Nice build! Following with interest. I love using these modern-ish cases for retro systems; one of my PIII machines is in an Antec Sonata III & it turned out really nice.
I ended up using a PCI USB2 card for the front panel ports in that build (and also because my board didn't have USB2 at all.) For some reason it's really rare to find cards that have the internal pinheader present - usually it's just empty solder holes, but you can add the header yourself easily enough. I have yet to see a card with support for TWO internal USB blocks, but please post up if you find one.

I've had pretty good luck with NEC-based USB cards on 98SE, although the more common VIA ones do the job too. ME might give you better support for both options.

Going all Druaga1 there with the SSDs, they definitely offer performance while also being still compatible with Win9x without patching. On a new system like that, I'd be running ME as well, since it's just as compatible with non DOS games as 98SE is.

I can imagine it being fast!

regarding the l2 cache comment, on core 2 CPUs the l2 is shared, so a dual core with 1MB overall would be faster even when using just 1 core compared to the celeron 4xx (512K and 1 core),
if you want you can run some 4MB l2 CPUs on this board and it should be faster, but, even the Celeron 450 is super fast for win9x

(the c2Q's are different, because it has 2 physical dies, so each couple of cores share l2, but not all cores)

SPBHM wrote on 2020-01-02, 14:12:

I can imagine it being fast! […]
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I can imagine it being fast!

regarding the l2 cache comment, on core 2 CPUs the l2 is shared, so a dual core with 1MB overall would be faster even when using just 1 core compared to the celeron 4xx (512K and 1 core),
if you want you can run some 4MB l2 CPUs on this board and it should be faster, but, even the Celeron 450 is super fast for win9x

(the c2Q's are different, because it has 2 physical dies, so each couple of cores share l2, but not all cores)

Actually the E4700 has 2MB, I was assuming that only 1MB was available per core. The idea that for Win9X, the E4700 would offer all 2MB for the single core in operation is a good reason to pop that cooler off and swap it in. See what benchmark differences I see.

ninkeo wrote on 2020-01-02, 09:28:

Going all Druaga1 there with the SSDs, they definitely offer performance while also being still compatible with Win9x without patching. On a new system like that, I'd be running ME as well, since it's just as compatible with non DOS games as 98SE is.

The SSD thing is pretty neat in this case. The A400 is a discount value SSD for sure, but for Windows 9X it's basically light speed. Kingston also has a 120GB model, which is under the 128GB partition limit for Win9X, where as many other SSDs are now larger. So CAD$25 for a new drive, that's stupid fast, relatively massive, doesn't need any partition tricks, and 'just works'. It's a solid argument. 😀

For very few speed sensitive win98/95, try donwclock your cpu.
For more win98 compatibility, you need use GF 5xxx line.

Not to hijack this thread but I recently finished a build with a similar concept.

So in this Dual boot 98SE/XP machine I'm running:
ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA
Xeon 3230 (4 Cores)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP
12MB Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 (Have a 12MB STB board that I may attempt again to SLI)
1 GB DDRII 533Mhz Ram
Creative AudioPCI ES1371
1 Crucial BX500 120GB SSD Sata(Partitioned 12GB for Win98se, 32GB for XP, the rest unpartitioned)
2 HDDs I 120GB Sata, 1 160GB IDE.
ML240P Mirage CoolerMaster AIO 240mm

All crammed into a Corsair CC-9011075-WW Carbide Series 100R Mid Tower Case.

This rig scores 21.5k - 22k in 3DMark2001SE (I had to reduce the ram timings to be totally stable from 533 to 400 Mhz, When at 533 it scores the 22k) I'm still looking for DDRII that can run at the full 533 without issue in this MB.

Here are some pictures, yes I know the cable management is horrible but the thermals are pretty good anyways!

I had to order a slimline fan because the full sized fan that came with the AIO wouldn't fit in this case above the CPU block, I installed the original fan from the AIO in the front of the case. Also I had to take a hammer to the top 5.25 drive cage to fit the radiator in the case, it was just barely blocked by the edge of the cage, after beating it savagely for a few minutes everything fits and no structural issues.

