i440BX with Pentium III late Coppermine or Tualatin, 512 MB RAM, Voodoo 3 will be a very capable machine for everything Win98, turn of the century - pre-P4 era which is best for XP.

keenmaster486 wrote:

i440BX with Pentium III late Coppermine or Tualatin, 512 MB RAM, Voodoo 3 will be a very capable machine for everything Win98, turn of the century - pre-P4 era which is best for XP.

I want to be able to turn off CPU cache so I can play old DOS games on this computer too.
I want to be able to boot into DOS 6.22 and play old DOS games.
I can do this by booting off a custom DOS 1.44 boot disk and then play DOS games.
And just boot off the hard-drive to play Win98 games.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I want to be able to turn off CPU cache so I can play old DOS games on this computer too.

Going that route, then the best is a K6-III+ machine, as it can do more Dos titles than P3 machines.
With that CPU type, you can tailor the speed to a specific speed, way better than on other platforms.
Unless you go the route of using actual 286/386/486 platforms. And those are not good for any Win9x installation.
(You should actually already know this by now, as you have been on Vogons some time now)

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I want to be able to boot into DOS 6.22 and play old DOS games.

How old? Like in 1981/85 games? Again. Go for SS7 platform.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I can do this by booting off a custom DOS 1.44 boot disk and then play DOS games.

Yes. And you can also dual boot with Win98/MS-Dos 6.22 on their own seperate primaery partition.
Then have a menuitem menu, ready at MS-Dos 6.22 start, in order to choose custom setup for games requirement.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

And just boot off the hard-drive to play Win98 games.

Why? Just do a real dual boot setup. Two primaery partitions, as they will be invisible for each other.
Just avoid an extended partition with logic partitions in it. Win98 might screw data up, or might not.
Better be safe than sorry.

He's already got an ultimate K6-3+ rig, I think he wants to support DOS but that is secondary to Win98 performance here.

I second the P3/i440BX suggestion, most benchmarks seem to indicate the P3 edges out Athlon at similar clock speeds.

BinaryDemon wrote:

He's already got an ultimate K6-3+ rig, I think he wants to support DOS but that is secondary to Win98 performance here.

I second the P3/i440BX suggestion, most benchmarks seem to indicate the P3 edges out Athlon at similar clock speeds.

K6-3+ are way better at hybrid Dos/win98 setup, than any P3 will be. P3 are better for good Win98 gaming and Athlon even better. Yet why would he even ask about the "Ultimate Win98 computer", when he in reality wants a hybrid? The ultimate Win98 machine are one of those monster machines, in the Socket775 class. Give it a monster AGP card that are 100% Win98 compatible, like that ATI-x800 or what it is called. He might be able to run last-gen Dos games or really late era Dos in other words. Yet doing dual boot and doing the ultimate Win98 machine in one. That seems a bit hard and borders the impossible as far as I can understand. Yet nothing is impossible. He just need to be prepared to give up non-masked IRQ and DMA's, if he want the ultimate Win98 machine.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I want to be able to turn off CPU cache so I can play old DOS games on this computer too. I want to be able to boot into DOS 6.2 […]
Show full quote

keenmaster486 wrote:

i440BX with Pentium III late Coppermine or Tualatin, 512 MB RAM, Voodoo 3 will be a very capable machine for everything Win98, turn of the century - pre-P4 era which is best for XP.

I want to be able to turn off CPU cache so I can play old DOS games on this computer too.
I want to be able to boot into DOS 6.22 and play old DOS games.
I can do this by booting off a custom DOS 1.44 boot disk and then play DOS games.
And just boot off the hard-drive to play Win98 games.

This does complicate things a little. You will be limited on the cpu speeds you can slow down to. Personally, after trying to do this, I ended up making two systems:
1) P3-933/Geforce 3/Voodoo2 SLI/Audigy/WinME for Win9x games from 1997-2003
2) Pentium 200MMX/ISA sound card/DreamBlaster X2/Roland MT-32 for DOS games from 1990-1997

You can certainly make it work, but you'll end up with a smaller range of games that are playable. If you're not interested in older DOS games, it will be easier.

Okay, Yeah. I was am looking for a faster CPU than the K6-3-450mhz. I can over clock to 550mhz. but that is still a little slow.
I was thinking maybe an AMD Duron@1ghz. or Athlon@1ghz. or Thunderbird 1ghz. With a motherboard in which I can disable cache in bios to slow it down to 300mhz.

What is the difference between these VIA Chipsets ?
VIA-133 ?
VIA-Pro ?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Okay, Yeah. I was am looking for a faster CPU than the K6-3-450mhz. I can over clock to 550mhz. but that is still a little slow. […]
Show full quote

Okay, Yeah. I was am looking for a faster CPU than the K6-3-450mhz. I can over clock to 550mhz. but that is still a little slow.
I was thinking maybe an AMD Duron@1ghz. or Athlon@1ghz. or Thunderbird 1ghz. With a motherboard in which I can disable cache in bios to slow it down to 300mhz.

What is the difference between these VIA Chipsets ?
VIA-133 ?
VIA-Pro ?

That is not so "ultimate win98". Eighter you keep using that K6-3 that you have, as it is the best for an hybrid Dos/98 machine. Or... You focus on the term "ultimate", and get something like a Socket-775 like so many here have done. Athlon 1ghz has nothing to do with ultimate win98, as there are tons of way, way, way faster systems, that have Win98 drivers. SocketA and SlotA systems are only if you want something that are those. Speedwise they are inferiour to Socket775. And as you said, doing cache disabling might give you access to some Dos games. Yet you already have something better at hand... Why not use that?

Truly a case of "the gods send nuts to those who have no teeth".