j^aws wrote:

With S775, you can get unlocked Core2duo CPUs that scale from 600MHz to 3000MHz+. Win98 drivers are available for the right chipset. And this range covers P3, P4 and C2D eras.

Below the 600MHz range, you can build K6/ VIA C3 machines for speed sensitivity and ISA. So with the right builds, you can have just TWO machines covering: 8088, 286, 386 ,486, Pentium, P2, P3, P4 and C2D...

YES! I'm agree. Only TWO machines can cover all these eras. But they both can be with ISA if you try very hard 😀

PARUS wrote:

YES! I'm agree. Only TWO machines can cover all these eras. But they both can be with ISA if you try very hard 😀

Well, I would personally struggle with only having 2 builds! I've got my ISA buses covered with two other industrial builds (a 14-slot backplane, and a 7-slot ATX build). These give me another 15 ISA slots to play around with...

A S775 with ISA is interesting for SVGA+ DOS games. These more modern DOS games can be covered with PCI sound cards - probably not all.

On my Core2 build I decided 5 slots enough. And use ISA riser. I use simultaneously 4 cards - "SBpro", "SB16", "GUS-GF1", "EMU8k". And MPU-401 interfaces on addresses 300 (Dream), 320 (Roland and Yamaha GM), 330 (MT-32 with SoftMPU).

Socket 478 is overkill for Windows 98 but not incompatible. Early Socket 775 might be ok for Windows98 but sporadic compatibility. Late Socket 775 is certainly Windows XP territory. I think ultimately that if you want a Windows 98 build socket 478 is dirt cheap high performance build. You might be able to accomplish the same with a Socket 775 system but it might be hit or miss, not really much point in trying unless that is what you happen to have on hand.

You can get Socket 478 boards with fully-functional ISA slots, if you don't mind looking at industrial motherboards.

OTOH, I've never seen any LGA775 mobos with an 865 or 875 chipset needed for 800 MHz FSB support and fully-functional ISA with DMA support. Later chipsets drop the second part entirely.

I built my P4EE 3.2 box specifically to have the fastest Win98SE system possible with ISA capability, while still being powerful enough for early/mid-2000s XP gaming, thus sparing me from having to build a separate 98SE system. It performs quite well at that, and I even get modern features like just hitting F12 to choose a boot device - my preferred sort of multi-boot manager, as it means I don't have to deal with bootloader kerfuffles on a single drive with partitioning.

I never thought to use an ISA riser, though. My board only has one ISA slot, but that would circumvent that limitation quite nicely, if I can be bothered with designing a custom case for it.

Looking at the price range of these socket 478 boards with ISA on ebay, i must say:

The cheapest boards around 60$ to 70$ from china have no AGP slot.

There are some on ebay.com which have also AGP, but to spend several hundred dollars for this board.
No, that's no option...
Better try to get cheaper Win98 platforms on socket 462 / 370 with ISA...

NamelessPlayer wrote:

You can get Socket 478 boards with fully-functional ISA slots, if you don't mind looking at industrial motherboards. […]
Show full quote

You can get Socket 478 boards with fully-functional ISA slots, if you don't mind looking at industrial motherboards.

OTOH, I've never seen any LGA775 mobos with an 865 or 875 chipset needed for 800 MHz FSB support and fully-functional ISA with DMA support. Later chipsets drop the second part entirely.

I built my P4EE 3.2 box specifically to have the fastest Win98SE system possible with ISA capability, while still being powerful enough for early/mid-2000s XP gaming, thus sparing me from having to build a separate 98SE system. It performs quite well at that, and I even get modern features like just hitting F12 to choose a boot device - my preferred sort of multi-boot manager, as it means I don't have to deal with bootloader kerfuffles on a single drive with partitioning.

I never thought to use an ISA riser, though. My board only has one ISA slot, but that would circumvent that limitation quite nicely, if I can be bothered with designing a custom case for it.

