I am currently in the same boat as you, but i opted for two systems and a kvm switch. One system specialized in dos, the other one in win98. It seems if you want a single system that does it all between 1990-2000, you run into some compromises, especially for dos midi imo. Ideally you would need OPL3 + a good wavetable, external midi modules are great, but a luxury.

If you plan to run everything in the w98 environment, maybe consider a Yamaha YMF7xx based sound card. I just ordered one myself for my w98 machine, not received it yet. Apparently they are do-it-all cards optimized for win98. They have both an opl3, a xg wavetable and a mpu401 compatible interface in a single pci package. The most advanced versions have surround sound too. Apparently you can load your own midi samples with it too. I cant wait to try this thing.

In that case, this build will be more biased toward the Win98SE end of things, probably 1995-1999 releases.

First off, I want to know what the hype about Aureal A3D and wavetracing was about, and I won't really understand until I can hear it in action. What I do know, though, is that Aureal was one of the first companies to popularize binaural, HRTF-based surround with headphones, a feature I have come to appreciate immensely with CMSS-3D Headphone on X-Fi cards (which likely borrows a lot from Aureal and Sensaura tech).

The other thing I know is that Aureal card support is rather dismal when running XP (and I don't think Win2000 fares much better, either). I know because when the integrated front audio jack on my XP-era box (Athlon XP 3200+, 2 GB DDR-400, Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe, GeForce 6800 Ultra) started acting up on one channel, I decided to install one of my sound cards for better results...and found that A3D was hit-or-miss and EAX was totally absent. I suppose we can "thank" Creative for that. This is why I have to build a Win98SE box.

If building a DOS desktop stuffed to the brim with sound cards for maximum compatibility, where do you draw the line? Pentium II/440BX? Katmai or Coppermine Pentium III? Something even older than those with more ISA slot options, but still a few PCI slots (maybe even AGP)?

NamelessPlayer wrote:

If building a DOS desktop stuffed to the brim with sound cards for maximum compatibility, where do you draw the line? Pentium II/440BX?

Thats very close to what im doing 🤣.
I found a GA-6ZXC motherboard + celeron 500 in good condition ( in the garbage.) pretty cool board for such a dos project.
It has 3 isa slots, 4 pci and one agp. I will have an opl3 based card, my mpu401 and probably a sb32/awe64 or such in the last isa slot. Ideally if i had a GUS it would be awesome but i dont have one. It has agp so it can be interesting to experiment with glide for dos and such. I finaly got a pci network card to work on it with win 3.11 ( that was a pain ). I can access internet and my network drive now, fun part is about to begin.

My win98 box is an athlon 1800+, voodoo3 2000, sb live!. pretty much a standard system for the era but i may change video/audio adapters. I wish i had a voodoo5 5500 to put in it, i need to snatch one of those.

Concerning your other inquiries with win9x and Aureal cards, i dont know anything about those sound cards, ive never used anything but stereo speakers and roland/sound blasters 🙁

As Maxwar said, you have no cards with a real OPL synth on them.

I use a Vortex 2 in my 98 machine and don't have any problems.
Personally, I don't see why you'd bother with all 3 of those cards, just pick one and roll with it for win98. If you're going to drop to DOS mode and have games that don't like the Vortex for some reason, you could always get a cheap Sound Blaster 16 or Pro off ebay- both of these are better in DOS mode than any of the cards listed in pure DOS.
The Vortex has pretty good general MIDI and you can always install a MIDI daughterboard like an XR385, that you can get cheap off ebay too.

What games are you really plan on playing as this can factor need of power from the system.

I think your highest potential would be to have 2 systems as said before Say a DOS/Win95 and a Win98/ME rig. Its hard to get everything run just right with just one.

Skip the Aureal cards. I can say wavetracing was ok but alot of games have turned out to be finiky with aureal cards. I have both a MX300 and a SuperQuad 2500 and enjoyed the tinkering but haven't really loved the cards as much as I hoped.

From all my configs for windows 98se rigs. I keep coming back in finding the best compatibility with a nice range of games will be on the intel side:
Pentium 3 Coppermine/Tualatin (I use a 1GHz coppermine on a regualar I815EP chipset)
Intel Chipset mobo = 440BX or I815 EP (B-step if going tualatin)
Sound Blaster Live! preferred but AWE 64 2nd choice.
Voodoo 3 (I've come to love this card over my Voodoo 5 5500 and Voodoo 2 12mb SLI setups)
16x'ish DVD-ROM

So far most of the harder to get running games have been:
Need for Speed 1 SE Win or Dos mode (This was on a V5 5500 AGP so dunno about the V3 rig yet)
POD
Screamer 2
Dues EX (haven't really even tried getting this to run yet but only getting a black screen so far on the V3 rig).

