Answers to your questions:

1: Yes there are.

2: ISA/PCI sound card combos should work. You just need to route the output of one into the line in of the other, or use a mixer. For AC'97 headers I am not sure if there are any sound cards with it. I think it was more of a header for motherboards with onboard sound. If you're dead set on front panel connectors, you could always hijack a few ports into an AC'97 connector, just make sure you know what you're doing.

3: For my P3 machine I use an NVidia GeForce 2MX. It's a bit overpowered for the system, so you may want to go for a GeForce 128, a RIVA TNT2, a Voodoo 2/3, or something comparable from ATI. AGP speed doesn't matter unless you go far into the future of graphics cards. It's most likely a 2x slot, maybe 4x.

4: Upgrade if you want. I use a P3 450/512/100 card, but if you want a faster CPU it will help. I don't like Slotket, if you want Socket 370, get a Socket 370 board.

PhilsComputerLab has a lot of benches. He's our resident bencher, capable of a 500 pound bench lift. He also does good CPU benches, especially with Slot 1 stuff.

Here's my suggestion: Get a good DVD+RW writer, and a spindle of DVD+RWs. This makes data transfer unimaginably swift. USB on those machines are usually USB 1/1.1 unless you add in a USB 2 card. This makes data transfers PAINFULLY slow, on the level of a bad broadband connection. DVD+RWs store 4.7gb, they are incredibly cheap, and run about 3 times the speed of USB 1/1.1

Don't use a floppy emulator or a flash hard drive replacement, or I might cry at the travesty. (Jk, do what you want)

Great reply Ampera. Thank you very much.

With regard to question 1 (pci usb header), I have been searching around on ebay before asking but search terms like "PCI internal USB" etc are bringing up much more modern items. Any way I can narrow it down so I can even find such a card? I'd like to use the flash drive still along with the dvd drive as I find myself constantly moving files right now.. though when I get an ethernet card I can probably just network transfer from my linux machine.

Wait, will a usb 2.0 card work with this board + win 98? I was under the impression USB 1.1 was the limit

If there are no cards with ac'97 / hd headers that's fine, I'll save for an audigy or something with a front bay panel (if those have 98 drivers I'll have to check). Or I can just mod the case with a direct line to a splitter. So that's ok.

I tend to agree on the slotket come to think of it. I'll check for some benchmarks and decide If i want to sell the 650 and get an 800. Does philscomputerlab have a benchmark database / website I can go check out?

I have a few DVD+RW drives and many blank discs, I will throw that in as we speak 😎.. I already ordered a few packs of floppies and have a 3.5 inch drive installed + a usb floppy drive on my modern PC. That's required for my old game collection. I'd like to add a 5.25 as I have some games on those but boy are the drives expensive these days. Don't worry, I don't feel like using a floppy emulator haha.

Does Windows 98 only support USB 1.1? You could install Windows 2000 SP4 as a dual boot. The reason I say dual boot is that the NTVDM is shit, and doesn't work for about anything, but it does support USB 2.0 I am pretty sure, so you can copy files over and then boot into Windows 98 later.

I never said there weren't any, there probably are, I just don't know of any. If you want to wait a bit for me to build my Pentium Pro machine I can see if my AWE32 has AC'97, but don't hold your breath.

EDIT: After investigating the card, I can say it does not have any sort of front panel connectors.

I didn't think an awe32 would have AC'97. I figured I'd be looking for a much more modern PCI card like Sound Blaster Live!. That's alright though I'll keep looking. Thanks for your help.

I'm trying now to hunt down a USB card with the header as that's a bit more important for me. Running benchmarks on the machine now too 😜

I think my SB Live! has a front panel header, the only problem is I don't know which one, if it is a front panel connector, and I don't know if it's AC'97 or Intel HD

I'm looking around now at SB Live! cards. This case has both AC'97 and HD Audio now that I'm looking in it so that would be great if one had either or.

Edit: Chaintech AV710 does have a front audio connector on it, not sure if that has 98 drivers though

It is possible to use a Audigy 2 zs and most likely other creative live cards with case audio ports
https://audigy2zshowto.blogspot.co.uk

But yeh, I was lazy and just used the official I/O bay.

Or you could just run an audio extension cable from back of the case to the front, its what I do 😉

Thanks chinny,

That's a pretty nice mod, I order from digikey pretty regularly so this could be doable. Thank you!

The extension mod sounds much easier to me as well if I'm feeling lazy 😜

I think my slot configuration circa 1999 with a Pentium III 500 (128MB RAM) on 440BX was something like:
1: Matrox G200 AGP
2: Voodoo2 SLI (8 MB)
3: NIC
4: Diamond Monster MX300 (Vortex2) + Wave Blaster
5: AWE64 Gold

I was really happy with that setup and remember it fondly. I may rebuild (and slightly enhance) it someday. I continued to run a 5.25" drive and play my old DOS games. Only Commander Keen really gave me trouble (Matrox-related).