😀 Please believe me they exist. And getting FSB400/533/667/800 without problems. Only three models with dual core CPU support and I named them here.
P4EE is a perfect decision too. But compared to Core2 the P4 is too fast for DOS games and too slow for middle-late 2000s XP/7.
I don't use boot manager, very happy with regular NT5 boot loader.

About ISA I can say that all contacts at this bus are parallel and no one ISA slot hasn't its own address line unlike PCI slots. Therefore we can use ISA riser on any board, in any case, without any modding. Number of slots is not limited, only number of IO, IRQs, DMAs is limited. For example my ISA sound cards:
1) IO=220, IRQ=7, DMA=1, first MPU-401 IO=300, second MPU-401 IO=320 --- EWS64 "SBpro"
2) IO=240, IRQ=5, DMAlow=0, DMAhigh=5, MPU-401 IO=330 --- AV310 "SB16"
3) IO=250, IRQ=3, DMAhigh=7, FM=OFF --- GUS Ace
4) IO=260, IRQ=9, DMAlow=3, DMAhigh=6, MPU-401 IO=OFF, FM=OFF, EMU IO=640 --- AWE64Gold

melbar, what is better everyone decides for himself. On old 462/370 systems with ISA which have SDRAM PC133 and AGP2X it is impossible to get fast compos work in WinXP and 2000s games. These 462/370 builds are only for older OSes.

You're absolutely right. When you want absolutely high speed, you'll need these kind of boards.

It's everybodys self decision to buy these rare hardware. I have said only my opinion that i would go better the cheaper way. Even if i need one build more.

Rhuwyn wrote:

Socket 478 is overkill for Windows 98 but not incompatible. Early Socket 775 might be ok for Windows98 but sporadic compatibility. Late Socket 775 is certainly Windows XP territory. I think ultimately that if you want a Windows 98 build socket 478 is dirt cheap high performance build. You might be able to accomplish the same with a Socket 775 system but it might be hit or miss, not really much point in trying unless that is what you happen to have on hand.

^^ This is also how I see it.

775 socket 865 chipset boards are fine for Windows 98. Official Win9x drivers do exist from them. I've installed Win98 on Asrock, Gigabyte and MSI i865 s775 boards and all work fine. I use my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 card and 6800 Ultra card on them. As I mentioned before, I prefer 775 socket boards because of better availability of 3rd party 775 heatsinks... which have better cooling profile and more quiet options available. Some new heatsinks still have socket 775 compatible holes/pin/screws setup available.

And really late socket 775 is really Vista/7 territory, although they retain full compatibility with XP.

PARUS wrote:

:) Please believe me they exist. And getting FSB400/533/667/800 without problems. Only three models with dual core CPU support a […]
Show full quote

NamelessPlayer wrote:

You can get Socket 478 boards with fully-functional ISA slots, if you don't mind looking at industrial motherboards. […]
Show full quote

You can get Socket 478 boards with fully-functional ISA slots, if you don't mind looking at industrial motherboards.

OTOH, I've never seen any LGA775 mobos with an 865 or 875 chipset needed for 800 MHz FSB support and fully-functional ISA with DMA support. Later chipsets drop the second part entirely.

I built my P4EE 3.2 box specifically to have the fastest Win98SE system possible with ISA capability, while still being powerful enough for early/mid-2000s XP gaming, thus sparing me from having to build a separate 98SE system. It performs quite well at that, and I even get modern features like just hitting F12 to choose a boot device - my preferred sort of multi-boot manager, as it means I don't have to deal with bootloader kerfuffles on a single drive with partitioning.

I never thought to use an ISA riser, though. My board only has one ISA slot, but that would circumvent that limitation quite nicely, if I can be bothered with designing a custom case for it.

😀 Please believe me they exist. And getting FSB400/533/667/800 without problems. Only three models with dual core CPU support and I named them here.
P4EE is a perfect decision too. But compared to Core2 the P4 is too fast for DOS games and too slow for middle-late 2000s XP/7.
I don't use boot manager, very happy with regular NT5 boot loader.

