Wow, should be a nice build, but those parts must have been pretty pricey if you bought them recently! You're doing well if you have less than $350 (USD) in this system!

Also, watch the hard drive capacity. I don't know how large you can go with that Gigabyte board since it only has an ATA-100 controller. I would think that 120GB should be plenty large enough and fast enough for anything pre-2001 though. Back in those days most games came on a single 700MB CD still.

Should be a lot of fun to put together and use though. Keep us posted. 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

You're doing well if you have less than $350 (USD) in this system!

I'm not doing well 🤣

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Also, watch the hard drive capacity. I don't know how large you can go with that Gigabyte board since it only has an ATA-100 controller.

Thanks, that's the kind of thing I need to know; I hadn't realised that was a thing.. My only experience with large IDE drives was on the original Xbox. I'll probably get another 120GB drive for XP then 😊

ac3t1ne wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

You're doing well if you have less than $350 (USD) in this system!

I'm not doing well 🤣

Oh, well, that happens. If you can afford it, then why not? 😊

ac3t1ne wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Also, watch the hard drive capacity. I don't know how large you can go with that Gigabyte board since it only has an ATA-100 controller.

Thanks, that's the kind of thing I need to know; I hadn't realised that was a thing.. My only experience with large IDE drives was on the original Xbox. I'll probably get another 120GB drive for XP then 😊

I had to brush up on it a bit, but it seems that ATA-100 could optionally support 48bit LBA which translates to 128PB maximum drive size, but many ATA-100 controllers were limited to 137GB anyway. Probably safest to just go with a pair of 120GB drives. 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Oh, well, that happens. If you can afford it, then why not? :blush: […]
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ac3t1ne wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

You're doing well if you have less than $350 (USD) in this system!

I'm not doing well 🤣

Oh, well, that happens. If you can afford it, then why not? 😊

ac3t1ne wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Also, watch the hard drive capacity. I don't know how large you can go with that Gigabyte board since it only has an ATA-100 controller.

Thanks, that's the kind of thing I need to know; I hadn't realised that was a thing.. My only experience with large IDE drives was on the original Xbox. I'll probably get another 120GB drive for XP then 😊

I had to brush up on it a bit, but it seems that ATA-100 could optionally support 48bit LBA which translates to 128PB maximum drive size, but many ATA-100 controllers were limited to 137GB anyway. Probably safest to just go with a pair of 120GB drives. 😀

If it were me, I would get a PCI SATA 150 controller and go with an SSD or 2 instead of slow IDE drives. Bootup is really, really fast with 98SE on an SSD.

cyclone3d wrote:

If it were me, I would get a PCI SATA 150 controller and go with an SSD or 2 instead of slow IDE drives. Bootup is really, really fast with 98SE on an SSD.

Would this just plug in and work with my motherboard?

I'm probably going to stick with the IDE drives for the same reason I want a real floppy drive (I want a PC that makes weird noises).

Even so it would be nice to understand more about this as a potential future upgrade if my drives should die?

ac3t1ne wrote:

Would this just plug in and work with my motherboard? […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote:

If it were me, I would get a PCI SATA 150 controller and go with an SSD or 2 instead of slow IDE drives. Bootup is really, really fast with 98SE on an SSD.

Would this just plug in and work with my motherboard?

I'm probably going to stick with the IDE drives for the same reason I want a real floppy drive (I want a PC that makes weird noises).

Even so it would be nice to understand more about this as a potential future upgrade if my drives should die?

If you buy the appropriate controller it will be a huge upgrade. A Promise Sata150 for example: it has win98 and winxp drivers, and allows to use huge HDDs or ssds. I like the idea of using ide drives and have a couple myself in my build, but ssds are too good to not use.

Pretty nice hardware, btw! For a case, I'm all about modern cases because of better airflow and cable managing. What do you have in mind?

If your going for ease You can also get adapters that allow you to use Sata drives on IDE systems, which is probably what I would do, only as 120GB sata drives are much easer to find the IDE ones.
Phil did a video on various options here.
https://youtu.be/Edmg43t28jg

Onto the PC itself, this is the second Duel CPU with a Voodoo 5500 this month, Were are they all coming from I like it!!!!
If you really want to max it out, Audigy 2 ZS was the final soundcard with Win98 support, drivers are a bit more refined then the Live and better suited to XP, Although I can imagine your wallet must be hurting a bit at the moment!

Re sound in dos, the Live should install drivers, this is a bit hit and miss, Audigy 2 doesn't have official dos drivers but you can use the Audigy ones from vogons drivers fine, You just need to manually configure them, but in all honesty I just play from within Win98 on my Duel P3 600

Case wise, I would go modern with good airflow, Multiple CPU's, HDD's and the Voodoo are very efficient heat generators.
Here is my Duel P3 for inspiration Asus P2B-DS Build
The heatsinks don't even get warm, and the fan controller (since added to monitor temps) report the voodoos' average in the 60's celsius

ac3t1ne wrote:

Would this just plug in and work with my motherboard? […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote:

If it were me, I would get a PCI SATA 150 controller and go with an SSD or 2 instead of slow IDE drives. Bootup is really, really fast with 98SE on an SSD.

Would this just plug in and work with my motherboard?

I'm probably going to stick with the IDE drives for the same reason I want a real floppy drive (I want a PC that makes weird noises).

Even so it would be nice to understand more about this as a potential future upgrade if my drives should die?

