That's one great guide. Anyone following it will get a very usable, fun system 😀

Of course, given our propensity to dive down rabbit holes and be opinionated, people can and will niggle, so let me be the first 😜

- motherboard (1): You refer to Athlon as being susceptible to 'buggy' chipsets. That's mostly related to the Via 686B southbridge, and that southbridge was used on at least as many So370 boards as Socket A boards, specifically on most Via ApolloPro133a boards that are the commonest way to get AGP4x and 133MHz FSB support. Now, how bad are these bugs? Unless you want to play around with unusual TV cards, the one place you experience them is with the Creative SBLive. Choose a different sound card and you are highly unlikely to even notice anything buggy. Intent on using SBLive? Then avoid Via chipsets from around this era regardless of platform, including the ApolloPro133a. Other vendors' chipsets are fine; i815((P)E) is a great So370 choice, but SiS735 on Socket A is fine too, as is AMD760, so long as it uses AMD southbridge and not Via one. I'd also consider P4 systems; if you avoid the later more challenging designs, you get very stable i850 and i845 systems. Performance isn't amazing, but with a P4 2GHz or similar they will run Win98 perfectly.

- motherboard (2): regardless of platform, late Win98 era is prime capacitor plague era - it's most definitely not just an Athlon problem. Some brands of motherboard are generally better (Asus, Intel OEM, Gigabyte) and some generally awful (Abit, Epox, Jetway, MSI), but even with a NOS Intel OEM, don't count your chickets before they hatch. Assume caps to be bad until proven OK. One workaround here is to go very late era - Socket 754 and Socket 939 with AGP is generally Win98 compatible and new enough to be fairly sure it won't have bad caps.

- motherboard (3): PCI card compatibility is strongly dependent on 3.3V support. That's a motherboard implementation choice, but if at all possible choose one that does. Rule of thumb is that AGP4x boards will have PCI2.2 and by definition 3.3V support- but check this. If not, you may be very limited in USB 2.0 or HDD controller cards.

- hard drive: you use a SATA - PATA adapters. That's convenient, but you can get lower latency, higher performance and (IMHO, subjective) more elegance if you use a PCI SATA controller. Or go for a board new enough for SATA onboard (P4 or Athlon64)

- sound card: Audigy2 is probably best Win98 option - but it limits you in terms of motherboard chipset. Aureal's A3D is a very nice and period-correct alternative with decent game support. Cards with the 8830 A3D2 are a good option. Or go for a card that offers both EAX and A3D, like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Alternatively, a cheap card with C-Media CMI8378, particularly one of the better ones by Terratec, are a good affordable choice with some EAX support. Are any of these better than an Audigy2? No. But they give you the option to use one of the ubiquitous, cheap boards with Via chipsets.

- PSU: modern PSUs will be able to run a system like this easily - if they are good. Even for an old system like this, be sure to check reviews of a PSU. Max power isn't at all relevant. Efficiency isn't directly relevant, but can be a strong indication of quality. Ripple - so stability of power delivery - is key. Finally, you want to choose a PSU that delivers its 5V power via its 12V line, so the fact that the old system draws heavily from 5V but lightly from 12V won't matter.

dionb wrote on 2023-03-21, 14:03:

That's one great guide. Anyone following it will get a very usable, fun system :) […]
Show full quote

That's one great guide. Anyone following it will get a very usable, fun system 😀

Of course, given our propensity to dive down rabbit holes and be opinionated, people can and will niggle, so let me be the first 😜

- motherboard (1): You refer to Athlon as being susceptible to 'buggy' chipsets. That's mostly related to the Via 686B southbridge, and that southbridge was used on at least as many So370 boards as Socket A boards, specifically on most Via ApolloPro133a boards that are the commonest way to get AGP4x and 133MHz FSB support. Now, how bad are these bugs? Unless you want to play around with unusual TV cards, the one place you experience them is with the Creative SBLive. Choose a different sound card and you are highly unlikely to even notice anything buggy. Intent on using SBLive? Then avoid Via chipsets from around this era regardless of platform, including the ApolloPro133a. Other vendors' chipsets are fine; i815((P)E) is a great So370 choice, but SiS735 on Socket A is fine too, as is AMD760, so long as it uses AMD southbridge and not Via one. I'd also consider P4 systems; if you avoid the later more challenging designs, you get very stable i850 and i845 systems. Performance isn't amazing, but with a P4 2GHz or similar they will run Win98 perfectly.

