700Mhz is fine for Win98, anything wanting a faster CPU is probably happy on XP.
I know its not an ideal PC but I'd still install Win98 and see how it performs as is, you may find you don't rally need anything better anyway
Of course, you'll need them all and then some. But if not, between 1 and 2, keep the prettier one, obviously.
I like jumpers.
Now that I've had a chance to go through all three systems in depth and really dig into the specs here's what i'll probably do:
Now all that being said, It's time to hunt for an decent 2000 era motherboard. Ideally one with SB-LINK so I dont have to buy a separate ISA card.just for dos playback. Otherwise I will have to borrow the VIBRA16 card from the dos machine. (can you have mutiple sound cards installed at once on the same os?) That also means I'll have to look for a CPU and AGP graphics as well, something more than 333mhz, to consolidate the gap from the ME machine. I'll read back through all the earlier posts for ideas, but does anyone have their favorite go-to p3 motherboards? i'm also noticing too quite a few threads about that so I have a lot to read
Most motherboards with sb-link are intel 440BX chipset P2/III ones. There's a thread for them:
List of motherboards with SB-link (PC/PCI) header
There's also a list for S370 mobos:
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards
But, you already have that time covered with the PIII. The 1 GHz chip is from 2000. Most later boards without ISA slot also lacked the SB-link, so when you need it, it's usually not there.
The PIII should pretty much take care of DOS.
To have some distance to the PIII, maybe get a later Athlon board that still has an ISA slot. Using a second soundcard is possible, you just need to manage the I/O resources without conflicts.
But, still mostly the same time frame. I'd say a next step is a board with DDR memory? No ISAs left, afaik.
I like jumpers.
Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-10, 20:59:Most motherboards with sb-link are intel 440BX chipset P2/III ones. There's a thread for them: List of motherboards with SB-link […]
Most motherboards with sb-link are intel 440BX chipset P2/III ones. There's a thread for them:
List of motherboards with SB-link (PC/PCI) header
There's also a list for S370 mobos:
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards
But, you already have that time covered with the PIII. The 1 GHz chip is from 2000. Most later boards without ISA slot also lacked the SB-link, so when you need it, it's usually not there.
The PIII should pretty much take care of DOS.To have some distance to the PIII, maybe get a later Athlon board that still has an ISA slot. Using a second soundcard is possible, you just need to manage the I/O resources without conflicts.
But, still mostly the same time frame. I'd say a next step is a board with DDR memory? No ISAs left, afaik.
The issue is that its not a 1ghz cpu in there, but only 700mhz. The original one was replaced or swapped out long ago 🙁 This current PIII motherboard cant do DOS audio, nor does does it have AGP, and it has a lackluster chipset. If it is possible to merge the Win 98 and Win ME machine into some middle ground I'd like to do that, but If I keep all three then I wouldnt be buying any more parts and just leaving it the way it is. I dont know where some of the people on here are finding full towers for cheap, I look on my local craigslist and all i see are 90's oem compaqs going for $150+ 😜
