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Sound card and storage advice for a Windows 98 gaming machine

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First post, by jdlewis77

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I am currently ordering parts for a Windows 98 retro gaming PC. At the moment I have managed to figure out everything I want except for the sound and the data storage. I am basing it off a socket 478 Pentium 4 solution with a Nvidia Geforce 4 TI 4200 and 512mb RAM which includes onboard sound. However, one thing that will wind me up no end is if the games don't sound right. Back in the day when we had a 486 DX2 66 PC we also had a Roland GS daughter board on the sound card. However as the motherboard I am using only has PCI slots available I am struggling to find a motherboard I could fit such a board to.

Eventually I would like to fit a Dreamblaster X2 into the mix which I can't do with an onboard sound solution and there doesn't seem to be many PCI cards available with the wave blaster port available in the UK. Any recomendations on a solution to this?

Also for storage I would like to go the solid state route to keep transfer speeds up and noise down. Can anyone recommend either an appropriate IDE to SD card solution or a way to attach a 120gb SSD?

Last edited by jdlewis77 on 2017-09-22, 00:27. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by jade_angel

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For sound, if you only have PCI, I'd go with something like the Audigy2 ZS. Most Windows games don't use MIDI in any case. For a Dreamblaster X2, you'll probably have to go with a USB MIDI interface, though, which I suspect won't work right in Win98 - it will in WinXP, though, and that box will run XP, so you might be able to dual-boot.

For storage, any of the various IDE to CF converters are easy to use - since CF cards speak IDE natively, those are simple pin converters and will work well. To use a SATA SSD, there are some SATA-PATA converters - the one I have in front of me is marked JP103-5. Alternatively, you can use a PCI SATA controller.

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Reply 2 of 2, by badmojo

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Sounds like a Vortex 2 based sound card is what you need - excellent Windows 98 card + working wavetable header.

You don't want CF for a Windows 98 machine - more appropriate for DOS. I just use an IDE HDD which are easy to find and configure.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

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