- motherboard (2): regardless of platform, late Win98 era is prime capacitor plague era - it's most definitely not just an Athlon problem. Some brands of motherboard are generally better (Asus, Intel OEM, Gigabyte) and some generally awful (Abit, Epox, Jetway, MSI), but even with a NOS Intel OEM, don't count your chickets before they hatch. Assume caps to be bad until proven OK. One workaround here is to go very late era - Socket 754 and Socket 939 with AGP is generally Win98 compatible and new enough to be fairly sure it won't have bad caps.

- motherboard (3): PCI card compatibility is strongly dependent on 3.3V support. That's a motherboard implementation choice, but if at all possible choose one that does. Rule of thumb is that AGP4x boards will have PCI2.2 and by definition 3.3V support- but check this. If not, you may be very limited in USB 2.0 or HDD controller cards.

- hard drive: you use a SATA - PATA adapters. That's convenient, but you can get lower latency, higher performance and (IMHO, subjective) more elegance if you use a PCI SATA controller. Or go for a board new enough for SATA onboard (P4 or Athlon64)

- sound card: Audigy2 is probably best Win98 option - but it limits you in terms of motherboard chipset. Aureal's A3D is a very nice and period-correct alternative with decent game support. Cards with the 8830 A3D2 are a good option. Or go for a card that offers both EAX and A3D, like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Alternatively, a cheap card with C-Media CMI8378, particularly one of the better ones by Terratec, are a good affordable choice with some EAX support. Are any of these better than an Audigy2? No. But they give you the option to use one of the ubiquitous, cheap boards with Via chipsets.

- PSU: modern PSUs will be able to run a system like this easily - if they are good. Even for an old system like this, be sure to check reviews of a PSU. Max power isn't at all relevant. Efficiency isn't directly relevant, but can be a strong indication of quality. Ripple - so stability of power delivery - is key. Finally, you want to choose a PSU that delivers its 5V power via its 12V line, so the fact that the old system draws heavily from 5V but lightly from 12V won't matter.

Yeah the motherboard thing is definitely complicated if you go into detail. I had 3 AMD systems with VIA chipsets back in the day and they all had different issues. My main problem with AMD, is that many motherboards you can find are not the best quality because these were considered "budget" systems and also many motherboards AND AMD CPUs died including my own three AMD systems. This is why I'm not keen on recommending it since the guide is focussed on rock solid parts, not parts that pump out so much heat that a failing fan can kill the CPU (which WAS a common issue with AMD Athlons). I'm also taking into account power usage and I believe Pentium IV & AMD systems were more demanding when it came to PSUs. I'd prefer a cooler CPU that is hard to kill over a system that get rather hotter than you'd like. Heat is the bane of all electronics ... .

AGP: it gets complicated because you have different types of AGP that can fit different types of cards. I used this website for more info: http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html
For your PCI comment: I actually never run into any volt issues ever - maybe I've been lucky?

For sound card: I have both Audigy 1 & 2 but the Audigy 2's software is both more demanding and I noticed more games failed to detect EAX. Otherwise, there's tons of options - but an Audigy is "cheap" enough

I didn't mention this but here's an overview of what my entire system cost or would cost you now to build:

Panasonic 17" monitor + ATX case with Pioneer DVD drive included + ASUS CUSLM-2 motherboard and 512MB 133Mhz memory = €70 (bought three weeks ago)
Pentium III 1Ghz CPU = €22 (eBay)
120GB SSD = €25 (Amazon)
Hard drive caddy = €22 (Amazon)
128GB USB stick = €15 (Amazon)
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 + new fan = €46 (Ebay)
SB Audigy = already owned one but you can get them for €20-25 easily
A new 400W PSU: €40 (Amazon)
PCI USB 2.0 card: €15 (Amazon)
USB SATA adapter: €7 (Amazon)
PATA to SATA adapter: €3 (Aliexpress)

In total you'd spent €285 which isn't bad for a full kitted out retro system. You can save a bunch if you have parts lying around like I did of course - an old quality PSU should work fine.

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-21, 14:46:

[...]

Yeah the motherboard thing is definitely complicated if you go into detail. I had 3 AMD systems with VIA chipsets back in the day and they all had different issues. My main problem with AMD, is that many motherboards you can find are not the best quality because these were considered "budget" systems and also many motherboards AND AMD CPUs died including my own three AMD systems. This is why I'm not keen on recommending it since the guide is focussed on rock solid parts, not parts that pump out so much heat that a failing fan can kill the CPU (which WAS a common issue with AMD Athlons). I'm also taking into account power usage and I believe Pentium IV & AMD systems were more demanding when it came to PSUs. I'd prefer a cooler CPU that is hard to kill over a system that get rather hotter than you'd like. Heat is the bane of all electronics ... .

