canthearu wrote:

Yeah, I bought a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP for my P-II 350 setup. Nice match up.

You can't have more than 512meg RAM in a windows 98 system, at least not without a whole pile of muck-arounding-ish stuff. So I suggest pulling one of the 256meg chips and leaving it at 512meg.

I will take your advice on board canthearu..
TBH I'm just so pleased the bios upgrade allowed me to fit a 128gb drive ..
The build goes on..
🤣
..and I read that a fan mod is a good thing for the Voodoo ..so back into mod mode soon.
😉

Looking good for this build ..
I more or less have rebuilt my PC from the 98 era ..
It is now in a mini tower case ..wheras ..back then it was a beige desktop.
It now has a 5.25" floppy ..
back then it did not ..but did have a PC/PD drive
back then it was CD only ..
now it is CD/DVD RW
back then it had only 256mb ..
now it has 512
back then it had a Banshee graphics card ..now it has a Voodoo 3
The sound card is the same ..creative soundblaster live.
The same AMD-K6 3D CPU ...but now a 128gb hard drive ...back then ..6gb
..made possible thanks to the modded bios I recently upgraded to.
..and of course ..a conventional 1.44mb floppy ..
what else 😀
I know I could go ..Gotek ..but I want it to look and feel like it did all those years ago..
I'm a sucker for drive sounds.
10/100 LAN network access ..and the dial up ditched ..

I modded the Voodoo more or less the same hour it arrived ..
I've _never_ had one before ..and knowing they run hot ...
A nice big fan was added..
A bit noisy I guess ..but I could always get a quieter fan ..or drop the working voltage.
Oh ..and I added an optical PS2 mouse ..
so much better than the old 'ball' type ..which had to be stripped down and cleaned after a few hours gaming.
I'll post a photo of the PC when I'm done ..
here is the voodoo
rgds
VS

So ..this build at least is now complete .
Now fitted with a SB live pci card ..so I guess it is time to use it.
This is the original mobo and cpu I was using in 98 and right up to just before XP surfaced.
but with Voodoo 3 agp ..which it did not have back in the day.
I'm attaching a pix of it in it's new mini tower case.
I admit it takes some getting used to the fact that the power LED is lit when the PC is off..🤣
I'd very much like to equip the build with some sort of HID ..and this doesn't have to be retro.
I have a Saitek X6-31M game pad I could use ..though only 4 buttons of the six appear to work in 98se
maybe drivers needed ?
Or ..I could use a Quickshot Joystick ..
But I have grown used to modern Top Hat type contollers Xbox stylee ..so it would be cool to have both analogue and digital on the same control pad ..
Is there one which works with 98se and connects via the SB gameport ?
USB ..being a bit limited and flakey back in the 98 days.
I'd appreciate your recommendations whatever they might be.
rgds
VS

I have done some digging ..and turned up one of these controllers..
Logitech F310
Can anyone confirm if this will work with win98se ?
rgds
VS

The case is beautiful!

Roman555 wrote:

The case is beautiful!

Thanks Roman ..
It was not always so ..
It has had a partial re-spray and laquer ..

On the soundblaster Live card ..
It would appear I really should be using VXD drivers ..but I assume WDM drivers were installed ..since the only driver folder on my CD (Black with 1024 on it) is for Win 95 I think...
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could help me here ..
Phils youtube video shows a different installation disk to the one I have ???
Bit of a minefield with the Creative Live cards ..
Both of my cards both in this unit and 'Mystery Meat ' are 5 jack socket CT4830 types ..
So can I run VXD audio drivers on these ..(This OS win98se ) ...mystery Meat (Win98se and XPpro)
can anyone advise me ?
rgds
VS

Yes, you can use VXD drivers on your SB lives in windows 98se.

Try some of the different drivers on the vogonsdrivers

canthearu wrote:

Yes, you can use VXD drivers on your SB lives in windows 98se.

