Okay, I have a lot I want to review.
mrau wrote:1gb is a lot for bare windows xp or sp1, sp2 and 3 will profit from more memory (as example i an tell You i was struggling on my athlon with 1.5 gig)
Are you saying that with Windows XP SP3 1GB of RAM is too little, because Asaki said the following:
Asaki wrote:I doubt there are many games that would benefit from 2 gigs of RAM in XP that would actually run on that kind of machine. I've run XP with 512-768 and the only thing that really suffers is video playback and modern day web browsing.
? I am not trying to start another debate ( 😀 ), I just want to know, only for pre- and up-to-2003 gaming (see below), will 1GB be fine?
squiggly wrote:Well you have 4 dimm slots so not a waste 😀
I am probably wrong, but wouldn't you want the same exact model stick of RAM in every DIMM slot, or does it only matter for each pair of dual-channel DIMM slots (for example, having two sticks of Corsair memory of one model in the first pair of dual-channel DIMM slots, and, say, a different model of Corsair sticks of RAM, or, let's even go as far as to say two sticks of G.Skills sticks in the second pair of dual-channel DIMM slots)?
squiggly wrote:The only other thing I would add is get a hot swap HDD caddy.
I plan to buy a heavily discounted Deepcool Tesseract case from Newegg, which has that! 😀
squiggly wrote:Work on the assumption your win98 will die once a year (that used to be the old advice on how often to reinstall 98).
🙁 😢
squiggly wrote:Constantly reinstalling windows is thr biggest turn-off of retro computing, but if you are smart about backing up partition images you should only ever have to install it once. I actually use EaseUS to fully prepare the partitions for install and then image them every time I make a big change. I am not kidding when I say this might be the difference between enjoying your retro build and wanting to give it up. Also, get some ide/sata adapters and just use modern sata drives of any capacity - so long as the first partition is for win98 (or msdos) and small enough (<120gb for 98, <2gb for Dos) it wont care (or see) what follows it.
I need to do it again, now that I have done a lot since, but I have cloned my Windows 98 SE partition, which encompasses the whole capacity of my HDD in my first P3 retro gaming machine (the one linked in my "signature") using Clonezilla and an 160GB HDD hooked up to the motherboard's USB port via a USB-to-SATA adapter cable. Yeah, I had to reinstall Win98 twice on that computer, once because I accidentally deleted the USB drivers while troubleshooting something (*face palm*) and a second time while trying to understand why I would get a blue-screen when entering MS-DOS mode via the shutdown menu (it turns out the culprit is my USB/PS/2 mouse whenever it is plugged into the motherboard's USB port, whose VXD driver I guess does not fully unload itself, so as a result I get that error; however, whenever I actually restart into MS-DOS mode via a .pif file, no errors occur with the mouse plugged in, and works even in the USB port!; any who, I digress). And you say that the Win98 partition should be before any other OS partition on the HDD (so, say, installing XP in a partition that is "in the front" of the HDD with its partition, and then installing Win98 and having its partition "after" it will not work?)?
agent_x007 wrote:1*) If 1024MB installation fails (it can work), go with 512MB of RAM (install Windows normally and on first Desktop boot copy/add himemx to config.sys and add/modify lines) :
Don't you mean "system.ini", which this website and this one say to add such lines to? If not, why use "config.sys" over "system.ini"? Just somewhat confused. 😀
agent_x007 wrote:Here's my attempt on video with 1024MB RAM and on C2E X6800 @ 3,2GHz : LINK
For shorter version start @9:00.
No tweaks/hacks were used.
Asaki wrote:I don't know if it makes a difference, but my machine is an Athlon 64.
🤣 It's just like people getting Windows XP to run on Intel Skylake systems when they are not "supposed" to. 😀
Finally, let me make some clarifications as to the goal I am trying to achieve with this P4 build I am building. I plan to play games from 1999-2003 (the latter being the year that the graphics card I am using, a nvidia geforce fx 5900 SE by PNY, was made), with the P3 I had built covering games up to 1999. This P4 build will bridge the gap between 90's retro gaming and early 2000's early modern gaming. And, as many of you have pointed out, having such a "late" Win98 PC is a great idea for getting those late Win98 games (from 1999-2001) to work where they are best suited - in Win98. 😀
Also, here's a rough parts list for this P4 build of mine:
- P4 2.80A SL7PK 2.8 GHz
- Asus P4P800 MB (being shipped)
- 1 Gig of DDR memory (the piece that was the reason for this topic)
- Nvidia Geforce FX 5900 SE AGP Video Card by PNY
- Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
- Aureal Vortex 2 SuperQuad (or something similar; can't remember its exact name)
- A TP-Link PCI wifi card (for XP)
- A 250 GB SATA (3?) Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 HDD
- An IDE optical drive
- A Gotek USB Floppy Emulator