Thing about power is that it's more a matter of which power line it came from, rather than absolute Watts. P4s were the first CPUs to use 12V ATX CPU power, which all subsequent platforms have been built around. They're much easier on a modern PSU than even a P3-1000; even if they draw twice the power, they do it over the 12V line. Same applies to Athlon64 and even the last AthlonXP SoA boards (mainly nForce2 or Via KT600).

AGP: it gets complicated because you have different types of AGP that can fit different types of cards. I used this website for more info: http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html
For your PCI comment: I actually never run into any volt issues ever - maybe I've been lucky?

Try that USB 2.0 card in an i440BX board. I'd say 66% chance it won't work. Same applies to a lot of SATA and IDE controllers and - infamously - cards with later Realtek NICs (RTL8139C or D)

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

I didn't mention this but here's an overview of what my entire system cost or would cost you now to build:

Panasonic 17" monitor + ATX case with Pioneer DVD drive included + ASUS CUSLM-2 motherboard and 512MB 133Mhz memory = €70 (bought three weeks ago)
Pentium III 1Ghz CPU = €22 (eBay)
120GB SSD = €25 (Amazon)
Hard drive caddy = €22 (Amazon)
128GB USB stick = €15 (Amazon)
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 + new fan = €46 (Ebay)
SB Audigy = already owned one but you can get them for €20-25 easily
A new 400W PSU: €40 (Amazon)
PCI USB 2.0 card: €15 (Amazon)
USB SATA adapter: €7 (Amazon)
PATA to SATA adapter: €3 (Aliexpress)

In total you'd spent €285 which isn't bad for a full kitted out retro system. You can save a bunch if you have parts lying around like I did of course - an old quality PSU should work fine.

Caveats:
- these look like prices ex shipping. Shipping will be significant with so many cheap parts. There's a lot to be saved by finding one-stop shops, even if the individual parts cost more, even more if it's local.
- prices at any given moment on eBay aren't cheap, they are in fact by definition the price nobody else has been willing to pay. Waiting patiently and grabbing better prices when they appear can save a lot, particularly on the most expensive parts.

And I'd be really, really suspicious of a PSU that sells for EUR 40 new. That is not going to be a quality part. If your budget limits you to that amount, go for a young 2nd hand good quality PSU, not a bad new one.

In any event, these numbers will vary hugely based on where you are and how patient you are / how much time you can spend trawling for deals.

dionb wrote on 2023-03-21, 15:59:

Try that USB 2.0 card in an i440BX board. I'd say 66% chance it won't work. Same applies to a lot of SATA and IDE controllers and - infamously - cards with later Realtek NICs (RTL8139C or D)

I did my homework when picking out which card to get and I have three of these in three different systems. One is an i440BX board with a Slot 1 Pentium II 333Mhz. The card is brand Logilink by the way.

Caveats:
- these look like prices ex shipping. Shipping will be significant with so many cheap parts. There's a lot to be saved by finding one-stop shops, even if the individual parts cost more, even more if it's local.
- prices at any given moment on eBay aren't cheap, they are in fact by definition the price nobody else has been willing to pay. Waiting patiently and grabbing better prices when they appear can save a lot, particularly on the most expensive parts.

Actually all prices include shipping except for the PC which I picked up. And of course prices vary but what I gave are ballpark figures - Amazon ships for free, Aliexpress does too to many countries and eBay is just a case of keeping an eye out. Since I bought all eBay parts recently, they're definitely up-to-date.

And I'd be really, really suspicious of a PSU that sells for EUR 40 new. That is not going to be a quality part. If your budget limits you to that amount, go for a young 2nd hand good quality PSU, not a bad new one.

A 300W PSU is all you need for a setup like this so you can definitely get one for not too much money - the €40 PSU (a 400W one) I have was actually tested by a popular tech Youtube channel and was basically a more expensive brand in the chassis of a cheap brand at over 50% less price. All the same components and very good test results - even thought it was rated 80 bronze, it was measured to be closer to 80 gold - of course samples may vary but still ... . It's all about doing your homework I always say.