About ISA I can say that all contacts at this bus are parallel and no one ISA slot hasn't its own address line unlike PCI slots. Therefore we can use ISA riser on any board, in any case, without any modding. Number of slots is not limited, only number of IO, IRQs, DMAs is limited. For example my ISA sound cards:
1) IO=220, IRQ=7, DMA=1, first MPU-401 IO=300, second MPU-401 IO=320 --- EWS64 "SBpro"
2) IO=240, IRQ=5, DMAlow=0, DMAhigh=5, MPU-401 IO=330 --- AV310 "SB16"
3) IO=250, IRQ=3, DMAhigh=7, FM=OFF --- GUS Ace
4) IO=260, IRQ=9, DMAlow=3, DMAhigh=6, MPU-401 IO=OFF, FM=OFF, EMU IO=640 --- AWE64Gold

melbar, what is better everyone decides for himself. On old 462/370 systems with ISA which have SDRAM PC133 and AGP2X it is impossible to get fast compos work in WinXP and 2000s games. These 462/370 builds are only for older OSes.

Well, shoot. It was hard enough to find out there were P4 boards at all with ISA support, and now you're telling me there's Core 2 boards I could've used instead?

Then again, I just remembered another big reason I had to go early P4: AGP.

I don't think PCIe cards have Win98SE drivers, not even the PCIe GeForce 6800s, and the goal here was to build the fastest 98SE gaming system possible, while also still having good enough DOS support for me to plow through something like Blood at 1600x1200 and still maintain 60 FPS. (Note that most Build engine games don't have source ports like Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior do, and driving higher resolutions requires exponentially more CPU power.)

I'll keep the ISA thing in mind for the future. It might just make having an AWE32 + GUS + VFX1 VIP board setup practical with a riser on just the one ISA slot.

OK. And how does all what you say disprove Core2 boards? I found them so it's possible. Less power? No, Core2 has more power.

Sorry, but about PCIe you're wrong. About nVidia at all. Unofficial driver 82.69 supports all cards up to 9xxx series. But PCIe cards haven't good compatible with DOS games.
Tell please why you recall PCIe? Have I say at least once about PCIe video? I told only about Core2 and didn't mean PCIe. What relation is PCIe to CPU model? Neither.

And Core2 is better than P4 anyway. I checked 😉

PARUS wrote:

OK. And how does all what you say disprove Core2 boards? I found them so it's possible. Less power? No, Core2 has more power.

Sorry, but about PCIe you're wrong. About nVidia at all. Unofficial driver 82.69 supports all cards up to 9xxx series.
And Core2 is better than P4 anyway. I checked 😉

Been there and done that - 82.69 is experimental driver for 7xxx series, and alpha driver for 8xxx/9xxx.
My 8800 GTX did NOT work on it (on win98), my 7900 GX2 did work : LINK

Rhuwyn wrote:

Socket 478 is overkill for Windows 98 but not incompatible. Early Socket 775 might be ok for Windows98 but sporadic compatibility. Late Socket 775 is certainly Windows XP territory. I think ultimately that if you want a Windows 98 build socket 478 is dirt cheap high performance build. You might be able to accomplish the same with a Socket 775 system but it might be hit or miss, not really much point in trying unless that is what you happen to have on hand.

Try playing Dungeon Keeper II @ 1600x1200 with AA on a pentium 3 and see how that goes. Some games will only run correctly on win98se - like the aforementioned DK2 - and while it will run fine on a P3 machine at lesser resolutions and details, I want to play it maxed out. That requires at least an Athlon XP /w a FX5900 for 30 fps at 1600x1200 with AA, and a radeon x800 / gf 6800 for 60fps and more. On winXP DK2 will either crash to desktop after a few minutes of gameplay, or show a black screen + cursor. That's why I build this:

Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)

It is very compatible with win98 and later win9x games and can run them all-out graphics-wise.

