philscomputerlab wrote:

Fascinating stuff these incompatibilities. I've never seen the issue with the black lines. What game and cards would trigger this?

I can only speak for my tests on vanilla (not patched) versions of UT99 and NFS-Porche, as they are the first two games I test for incompatibility with.

On every GF cards from GF4-ti4200 and up (GF2-MX440 and earlier has no issues) UT99 tend to render textures incomplete.
NFS-Porche has this blurry text issues in the menu, not in the game. And really new GF cards make the arm wobble when the driver changes gears.
Like really going insane, the spastic way... Looks cool, yet annoying.

The Radeon series (9200, 9600 and 9800) has none of these issues at all. Both patched and unpatched.

Whenever a GF (4 to FX5200) is used, and the game is patched. You need to enable at least AAx2 (AAx4 on fx5200).

I have gotten this Asus V770 Deluxe last week. And have not gotten to the point of testing these issues out yet.
I suspect that it is running without issues on these games. Yet it is horrible underpowered compared to a FX5200 or FX5700.

oerk wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

3.06 GHz! Wow, that is super fast for a Windows 98 machine 😀

Yeah, but why not? That way, it's fast enough for games up to around 2004, and I don't use it much for DOS if at all. It's actually running ME and I'm thinking about dual booting 2000 or XP.

Played some NFS III in software mode yesterday, the 3 GHz processor is definitely not overkill. The software renderer looks pretty good in 1024x768 with full details 🤣 slow downs in some places, but 30+ frames most of the time and super playable. Sure, the machine sounds like a jumbo taking off, but at least fan control works 😵

So, still very pleased with the results.

Gamecollector wrote:

Almost all q3engine games (American McGee's Alice etc) in 800x600+ resolutions. […]
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philscomputerlab wrote:

Fascinating stuff these incompatibilities. I've never seen the issue with the black lines. What game and cards would trigger this?

Almost all q3engine games (American McGee's Alice etc) in 800x600+ resolutions.

Grand Prix Legends - black lines on the sky.

Etc.
This trouble is present on all new videocards but IIRC NVidia had the fix in drivers ("Disable conformant texture clamp").

By the way, there is another example for an incompatibility. Pixel centering. Especially after the "alternative pixel center" checkbox was removed from AMD and NVidia drivers.

Very interesting.

Gamecollector, you should document all of this one day, a lot of this is new to me 😊

I want to build a very fast Win98 machine. All I have so far is an Intel MicroATX board (D865PESO). I've also got a 3.2ghz Northwood CPU coming in the mail.

Unfortunately new aftermarket coolers for socket 478 are hard to find. Is the standard Intel heatsink/fan efficient enough to cool that CPU in a MicroATX case? All the reviews back in the day seem to mention these fast P4's being super hot. If not maybe I'll buy a Scythe Shuriken, since I don't have any other coolers at the moment.

Or as a last resort,, I guess I could just buy a slower CPU for it if needed.

Northwoods don't need any more than the stock cooler, even when overclocked.

Prescotts were the problem though.

There was an old saying "You don't need a heater when You've got a Prescott"

Nintendawg wrote:

Unfortunately new aftermarket coolers for socket 478 are hard to find. Is the standard Intel heatsink/fan efficient enough to cool that CPU in a MicroATX case? All the reviews back in the day seem to mention these fast P4's being super hot. If not maybe I'll buy a Scythe Shuriken, since I don't have any other coolers at the moment.

Yes, the stock cooler is okay, but pretty loud. I got lucky and scored four brand new Arctic Super Silent 4 Ultra TC coolers for 1,-€ on ebay. It's low noise and works well. Maybe keep an eye out for one of those.

Reading posts like this gives me big problems. Was going to recycle 8 HP D530sff desktops with a 865 based mini atx motherboard (made by Asus) we have stored at work. Never thought they would do any good and have kept my eyes on some Compaq Evo D510ssf models i wanted to save. Now i want to keep the D530s after i saw they have rather normal motherboards inside...

Scraphoarder wrote:

Reading posts like this gives me big problems. Was going to recycle 8 HP D530sff desktops with a 865 based mini atx motherboard (made by Asus) we have stored at work. Never thought they would do any good and have kept my eyes on some Compaq Evo D510ssf models i wanted to save. Now i want to keep the D530s after i saw they have rather normal motherboards inside...