I ended up with pentium III 900mhz with voodoo 3 2000 card as win 98 machine manly because native glide . Other than that is flexible . 99% of win 98 games works fine under win xp .

ciornyi wrote on 2023-03-21, 18:21:

I ended up with pentium III 900mhz with voodoo 3 2000 card as win 98 machine manly because native glide . Other than that is flexible . 99% of win 98 games works fine under win xp .

If I didn't have a pII 333 with a Voodoo 3 3000 I would have been conflicted as well - it's a good choice. If you go up to 2003, then I'd recommend a beefier card since graphics card performance exploded at that time.

The biggest reason I usually recommend INTEL Pentium 4 boards is mostly price. Pentium 3 machines tend to be expensive because everyone wants one for theirs and P4 has a bad rep. That said, if you do happen to find a nice P3 system for a good price - it will definitely be more compatible and perform quite well. However, just hopping on auction sites - I find many more P4 boxes for much cheaper on average.

With an intel chipset, they're generally rock stable in 98 providing no hardware issues. A Northwood 1.6-2.0A on a chipset like 845 or 865PE will do extremely well in 98, avoid many of the faster speed compatibility issues, and you have a bit of headroom to go faster if you wanted to dabble in dual booting XP in the future. Some boards give you modern conveniences like built in USB 2 (so you avoid picky usb cards), SATA ports, and an actually decent 'legacy/compatibility mode' option in the BIOS. Not to mention, with the 'new' 4 pin P4 connector - finding a modern PSU that works properly with it is much easier.

Cooling is also not as big of an issue if you apply a bit of modern case design. Many old P4 systems were usually beige closed sweat boxes with tiny fans so it's no wonder they had heating issues. My 3.0c with the stock cooler barely cracks 45 degrees on load with a Fractal Core 1100 case, modern arctic case fans, and using a bit of cable management to allow for better airflow. It's def not for everybody though.

Def agree with your sound and video card choices though. I have a Ti 4200 as a spare which works extremely well in 98 and the Audigy 2 ZS with VXD drivers sound great. A voodoo would be pretty king (especially paired with an era-correct P3) but they're all so expensive these days.

A good cheap alternative is a 128bit GF4 MX card. They can be difficult to find though because many asshole companies used the same serial for 64bit and 128bit SKUs, but you can snag some really nice deals if you're patient and careful because they're the 'bad card'. A Quadro 4 is another avenue to look at, they're all 128bit cards but some of them come with DMS-59 connectors.

gen_angry wrote on 2023-03-21, 18:46:

The biggest reason I usually recommend INTEL Pentium 4 boards is mostly price. Pentium 3 machines tend to be expensive because everyone wants one for theirs and P4 has a bad rep. That said, if you do happen to find a nice P3 system for a good price - it will definitely be more compatible and perform quite well. However, just hopping on auction sites - I find many more P4 boxes for much cheaper on average.

A lot of P4 hardware I can buy locally, are low end workstations from Dell & HP and I'm honestly not very keen to use those for retro PCs. They have hard locked options and custom non-standard BIOS etc. They also often supported limited RAM brands among other things. P3 motherboards from 2001 are rather rare but I can easily buy a 1999-2000 P3 motherboard for, say, €40-50, especially if you go Slot 1. The issue is you can't use higher end Pentium III CPUs, AGP is often missing or only 2x (if even that) and you have BIOS limitations and so on. If you're a little patient you can grab a good motherboard off second hand sites for around €50-70 which, considering a good motherboard is the most important foundation, is not that bad. Just need to watch out for bad caps. Mine is in pretty good shape but I'll have a guy recap it as soon as he has time just to be sure it's solid for another 30 years.

gen_angry wrote on 2023-03-21, 18:46:

With an intel chipset, they're generally rock stable in 98 providing no hardware issues. A Northwood 1.6-2.0A on a chipset like 845 or 865PE will do extremely well in 98, avoid many of the faster speed compatibility issues, and you have a bit of headroom to go faster if you wanted to dabble in dual booting XP in the future. Some boards give you modern conveniences like built in USB 2 (so you avoid picky usb cards), SATA ports, and an actually decent 'legacy/compatibility mode' option in the BIOS. Not to mention, with the 'new' 4 pin P4 connector - finding a modern PSU that works properly with it is much easier.

Yeah I've always felt Intel chipsets beat VIA and many others in stability and reliability. Sure, some versions had their issues but on the whole ... .

This is a very nice guide, great work! I wanted to add an idea I used on with my recent Windows 98 build on an AMD K6 platform - separate partitions and backups. I was reading through an old school Windows 98 optimization book and the author noted the advantages of separate partitions for Windows 98, programs, and data.