Another good example is homeworld - at 1600x1200 on winXP it will not display correctly - the image is moved either 1/4 of the screen to the left, or to the bottom. On some older video cards it will display correctly at that resolution in XP, but it can't handle AA. On the X800XT in winxp the screen is centered correctly but nlips won't work correctly and there are several lighting bugs. With the same video card in win98 it works perfectly. Same with Black and White (1).

What is this PC/PCI mentioned earlier in the thread? I know PCI and PCI-X of course, but this one has me baffled.

Homeworld is a beast for the CPU as is Homeworld 2, especially if you're using custom mods.

PC/PCI is a small header on compatible motherboards and PCI sound cards which allows the PCI card to use resources typically available only to an ISA card. This allows perfect compatibility with DOS titles.

PARUS wrote:

OK. And how does all what you say disprove Core2 boards? I found them so it's possible. Less power? No, Core2 has more power. […]
Show full quote

OK. And how does all what you say disprove Core2 boards? I found them so it's possible. Less power? No, Core2 has more power.

Sorry, but about PCIe you're wrong. About nVidia at all. Unofficial driver 82.69 supports all cards up to 9xxx series. But PCIe cards haven't good compatible with DOS games.
Tell please why you recall PCIe? Have I say at least once about PCIe video? I told only about Core2 and didn't mean PCIe. What relation is PCIe to CPU model? Neither.

And Core2 is better than P4 anyway. I checked 😉

We seem to be talking past each other, and NOT ONCE did I say that Core 2 was slower than P4 in performance terms. Is English not your first language? You sure don't sound like it.

I was expressing surprise that Core 2 anything was viable for Win98SE gaming at all because the hardware's so new and likely to have incompatibilities, usually because there aren't working Win98SE drivers for something. It's an option I hadn't realized before because no one even considered it an option until now. Only you brought it up, and you're acting like this should be common knowledge when it isn't.

You have to remember, computers are a sum of many different parts, and any one of those not having the right drivers - or the right obscure feature sets that old games depend on, like paletted texture support or properly implemented shadow buffers - can break the experience. Even having a CPU that's too fast will break a lot of games, though Core 2 is trivial to underclock.

I built my 98SE/XP box with the knowledge I had at the time since I was stretching the very limit of what I knew would have working 98SE drivers available, and had I known that a typical Core 2-era chipset like P35 or P45 would work and any form of PCIe graphics would have working drivers, all while having fully functional ISA, that would have taken a very different turn altogether.

Well I think the problem is that most people are talking about TYPICAL chipsets, TYPICAL CPUs, and more typical... If NOT TYPICAL is better than TYPICAL it doesn't matter for them. TYPICAL and ERA are keywords. But I don't think so.

If there is an unusual built system that works perfectly it is a new information to knowlegde, isn't it? I'm not acting like all must to know it, I just show this, I'm talking about beautiful alternative with large multiplier range Core2 models (like E5700, E5800, X6800, E6500K, QX9650). And note this is NOT overkill. It's versatile because has range 600MHz and up.

Please forget about s775 typical P35/45 and typical PCIe, and if would work, would have working drivers etc. A top chipset with Win9X/ME support and fully functional ISA is 865/875. I remember computers are a sum of parts and I not named at least one DOS/9X incompatible or unstable part.

Yes, English is not my first language. As many people on the Earth 😉

Davros wrote:

Be aware that 775 boards support sata but its often sata 1.0
and newer sata drives dont have a jumper to set sata 1 mode so the boards wont detect the drive

Considering the somewhat stupid way SATA is implemented on some early SATA-capable motherboards (SATA feeding right into the IDE interface), you could just use a SATA-to-IDE adapter...

Another issue is that on some early SATA-capable motherboards you can't actually boot from a IDE drive if SATA drives are also present - which means that if you're adding a SATA drive to a system that already is set up for booting from a IDE drive you're in for a nice bit of reinstalling.