The only games I ran into that don't have enough power so far at the resolutions I want have been:
NFS: High Stakes @ 1024x768

I'll list a few games that work fine or minor issue for me though:
Blood 1/2
Redneck rampage
Shadow Warrior
Duke Nukem
Doom series
Rocket Jockey
Carmageddon 1 /Splat Pack/ 2
Need For Speed 2/3/4
Kiss Psycho Circus
PowerSlide
Kingpin: Life of Crime
Quake 1/2/3

Clarification: I didn't say I'd use ALL of the sound cards listed at once, or all of the video cards for that matter (if there's even a motherboard with multiple AGP slots). I'm just mentioning what I have on hand that could be used.

I know I don't have anything with a real OPL3, which means more money spent on yet another sound card...but the vast majority of DOS games I can think of support General MIDI, or even the EMU8000 synth directly for a few added effects (Eradicator's said to be one). Only one I can immediately remember that's constrained to FM synth for music is MegaRace. (Stephane Picq is a FM synth god.)

Biggest priorities for this system:

-Heavy Gear II. Dear god, HG2. This game is a pain in the ass to get working without crashes on even my XP box, and my current Win7 64-bit, Q6600, 8800 GT flagship fares even worse (really messed-up graphics, like the culling's messed up, and even more crash-prone). I think the only way for this one is to have a proper Win98SE desktop. (Oh, and then there's that Interactive Around-Sound middleware that tends to be iffy with getting A3D or EAX working on XP and later.)

-MechWarrior 2 and everything else based on its engine (notably Interstate '76 and Battlezone). Specifically, I want to run the Glide version of 31stCC and the 1.1 version of Mercenaries in Direct3D, with the MeX shell if possible. Those in particular aren't exactly modern computer-friendly, even when trying stuff like MechVM. (By contrast, the QuickDraw 3D RAVE version of 31stCC for old Macs seems a lot less finicky, though there's a ground texture bug on my PowerBook G3.)

(Notice a pattern here? All these games were published and developed by Activision...)

-Rocket Jockey. (RogueTrip2012, you get bonus points for mentioning it before I did.) It technically runs on the newer computers, but there's some nasty input lag that I don't remember running it on older hardware that's intermittent and rather random.

-Unreal Tournament, if I can get away with an average 60 FPS for it. Same goes for Unreal Gold.

-Descent II. Normally, I wouldn't put this on the list due to source ports, but D2X-Rebirth has a far slower turning speed than I remember (like frozen molasses by comparison), and D2X-XL isn't exactly stable. The turning speed issue could be due to the fact that I most prominently remember playing it with a Spacetec SpaceOrb 360, whose setup may have allowed faster than normal turning speeds. While I'm at it, I might as well throw in Descent 3 for extra good measure.

-Independence War Deluxe. I haven't actually started on it yet (one of the rare cases where I'm playing through the sequel first in spite of knowing it's a sequel), but it definitely seems like one of those games that was just made for older computers. Gonna have to play this one with the SpaceOrb too due to 6DoF movement.

That's just what immediately comes to mind right now. Notice that most of the games I mentioned don't like newer hardware to begin with (except for UT, which is in there for benchmarking purposes; I could throw in Q3A for that too). As for DOS games, they're less of an issue compared to DOSBox, but that doesn't help me get around the use of specialized controllers like the SpaceOrb.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

-Rocket Jockey. (RogueTrip2012, you get bonus points for mentioning it before I did.) It technically runs on the newer computers, but there's some nasty input lag that I don't remember running it on older hardware that's intermittent and rather random.

Do you have the RJ Lanpatch installed by chance? I use a USB-2-PS2 adapater and didn't really notice the lag you talked about until the lanpatch was installed. Of couse I'm using win98se and will probably re-install the game again without the lanpatch and re-try to make sure it is not a controller issue.

Back in the day I made LPT-2-PS1 adapter that always worked great with this game in win98se or winXP but unsure if I used the lanpatch back then. I still have the adapter and drivers and see if that fixes my issue if it turns out to be the USB-2-PS2 adapter.

I'm no expert in the other games but sounds like if you already have the V2-SLI setup it would be a better choice for your games listed. I'm sure UT will work well enough on it given a faster CPU.

Maybe someone could chime in if a V5 would work with those Activision games.

Yes, I installed the LAN patch. You think that's what's causing it?

Also, I only have ONE Voodoo2 and no SLI cable (though it looks like a short floppy drive cable). Haven't decided if I'll get a second for SLI yet.

