bad luck. But this was such a frustrating experience.

I'm back with SS7 machines and pure DOS. Everything just works 😀

But some findings I'd like to share:

Both, my SS7 and BX440 BIOS support drives up to 128GB. W95 and W98 lets you create a 64GB partition, W98SE a 128GB partition. I've used a 640GB WD Sata drive for the tests.

The SATA<>IDE bridge works wonderful. Shame one bridge only drives a single drive, I might investigate if there are other options.

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

No, I have a 98se partition of 184 gigs without having to patch anything. Get hb 9.9 and use the integrated bartpe based XP and format your drive with GUIformat.exe 😀 it will bypass your motherboard's limit.

btw: to the one who said your motherboard has to support it, me and a friend have a Pentium mmx 166 @266 rig which has a limitation of 8192 mb per drive but currently has two 40 gb drives working at their full capacity perfectly: One of them is for the OS + installing games and the other is for storing images of my cd games 😁

Try my trick mentioned above, (almost always works) or directly format your hdd from another pc 🤣

Does this mean one could bypass the BIOS harddrive limitation of a 486 board this way? That would be awesome!

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

No, I have a 98se partition of 184 gigs without having to patch anything. Get hb 9.9 and use the integrated bartpe based XP and format your drive with GUIformat.exe 😀 it will bypass your motherboard's limit.

btw: to the one who said your motherboard has to support it, me and a friend have a Pentium mmx 166 @266 rig which has a limitation of 8192 mb per drive but currently has two 40 gb drives working at their full capacity perfectly: One of them is for the OS + installing games and the other is for storing images of my cd games 😁

Try my trick mentioned above, (almost always works) or directly format your hdd from another pc 🤣

You might be able to "see" all of the 184 gigabytes, but you won't be able to access anything beyond 128 GB. For that you need to install the 48-bit LBA patch.

Tetrium wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

No, I have a 98se partition of 184 gigs without having to patch anything. Get hb 9.9 and use the integrated bartpe based XP and format your drive with GUIformat.exe 😀 it will bypass your motherboard's limit.

btw: to the one who said your motherboard has to support it, me and a friend have a Pentium mmx 166 @266 rig which has a limitation of 8192 mb per drive but currently has two 40 gb drives working at their full capacity perfectly: One of them is for the OS + installing games and the other is for storing images of my cd games 😁

Try my trick mentioned above, (almost always works) or directly format your hdd from another pc 🤣

Does this mean one could bypass the BIOS harddrive limitation of a 486 board this way? That would be awesome!

Perhaps 😀 In that case you should format it from another pc that can load Hiren's boot Mini XP or has any other os with LBA48(XP sp2/sp3, veeeesta, 7)by running this guiformat.exe tool I mentioned(to format FAT32 partitions bigger than 32 gb)

Svenne wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

No, I have a 98se partition of 184 gigs without having to patch anything. Get hb 9.9 and use the integrated bartpe based XP and format your drive with GUIformat.exe 😀 it will bypass your motherboard's limit.

btw: to the one who said your motherboard has to support it, me and a friend have a Pentium mmx 166 @266 rig which has a limitation of 8192 mb per drive but currently has two 40 gb drives working at their full capacity perfectly: One of them is for the OS + installing games and the other is for storing images of my cd games 😁

Try my trick mentioned above, (almost always works) or directly format your hdd from another pc 🤣

You might be able to "see" all of the 184 gigabytes, but you won't be able to access anything beyond 128 GB. For that you need to install the 48-bit LBA patch.

It can be... I will try to fill my partition with some random crap and see If i can access files stored after the so called 128gb limit

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

No, I have a 98se partition of 184 gigs without having to patch anything. Get hb 9.9 and use the integrated bartpe based XP and format your drive with GUIformat.exe 😀 it will bypass your motherboard's limit.

btw: to the one who said your motherboard has to support it, me and a friend have a Pentium mmx 166 @266 rig which has a limitation of 8192 mb per drive but currently has two 40 gb drives working at their full capacity perfectly: One of them is for the OS + installing games and the other is for storing images of my cd games 😁

Try my trick mentioned above, (almost always works) or directly format your hdd from another pc 🤣

Does this mean one could bypass the BIOS harddrive limitation of a 486 board this way? That would be awesome!

Perhaps 😀 In that case you should format it from another pc that can load Hiren's boot Mini XP or has any other os with LBA48(XP sp2/sp3, veeeesta, 7)by running this guiformat.exe tool I mentioned(to format FAT32 partitions bigger than 32 gb)

I usually format harddrives (that I intend to use with 9x) in an XP rig anyway as I can do a quick format 🤣. But I have to use guiformat to achieve this?

And sorry for derailing your thread, Maulwurf 😊

@Maulwurf: Personally I don't understand why you are having the issues that you are having. Theres a good chance some BIOS settings will aid in reducing those pops and other sound issues, but I don't know the necessary tweaks from top of my head.
I can't recall ever having these issues myself.

As for uninstalling the Voodoo 2 drivers, isn't there an uninstall option located somewhere?

I can not watch your video from work, but

What is your PCI-Slot/Card to IRQ mapping list? (including onboard devices)
What is your latency setting? (cycles)
Did you run memtest to make sure it works reliably?

I would attach a fan to a Katmai.
FAT32 should work upto 2.2 TB, but I would limit partition size to 128 GB due to LBA28.

Tetriums theory is only true for Glide.
If a card is unplugged Win98SE keeps the drivers prepared and will load the same settings+driver when the card is plugged back. It is rather comfortable as long as the drivers don't interfere.

Win98SE has to be restarted often, I strongly recommend to use the manual short reboot whenever possible and TweakUI for Auto Network Login.