I'd go with the Soyo. It has the newer chipset (MVP3 vs. VP3) and also has more L2 cache.
The Soyo is a Baby AT and the FIC is an ATX. Baby AT was to make it compatible with older cases. Luckily it's ready to go with an ATX power supply so you don't have that issue, but it may need jumpers changed according to which power connector you are going to use. Do you have all the brackets including the one for PS/2 mouse?

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-02-26, 20:03:

I'd go with the Soyo. It has the newer chipset (MVP3 vs. VP3) and also has more L2 cache.
The Soyo is a Baby AT and the FIC is an ATX. Baby AT was to make it compatible with older cases. Luckily it's ready to go with an ATX power supply so you don't have that issue, but it may need jumpers changed according to which power connector you are going to use. Do you have all the brackets including the one for PS/2 mouse?

Thanks! I have all the brackets with it. Just trying to figure out how to keep the install as clean as possible. With those brackets, at least in an ATX case (trying to find a good AT case is harsh on the wallet, so using spare parts), I can put one bracket in, then AGP for the video card, then the other two brackets with the cables going over the AGP card and taking up PCI slots. I mean, it is fine and I am sure back in the day when I was building PC's I did that without worrying about it.

Some early ATX cases still had the punch-outs for serial and parallel ports in them so that you could put those port headers in them without taking out slots.

There's also a 3D printed I/O shield floating around here on Vogons that is designed to have cut-outs so that you could attach those headers to the I/O shield instead of on brackets.

I've always been partial to AT-builds, so if it were me I'd use the Soyo board + MMX Pentium 233.

I would also likely go for a DOS / Windows 95 build, as opposed to Windows 98. IMHO the Windows 98 era benefits from a faster setup (e.g. Pentium II and up).

As for GPU, this depends on which games you want to play and compatibility with older DOS titles. The S3 card will be more compatible in this respect.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-02-26, 20:27:

Some early ATX cases still had the punch-outs for serial and parallel ports in them so that you could put those port headers in them without taking out slots.

There's also a 3D printed I/O shield floating around here on Vogons that is designed to have cut-outs so that you could attach those headers to the I/O shield instead of on brackets.

That is a great idea. Let me see if I can track down that IO shield plan. Appreciate the input!

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-26, 20:36:

I've always been partial to AT-builds, so if it were me I'd use the Soyo board + MMX Pentium 233.

I would also likely go for a DOS / Windows 95 build, as opposed to Windows 98. IMHO the Windows 98 era benefits from a faster setup (e.g. Pentium II and up).

As for GPU, this depends on which games you want to play and compatibility with older DOS titles. The S3 card will be more compatible in this respect.

Thanks. Those are good points.

SOYO + MMX

I'd also look for a TNT2-M64. Decent 3D accelerator, especially for this CPU and also abundant and cheap. You can probably find one somewhere between $0-5.

Tbh, I'd not try Win98 gaming on either of these CPUs. Yes, you can run Win98, but games in 1998 are things like Unreal. With a Pentium MMX, that will give you 11-18fps at low settings. I get that playability back then was judged differently, but this is an unplayable slideshow by anyone's standards, unless you drop to 640x480 or so.

P233MMX would give you decent mid-period Windows 95 performance, but anything from mid 1997 onwards (so before Win98 was launched) will make it sweat badly. I used a P200MMX for my late DOS machine, but decided to upgrade that to a P3-500 to avoid slowdowns. I run Win98SE on a Tualatin P3-1400S, which is slightly overkill, but a late Coppermine P3 is perfectly period-correct for a high-end Win98SE system from just before the launch of XP (I'm assuming WinME or 2k are out of consideration here).

So I'd stick to DOS on this one. In that case the added value of AGP is minimal, so the advantage of the ATX form factor on the PA-2011 might be greater. For DOS, VESA compatibility is more important, so the S3 Trio beats the ATi RageII anyway. As for CPU... at stock there's not much between them, but that P233MMX can almost certainly be clocked to 75MHz FSB, and given the board has three jumpers for FSB yet only has 4 documented speeds, I'm willing to wager you can do more, most likely including 83MHz, which the VP2 chipset can handle and will give you 290MHz.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-26, 21:00:

SOYO + MMX

I'd also look for a TNT2-M64. Decent 3D accelerator, especially for this CPU and also abundant and cheap. You can probably find one somewhere between $0-5.

Thanks, I will keep an eye out for one!

dionb wrote on 2023-02-26, 21:45:

Tbh, I'd not try Win98 gaming on either of these CPUs. Yes, you can run Win98, but games in 1998 are things like Unreal. With a Pentium MMX, that will give you 11-18fps at low settings. I get that playability back then was judged differently, but this is an unplayable slideshow by anyone's standards, unless you drop to 640x480 or so.

P233MMX would give you decent mid-period Windows 95 performance, but anything from mid 1997 onwards (so before Win98 was launched) will make it sweat badly. I used a P200MMX for my late DOS machine, but decided to upgrade that to a P3-500 to avoid slowdowns. I run Win98SE on a Tualatin P3-1400S, which is slightly overkill, but a late Coppermine P3 is perfectly period-correct for a high-end Win98SE system from just before the launch of XP (I'm assuming WinME or 2k are out of consideration here).

So I'd stick to DOS on this one. In that case the added value of AGP is minimal, so the advantage of the ATX form factor on the PA-2011 might be greater. For DOS, VESA compatibility is more important, so the S3 Trio beats the ATi RageII anyway. As for CPU... at stock there's not much between them, but that P233MMX can almost certainly be clocked to 75MHz FSB, and given the board has three jumpers for FSB yet only has 4 documented speeds, I'm willing to wager you can do more, most likely including 83MHz, which the VP2 chipset can handle and will give you 290MHz.

Thanks, lot to think about here but seems like DOS thru Win95 would be best on this one. Above that, I might only have parts that are too new. I have a ASUS M3N78Pro AM2+ board. It has PCI and PCIe ports and legacy IDE and floppy ports with SATA so it seems to a mix of old and new. Guessing that would be more of an XP era build though. So nothing for higher end Win95 - 98. Oh well, one thing at a time. Thank you for the info.