You have a little more oomph with that 650. The guys are weighing in your thread and have some good things to say - I will add though, that I was happy I went the Aureal Vortex2 route instead of Creative Labs (EAX) route at the time. The MX300 can do A3d 2.0, 1.0, and EAX 1.0. I can't really recall game specifics and what I may have missed out on, but Vortex2 in 1998/1999 was really rocking.

Too bad I got rid of my Awe32 and 64 years ago. Between those and Voodoo card prices I'll need to hit the lotto 😜

I dug up a Geforce4 MX 440 for now which seems to be working ok although not time period accurate at all.. That should give me time to decide on a card as long as it doesn't cause any grief.

I'm trying to find a NIC card now. Should I be checking the net to make absolutely certain there are win98 drivers available, or will win98 install these as pnp devices? I'm looking at D-Link DFE-530TX+ 10/100 on ebay dirt cheap, but I'm not 100% sure about it. What do you think?

Seems all of the Vortex 2 cards on ebay right now come from overseas and are pretty pricey =\. I think I'm just going to grab a SB Live! or early Audigy and run it along side the Washington 16. I have a SB16 coming and a pro2 I'm trying to run side by side in a separate machine as well.

If you got cash, scoop up the AWE32s you can find cheap. They are the best DOS sound card IMO

Ampera wrote:

If you got cash, scoop up the AWE32s you can find cheap. They are the best DOS sound card IMO

I may be needing one as it is for the project I'm working on. Which ones are considered good though? I had a value type awe32 back in the mid 90s and I hated that card to death. I went back to a sound blaster 16 and used that all the way up until SB Live! came around. Sadly not many turning up on ebay and the prices are outrageous

That D-Link has 98s drivers for sure, just a matter of tracking down the drivers. Also I would suggest 98se vs vanilla. Stability is better, driver compatibility/ support is better, and it supports both USB 2.0 and HDD's past 120gb if your bios isn't limited of course. EDIT: I can recommend 3com Etherlink cards, they almost always work in 98 and even 95.

How about Linksys-LNE100TX v4? I came across a driver for windows 98 (supposedly) for it.. made an offer for $4 for one 🤣 so I have to wait and see what this seller says.

I put SE on it with a third party patch to make usb flash drives work. Hard drive is 20GB but that's plenty enough for now since I'm primarily interested in programming and playing games for 16 bit DOS. I had no idea USB 2.0 would work, maybe I should get a usb 2.0 card and then I can use a usb hub to get some easy access ports for my flash drive?

Now it's crashing fairly often now that I'm trying to play some simcity2k so I'm trying to narrow that down. Hopefully it's just the old power supply.. Probably the reason this was moved from main use to storage in the first place.

The CT3670 models are what I use. They are basically the AWE64 EMU on an AWE32 card. It doesn't have a wavetable header, but makes up for it with brilliant onboard MIDI out of the box.

Ct3670 seems to be fairly uncommon on ebay with wildly variable prices, what do you think is a fair price for one? By the looks of it they may be worth more than $100. Way out of my league :p

Really? I picked one up for my Pentium Pro machine for around 25-35 USD. Similar price for the on in my 486.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ISA-sound-card-Creati … BcAAOSw5cRZEgvs

This one is a bit pricy, but not totally out of reason.

Make sure to pop the powersupply open for bad caps!

1. There are. I can't recommend an exact model, you'll have to scower add sites or aliexpress for them.

2. This is down to your personal preference of course, but I wouldn't bother - too much work and kind of ruins the look of the PC - audio front panels are more of a 2000-2005 PC thing. An easy and cheap solution would be a simple jack extender.

3. Definitely the AGP Voodoo 3. Fast enough for most games the CPU can run, glide, and great DOS performance / compatibility. Alternatively you could go for the S3 AGP card (or a RIVA TNT2) + Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 2 SLi but that might be a more expensive solution.

4. CPU: It really depends on what you want to run on it. As a 440bx machine, I think the 650 is a perfect fit. It will comfortably run most games up to year 2000 with a few exceptions. A faster CPU will only extend performance to running a few more titles, but not enough to warrant an upgrade - and will interfere with the machine's ability to properly run some DOS games. If you feel the need to run later titles, go for a socket 370 machine with a 1100MHz PIII or (preferably) a 1400MHz Tualatin - even better a socket A rig. The latter will allow you to run titles up to 2004 but will break compatibility with most DOS games.

I'd say keep the CPU and build around it.