MW2: 31stCC Glide only works natively on a Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 (it's a very early version of the Glide API), though dgVoodoo does work with it on my XP box. (However, that system has a different issue, where most of the graphics abruptly disappear a few minutes into sim mode, leaving me without a visible HUD, enemy 'Mechs, or even the Esc menu!) Everything else uses Direct3D from Mercs onward. Same for Heavy Gear II, though that game has its own engine.

I've noticed another pattern here...the really finicky games are the ones that use Direct3D 7 or prior, coincidentally the versions that Wine and virtual machines DON'T get along with.

Oh, another important set of resources I have access to that I forgot to mention:

-3*256 MB PC-133
-2*256 MB DDR-266

I don't think I'll have to worry about RAM either, just the CPU and mobo (maybe PSU too). The only reason I'm not using my BP6 with the dual Celeron 533s is that Win98SE can't use the second CPU anyway, and a single Celeron 533 stock (I would OC it if the multiplier wasn't also locked downward so that it's running roughly the same at 100 MHz FSB) simply doesn't cut it for Unreal Tournament or some of the other more demanding games.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Yes, I installed the LAN patch. You think that's what's causing it?

Ok, I un-installed the game fully then re-installed off the cd-rom. I can say that the lanpatch was causing my input lag!! Plays great again with a cheap radioshack wireless PS2 controller. Played 4 races so far in testing.

I have MW2 as it was a pack-in with my Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo1) so I can say it was probably more native to V1 series. I was never into that game-type so I'm no help on this.

If I76 uses the same engine though then maybe GoG has MW2 avail for newer systems? I bought I76 off GoG before I started building my old rigs and got it playing on Win7.

Anything over 512MB (really even 256-384 is more than enough) is gonna be overkill for Win9x OS'es. So yes, your good there. Over 512mb you may need to get rloews patch I've heard and also set MaxFileCache which I'd like to avoid. Personally have tested 768MB and got away with just setting the MaxFileCache.

I'd think any Pentium III 733Mhz+ or equivalent is ideal for Voodoo 2 territory. Without SLI you will be restricted to 800x600 or less (heared there was a patch to run higher res on some voodoo 2 cards but never tested myself).

You may be right...the 1.0 install has absolutely no hint of input lag at all! Too bad that it comes at the expense of LAN...this is a game that's just begging to be played with other people.

*installs 1.1 into a copied folder* Definitely lags a bit, though not nearly as bad as I remember (where it would sometimes take a whole second). Still, it would be nice to have the benefits of 1.1 sans the input lag bug.

The Glide version of MW2:31stCC was definitely based around the original Voodoo1 cards; the Voodoo2 just happens to work since it's essentially a Voodoo1 with a second TMU and more VRAM. Since the Voodoo3 and later use a different architecture and apparently didn't implement proper support for Glide 1.x...

GOG doesn't sell MW2, even if they do sell I'76. There's additional licensing problems there, especially if it contains any of "The Unseen".

I'm planning to build myself such a PC one day as well - but I don't have much of a clue since I simply don't know which motherboards are supporting Win98SE nowadays.

Same goes for the other peripherals.

So thanks anyway for what you have already written here : It gives me at least some hints ... 😉

Alrik Fassbauer wrote:

I'm planning to build myself such a PC one day as well - but I don't have much of a clue since I simply don't know which motherboards are supporting Win98SE nowadays.

Same goes for the other peripherals.

So thanks anyway for what you have already written here : It gives me at least some hints ... 😉

If you want a more modern motherboard for windows 98/ME then check this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/97588-modern- … ith-windows-98/

As always YMMV.

Your pretty safe for windows 98 on Socket 7 / 370 / 462 / A or Slot A / 1 motherboards. Chipsets are the bigger breakdown on knowing what is good.

Don't feel afraid to ask for help on the forum as there are many knowledgeable folk here.

I postponed this project much longer than I planned on...

I think I'll go for an MSI 694T Pro to base everything on. Soyo 7VBA boards would be preferable, but the premiums they charge on eBay are ridiculous, and the 694Ts are dirt cheap by comparison. I'm sure I could do worse as far as Tualatin-compatible motherboards with ISA slots go.

Then I'll just need a Socket 370 HSF that isn't one of the Golden Orbs that came with my BP6, a Pentium III-S 1.4 GHz, and maybe a new PSU, and I should be good to go.

The only hanging point is the HSF...I'm not sure where I can find them or which ones to get. It's said that Socket A ones will work fine, but I'm not sure I want to take chances there.

I have a soyo 7vba. It's nothing great. I think the MSI boards are better. Just change the caps if they're bulging and you're good to go.