Try some of the different drivers on the vogonsdrivers

Many thanks ..
I will grab a copy of Sound Blaster Live! Install (VXD 4.12.01.0905 + WDM) CD
..and go from there.
rgds

I thought I'd done with this build ..but sadly not so.
There are games in my collection which simply coudn't be installed through win 98se ..and run in a DOS window..
an example of which is linked here..
Running 'Under a Killing Moon ..under win98se
Starting in DOS wasn't an option either ..as CD nor mouse would be accessible.
Back to the drawing board ..and have partially completed a dual boot system with win98se ..and pure DOS 7.1 ..
with help referring to Phils youtube vid..
I still find DOS an enigma..beyond the basics.
So far I have a 120gb ide drive split roughly 30gb for DOS and 85gb for win98se.
The DOS partition being the first primary partition ..and 98se the second.
Both partitions are set primary ..
and using Gparted ..I was able to hide each in turn to perform the install ..
Though 98se was not reinstalled as such ..
The partition was made and formatted in fat32 ..then the 'entire' contents of the original 98se OS was copied over to this new 2nd primary patition ..
..and providing the DOS partition remain 'Hidden' ..it does boot OK ...so far that is .
I have yet to actually use a bootloader ..but I do like Graphical ...so hopefully GAG will fill this role...as it fully installs itself in the MBR area..
fingers crossed this will do the job .
I'll let you know.
GAG auto hides whichever partition is 'NOT' required at boot time..
rgds
VS

Oh dear ..fallen at the last hurdle it seems..
GAG will not work with my bios (too old apparently)
So ..can anyone suggest an alternative ?

The setup is as follows ..
2 operating systems ..one of which is DOS
Both are on their own primary partitions.
Lets call them A and B
If I hide A ...I can boot B
if I hide B I can boot A .
Only one can be active at a time.
I really dont know which bootloaders can handle this if any ?
It really is that straightforward as both operating systems are built and will boot and function correctly.
So I guess I need one that can absorb and control both OS by taking control on selection at boot time...and preferably be resident in the MBR/Bootsector
Anyone ?

Progress is being made of sorts ..
since I can't dual boot ..opted for pull out IDE caddies again ..
One HD has win98se on it ..and a second has Phils DOS7.1 inspired build.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2SPlHzAcSI
These are easily swapable ..
So now I can boot into Pure DOS ..
And at startup I can select various DOS options to boot ..
Thus I now have mouse keyboard and CD functional.
The next tricky step was to get the soundblaster Live pci card working in DOS ..
I found the info I needed on this forum ..

big thanks for this thread..
Re: Soundblaster Live CT4830 Dos Drivers
I edited Phils Autoexec.bat thusly ..

1@ECHO OFF
2PROMPT $p$g
3SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
4SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
5SET CTSYN=C:\drv\creative\dosdrv
6C:\DRV\CREATIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
7PATH C:\DOS
8SET TEMP=C:\DOS
9GoTo %config%
10:EMC
11:XMC
12CMC
13LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:OPTICAL
14:EM
15:XM
16:CM
17LH C:\DRIVERS\CTMOUSE.EXE /R2
18:E
19:X
20:C

after installing the drivers in a DVR/CREATIVE directory made on C:

This finally got my DOS game 'under a killing moon ' installed..
So good to hear James Earl Jones silky smooth tones coming from the speakers.
The audio can sometimes throw a few tiny glitches ..but the game runs smooth enough ..but a little blockier than I remember ..but I guess thats LCDs for ya ..
I no longer own a CRT monitor ..sadly.

I can't help wondering if improvements could be had if I had and could install DOS drivers for the Voodoo 3 pci card instead of what I presume is generic VGA .
Anyone ???
but at least the game runs ..and DOS7.1 is running on it's own 40 gb Hard drive.
Any further help regarding video/graphics would be most appreciated.
rgds
VS

Fixed it for you.

Vipersan wrote:

(no space between colon and the X .. Ive added these to avoid a smiley being added to the text)

There's a checkbox under where you enter your message, "Disable smilies"... 😉

Stiletto wrote:

Fixed it for you.

Vipersan wrote:

(no space between colon and the X .. Ive added these to avoid a smiley being added to the text)

There's a checkbox under where you enter your message, "Disable smilies"... 😉

Cheers ..
I'll write that to the grey biomass computer..
🤣