I ended up making a 2GB partition for Windows 98, 10GB or so for programs, and another 4GB for my data. This made it easy to backup just the small C: partition and restore it if something went wrong - for example, a bad driver that prevents booting. I used TweakUI to repoint C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files and most programs work fine and don't mind. Only one (MouseRate for USB polling changes) had hardcoded shortcuts to C:.

This next part is probably not for everyone, but I'm a fan of OpenBSD and dual boot it alongside Windows 98. This means if I break 98, I can drop into OpenBSD and rsync my C: partition back to a known good state. Even on my slowish SCSI disk, rsync minimizes writes and makes it bearable. This has saved me countless reinstalls. : )

I suppose if you have ejectable SSDs and an USB 3.0 SSD adapter though, you can probably just do this on your main machine with way less fuss, haha.

Cosmic wrote on 2023-03-21, 19:39:

This is a very nice guide, great work! I wanted to add an idea I used on with my recent Windows 98 build on an AMD K6 platform - […]
Show full quote

This is a very nice guide, great work! I wanted to add an idea I used on with my recent Windows 98 build on an AMD K6 platform - separate partitions and backups. I was reading through an old school Windows 98 optimization book and the author noted the advantages of separate partitions for Windows 98, programs, and data.

I ended up making a 2GB partition for Windows 98, 10GB or so for programs, and another 4GB for my data. This made it easy to backup just the small C: partition and restore it if something went wrong - for example, a bad driver that prevents booting. I used TweakUI to repoint C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files and most programs work fine and don't mind. Only one (MouseRate for USB polling changes) had hardcoded shortcuts to C:.

This next part is probably not for everyone, but I'm a fan of OpenBSD and dual boot it alongside Windows 98. This means if I break 98, I can drop into OpenBSD and rsync my C: partition back to a known good state. Even on my slowish SCSI disk, rsync minimizes writes and makes it bearable. This has saved me countless reinstalls. : )

I suppose if you have ejectable SSDs and an USB 3.0 SSD adapter though, you can probably just do this on your main machine with way less fuss, haha.

My current setup has a 8GB C and a 112GB D partition for this purpose. I make regular backups of the C partition but Windows 98 is not that difficult - if you copy the Windows folder it's already a good start.

And yeah the ejectable SSDs are such a huge advantage - SSDs cost peanuts these days, use little power, are fast & reliable and hard to break so if you drop one while swapping them out it's no big deal. It takes less than half a minute to eject the drive & to hook it up to my PC.

I didn't respond to the comment earlier about a SATA PCI card being better - it can be, but last time I tried one, it failed on both PCs I tried it on. This card was also NOT cheap - I paid €50 or so. On top of this, it needed drivers to function (well it didn't even with drivers in my case) which is less ideal. Also, with this SATA PCI card, you can't use a caddy and the caddy is important to make the "flow" work. Having to take your PC apart to get to the SSD is annoying and Windows 98 has suddenly gone dead on me in the past so restoring a backup is now incredibly easy.

For me I think 2 big points are missing, if we are keeping this as a beginners guide.

Partition your hard drive!
You make the very good point of copying all the software and drivers to the folder. Problem is when you need to perform a clean install you can't simply format C:\
Create a 2nd (or more) partitions and this becomes a non issue.

2nd point may or may not belong in a beginners guide- networking.
It does require a bit more work so maybe it's for the next level but once you have a large hard drive and networking (either ftp or Windows SMB) copying files to/from other computers is easy and ties into the "degrades moving parts / no faffing around with CDs" mindset.

but yes, nothing is wrong with this guide and good place to start if new to the hobby 😀

chinny22 wrote on 2023-03-22, 11:41:

2nd point may or may not belong in a beginners guide- networking.
It does require a bit more work so maybe it's for the next level but once you have a large hard drive and networking (either ftp or Windows SMB) copying files to/from other computers is easy and ties into the "degrades moving parts / no faffing around with CDs" mindset.

I agree with this. Networking makes many things easier, as you can set up a NAS and access that from all your retro PCs (yes, even those running DOS 6.22) for a one-stop-shop solution to data storage. A network card also takes up fewer resources (only a single IRQ) than a USB 2.0 adapter (usually needs three IRQs) which can make a difference with certain sound cards.

Period correct network cards are also better tolerated by retro rigs than USB 2.0 adapters, as those can cause performance issues on certain platforms.

dionb wrote on 2023-03-21, 14:03:

Assume caps to be bad until proven OK. One workaround here is to go very late era - Socket 754 and Socket 939 with AGP is generally Win98 compatible and new enough to be fairly sure it won't have bad caps.