Yep, just need one that has a bios on the SATA card. They will work in any PC motherboard that has a PCI slot. The computer just sees it as a SCSI card for bootup purposes. The Promise S150 cards work fine as do the Via cards. I think there is another one that works as well but I would have to dig through my cards to see what it is.

My first hard drive arrived, but I also cracked and bought this:

Still not sure which direction to take..

I'm actually struggling to find an old beige case for a reasonable price which is annoying, i'm going to get a CRT for this so I thought I should get the case to match.

Got the same controller. Haven't had any issues with it, no matter how much I seem to be abusing it. Good choice!

Win98 drivers for them seem rock solid too.

OK big update (taken a while as I have moved home over the new year period)

I have spent way to much on this machine, I refuse to count it but it's a lot.

I have started the build, and I didn't take photos as the parts arrived (plus I am still waiting on a few bits)

here is a badly stitched together in paint picture off ripped off ebay thumbnails of what I have bought:

- Server chassis with 420 watt PSU and some fans (had to be beige).
- some coolermaster cpu fans (went with the 3 hole ones, only to find the spacing was inccorrect for my sockets!! Out came the hacksaw)
- Sony MPF920 floppy drive
- Sony CRX320E cdrw dvd combo
- Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9200, 128MB DDR PCI (better graphics for XP where the voodoo 5 might have been a bottle neck)
- cables (IDE, SATA CD audio)
- stickers (oh yes!)
- a couple of sandisk 128gb SSD (one each for 98 and XP) + enclosures for these
- big case fan
- TRENDnet TEW-423PI wifi card (this would all be pointless if i dont get to play unreal tournament online in its windows 98 glide glory)
- a reasonably nice looking (but cheap) beige wired keyboard and beige wired optical mouse

and the controversial piece:

due to space limitations i decided against a CRT (as nice as that would have been) mainly because I got a really cheap deal on a 23 inch (?!?!?!?! who knew this was a thing ?!?!?!) 4:3 beige "flatscreen" that is still 2 inches thick, comes with DVI and VGA inputs (so I can have the radeon and the voodoo hooked up at once) has built in speakers and still manages to weigh as much as a neutron star.

I am really excited (and probably scared) to have the last pieces arrive and see if this thing works.

Assuming I can get the dual boot XP 98 thing going ok and have it automatically output through the right graphics and get the correct drivers for everything, I am hoping to be covered for all of my retro computing whims (at that point ill probably just neglect to use it and find another hobby to waste my time and money on 🤣 )

FYI, and even though you've amended the specs since the OP, the on-board IDE controller on the GA-6VTXD will support large capacity HDDs - I have a 320GB one connected to mine.

Its alive!

I am still waiting for the wifi card, i don't have a desk for it yet and I accidentally bought a ball mouse (yuck) but apart from that it's so far so good.

The monitor is awesome I would highly recommend it if you don't want a CRT it has a nice crisp picture at up to 1600 x 1200 resolution.
2GB of ram is working perfectly in 98 with R. Loew's patch.

A couple of things i noticed:

With multiple hard disks definitely format them with fdisk before trying to install Windows 98 or it may get confused where the CD drive is and not let you progress.

These are the drivers you want for a Soundblaster Live 4670 : https://msfn.org/board/topic/115903-compilati … for-windows-9x/ the ones on the liveware 3.0 disk crashed the pc to the point where it needed to be reformatted.

You cant have an IDE drive in the machine when setting it up with the SSDs of the SATA controller or it will take priority and be C:\

So i'm pretty happy with the 98 setup (although I would like a guide to set up my autoexec.bat / config.sys for DOS games? I have the sound drivers but that's it for now). So next i need to set up the dual boot with XP black edition and install my wifi card when it comes.

Did anyone ever play Tactical Ops btw? One of my favourites from when I was younger, it's basically Unreal version of Counterstrike and it looks awesome in Glide. (Can still play it online too which i fully intend to do on this machine soon).

This is looking like a pretty interesting build. 2GB of RAM is pretty much a waste for 98, but it should help the XP side of your build, especially if you have SP3 installed. I don't mind using ball mice, but optical mice are better of course.

ac3t1ne wrote:

These are the drivers you want for a Soundblaster Live 4670 : https://msfn.org/board/topic/115903-compilati … for-windows-9x/ the ones on the liveware 3.0 disk crashed the pc to the point where it needed to be reformatted.

I see what you mean about the SB Live! drivers, I normally stick with the drivers from Creative's website (sblw9xup.exe) for my CT4670, but I'll be sure to keep that MSFN link in mind the next time I deal with another SB Live! model with hard to find drivers.

*breathes heavily*

ac3t1ne wrote:

...
You cant have an IDE drive in the machine when setting it up with the SSDs of the SATA controller or it will take priority and be C:\
...

Perhaps you can.
Treat your SATA controller as a SCSI controller and put that "SCSI" controller into the first position of your boot order.

Wifi card is in, XP is dual booting and all of the drivers are installed, and I have an optical mouse!

Now that its all up and running I need some games to try... Already playing Tactical Ops online in Glide mode in 98 although I can't help but think it might be better off running in XP with the Radeon... still it's nice to have the options!

Will try and get some pictures or videos soon.

Don't forget to add your scores to the Quake 3 SMP thread
quake3 SMP-scaling thread…

chinny22 wrote:

Don't forget to add your scores to the Quake 3 SMP thread
quake3 SMP-scaling thread…

That would be nice, yeah! You'd be the first dual Tualatin build with SDRAM (there are DDR and RDRAM builds already), and the first V5 result!