The plate, wich the motherboard is mounted on, the plate that also contains the I/O-Shield, can be all mounted inside a normal ATX-Case.
Just remember to use the plate, as the motherboard have something that needed to be cooled on the bottom.
The reason for me to write this, is that the PSU on those HP d510/530-SFF machines are shit.
They tend to blow up, after sitting unused for a long time. Something to do with the wrong cap's still a charge or something.
In a normal ATX-Case with a normal PSU, that board is awesomme. Just don't expect any dos-support from any SB-Live soundcard.
Did this for over a year ago, and moved on to different machines instead.

brostenen wrote:

The plate, wich the motherboard is mounted on, the plate that also contains the I/O-Shield, can be all mounted inside a normal A […]
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The plate, wich the motherboard is mounted on, the plate that also contains the I/O-Shield, can be all mounted inside a normal ATX-Case.
Just remember to use the plate, as the motherboard have something that needed to be cooled on the bottom.
The reason for me to write this, is that the PSU on those HP d510/530-SFF machines are shit.
They tend to blow up, after sitting unused for a long time. Something to do with the wrong cap's still a charge or something.
In a normal ATX-Case with a normal PSU, that board is awesomme. Just don't expect any dos-support from any SB-Live soundcard.
Did this for over a year ago, and moved on to different machines instead.

I took a board off its plate and saw the heathspreading gummy thing under it. Also drilled off the thin IO shield that was attached to the plate. Read later that that was not needed as you mention because this motherboard can fit in an atx case with its plate on.
Do you have any idea why SB-Live didnt work in dos?
Funny you mention the PSUs on theese machines. We still have about 40 D510sff (2.4ghz 2GB ram 80GB hdd) used at some schools with Windows 7 Ent x86, and have not had many blown PSUs. The P4 Northwood is a classic workhorse that keeps going for years 😊 😊

It was in pure MS-Dos-6.22 that it did not work.
Well... Work and work is a broad statement, it would work for like 10 or maby 15 minutes and then die.
It has something to do with masked/unmasked IRQ, DMA and I/O channel's.

Really a long time since I did it, and I remember giving up and just went for Mobo's with ISA instead.
That machine was actually my main entry into taking up MS-Dos again, for retro computing that is.
Another thing that struck me about these HP SSF's, are that mine got REALLY hot inside.
The PSU would like be toasting hot after an hour of use, wich made me move the motherboard to
another case. And after a while, I simply gave up, scrapped the board for caps and other stuff.
And simply shipped the sad an poor leftovers for recycling. Boy did I get some quality caps this way. 😜

The PSU's will get unstable, when sitting unused for about half a year.
The best is to hold the powerbutton in, for about 5 seconds, before connecting the 220volt cable.
This is just what people have been reporting a great big many times around the net a couple of years ago.

Other than that, it is just plain standard ATX connector, wich is good as a standard PSU can be used.

I think intel865 still supports some Core 2 Duos so why not use them instead of P4's? Any Conroe will trounce a high end P4 and will consume much less power.

I just checked eBay and one can get E63xx to E67xx quite cheap. Better yet is to use Wolfdale E8200, should be cheap as well more power efficient and runs cooler. Just let those P4's die.

Different socket, which means a lot of the 10 reasons won't apply.

Also no need to trounce the P4 when it comes to Windows 98. There is only so much performance one needs.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Different socket, which means a lot of the 10 reasons won't apply.

Also no need to trounce the P4 when it comes to Windows 98. There is only so much performance one needs.

Yes indeed. No dual cores for socket 478 and even if it was a socket 775 board with a 865 chipset you are still stuck in singlecore territory? Prescott, Cedar Mill and Gallatin P4s had 775 versions. Heath is just a bonus here i Norway 😎

^Beaten by seconds. The socket 775 boards still using the 865 chip won't take any of the core series cpu's as far as I know.

My P4 will never die! Once it gets going. Hopefully. 😕

I know of one Asrock board that is 775, which i865 chipset and does take Core 2 Duo, but I think its a "one of a kind" type of boards that Asrock likes to build 🤣

You can get it Newegg apparently.

Apparently i915 has driver support for win9x

http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-95/w … set/171067.html

And you might be able to also use ICH7 chipsets 945/946/975/955/31/41

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158536-do-you … r-esp-for-p965/

Wow, I definitely stand corrected on that. Very, very interesting boards.

So no BIOS upgrades for LGA 775 i865 motherboards to support new CPU microcode? Seems odd...

EDIT:

Found a couple of models. The Gigabyte GIGABYTE GA-8I865GME-775-RH rev. 3.9 supports Core 2 Conroe's right out of the box. Rev 1,x can be flashed to support E6xxx CPU's.

Biostar I865G-M7 also does have BIOSes upgrades.

So the only reason you lose is that these boards are harder to find/less plentiful.

9xx based motherboards probably lack AGP, so PCI-E or PCI are your graphics options. Isnt PCI-E graphics driver support very limited in Windows 98, and what about Dos? If using a Voodoo2 that may be no issue anyway..

No DOS support for 9xx motherboards because ICH6 and later not have the compatibility mode (the emulation of 2 8259A, 2 8237, 8254 and 2 IDE channels at IRQs 14 and 15).