I agree with most of what's been said, but I have to objectively disagree with this. Socket 754 and 939 were both firmly in capacitor plague era. I have seen many Socket 775 boards with bloated or leaking electrolytics (Emachines ECS boards and Dell boards specifically), and I would imagine that many cheaper AM2 boards are in the same boat.

Personally, I would not rule out cap plague concerns until Socket 1156\1366 for Intel and AM2+ for AMD.

As far as which boards from the late '90s and early 2000s are "safe" from this issue, I don't think there's any guarantee, but I have noticed some trends. I have found 440BX boards to be much less likely to have them, other than a few specific boards I've seen from Abit and some others. Anything before that (440LX for example) generally does not have them unless it's a really really cheap board... but with these boards you won't be getting the same level of performance. My best recommendation for someone getting into this hobby is to teach themselves how to spot visibly swollen caps in blurry pictures when shopping for a motherboard. If the top of the cap has any variation in the shine it is probably either bulged or leaking. If it's a flat shade\color it's probably fine. This isn't a guarantee that the caps are good, but buying a board with visibly bad caps is the exact opposite, so do what you can to reduce your chances of having to deal with this.

Alternatively, if someone has some decent tools, a steady hand and an interest in board repairs, replacing caps without damaging boards is a great skill to have.

Anyway... carry on with the recommendations. This is all good stuff. 😁

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-21, 19:31:

gen_angry wrote on 2023-03-21, 18:46:

The biggest reason I usually recommend INTEL Pentium 4 boards is mostly price. Pentium 3 machines tend to be expensive because everyone wants one for theirs and P4 has a bad rep. That said, if you do happen to find a nice P3 system for a good price - it will definitely be more compatible and perform quite well. However, just hopping on auction sites - I find many more P4 boxes for much cheaper on average.

A lot of P4 hardware I can buy locally, are low end workstations from Dell & HP and I'm honestly not very keen to use those for retro PCs. They have hard locked options and custom non-standard BIOS etc. They also often supported limited RAM brands among other things.

That was the case here as well - P4 tended to be what was bought by corporate customers. Most enthousiasts bought Athlon, as you could get better performance than a P4 for less than the price of a (hopeless) P4 Celeron. So most motherboards allowing a lot of freedom tended to be SoA.

As for RAM compatibility, that tended to be more brand than platform based. In the early 00's, Asus somehow managed to get incredibly picky on their high-end dual channel boards. Contemporary Asus P4P800 (So478, i865PE) and A7N8X (SoA, nF2-400 Ultra) would only work with a miniscule number of specific DIMMs, as bad as more recently with some Ryzen boards. Other brands didn't have anything near the same issues. My housemate at the time had the A7N8X Deluxe while I had a Gigabyte GA-7N400-L with the same nForce2-400 Ultra chipset. Mine ate any DIMMs within spec, his would only use two very specific ones (which were mine, not his - that exchange was worth a few beers 😉 ). A lot of OEM systems (HP...) used Asus boards so shared their engineering around this time.

Yeah I've always felt Intel chipsets beat VIA and many others in stability and reliability. Sure, some versions had their issues but on the whole ... .

I'd be very reticent of judging chipsets across time and platform on brand. Intel had a whole range of artificially castrated chipsets (i815 with 512MB memory limit, i810 with 512MB memory limit and max 100MHz memory bus) and the utter reliability trainwreck of the i820 Camino, with the third RIMM slot being unstable, as was the MTH which allowed you to use SDRAM with it. Sure, i440BX was legendary for good reason, and most early P4 chipsets were rock-solid (if terminally slow in the case of i845B), but blanket "Intel good, Via bad" is hardly justified, and a lot of non-Intel, non-Via chipsets were extremely interesting. Many people consider the SiS635T to be the ultimate So370 chipset, to name but one, and at various times in the Win98 era, SiS, AMD, nVidia and ULi had some of the best performing (and most stable) chipsets out there.

I'd really suggest recommending specific chipsets rather than chipset brands, but tbh, there are more good to excellent ones at this time and a blacklist of 'avoid these' chipsets makes more sense. Avoid i820 northbridge with SDRAM, avoid Via KT266 (non-A) northbridges and 686B southbridges, and as long as you stick to AGP 4x requirements, anything without those two should be fine on So370, SoA or So423/478.