So it's been fun using a 32GB USB flash drive to ferry files to the WinME machine but also, ya know, horrible. Often reading large installers directly off the drive, it'd get read errors, so I had to copy files to a temp folder, and it didn't really 'hot swap' more like 'Reboot every time you remove this drive.' I was about to consider maybe a DVDRAM disc or something? I plugged it into my network and ding, it could see the shares on my UnRAID machine as is, probs cause it's also running support. ...It can also see my 65" UHD SmartTV which is fascinating. o.o

Yeah, I think I'll just setup a share on UnRAID for hosting files and map it to z:\ or something.

Here's my 3DMark2001SE details from the above machine:

What's interesting about this is the Nature test runs faster in Windows 98 while all the other tests run faster in XP. This must have something to do with 1 core vs multiple cores in XP and better DX-8 implementation in the drivers for 98? Haha, or is this the old cheating drivers, I forget which versions that was...

So, I'm not as experienced with these older OSs as I was when, well when they were new and I was using them. I didn't realize that Windows ME wouldn't enable DMA on it's storage by default. I must admit, WinME was REALLY snappy with only 3MB/s speed off the SSD. Probably that 0.01ms access time made up for it hugely. ...A lot better at 125MB/s or so now however. 😀

So I impulse bought a Radeon X800 XT PE from Poland on eBay, that'll be probably the 'fastest' GPU on the ATi side that I can put in this box while maintaining Win9X compatibility. At least I think so?

The E4700 I think was giving me issues. I started getting bizarre, ANIMATED, graphical artifacts. Like strange 'waves' over the video signal and meanwhile mouse input stopped. I put the Celeron 450 back in and it's maybe better? But it was an intermittent issue so I can't be sure. That's a bizarre issue for sure and the idea of the E4700 causing it makes little sense either. Though I'd wonder if capacitors are failing somewhere and the increased power draw of the E4700 is the cause. Since it's so intermittent I can't be sure of anything yet. I'll post a video if it happens again.

The x800 doesn't have native Win9x drivers as far as I know, you're likely to have trouble with it. For Win9X I believe the cut-off is 9800 for ATI and 5900 series for Nvidia.
If you do find some drivers to use with the x800 and Win9x and you play a bunch of games please let me know about the stability/compatibility you observe.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-14, 02:10:

The x800 doesn't have native Win9x drivers as far as I know, you're likely to have trouble with it. For Win9X I believe the cut-off is 9800 for ATI and 5900 series for Nvidia.
If you do find some drivers to use with the x800 and Win9x and you play a bunch of games please let me know about the stability/compatibility you observe.

I'm already running an X800GT. 😜 I'm just upgrading to an XT PE.

PhilsComputerLab even hosts a version of the drivers.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ati-9x-driver-archive.html

That's cool I didn't know there was a version for Win 9x, have you played many games for many hours on it, not just benchmarks? Does it seem stable? I might have to get another x800 XTPE, I owned one back in the day when they were new, it's the only video card I've ever had that died on me, hopefully that was just unlucky...

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-14, 05:26:

That's cool I didn't know there was a version for Win 9x, have you played many games for many hours on it, not just benchmarks? Does it seem stable? I might have to get another x800 XTPE, I owned one back in the day when they were new, it's the only video card I've ever had that died on me, hopefully that was just unlucky...

I am having one issue, which I had mentioned above;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiH-vbowrcY&feature=youtu.be

I caught it on video here. It's running 3D Mark 2001's demo here and the issue is very intermittent. It has some odd animation to it and doesn't look like 'Dead GPU' as I'm used to seeing it. I've seen it on both my Celeron 450 and the E4700 CPU. It can happen in games, but go away once I switch to the desktop, but it will also happen on the desktop sometimes. It's strange looking and doesn't seem to have very predictable behavior.

I have an X800 XT PE coming in a few days which I can use to rule out the GPU. But it could be caps on something? Or maybe the monitor's own image processor is doing it. Cause here's the weird thing, the PC doesn't crash. Software doesn't crash. That all ticks along like nothing is wrong but the user can't see right. It'll take some time to figure out a source I think, since it's so intermittent.

That's pretty weird, it looks like it could be the video driver crashing over and over again which I would suspect is a problem with the card, I'd be surprised if you see anything like that with your next card though it could be other things. Lets see what happens with the new card.

Have you tried the "other" version of the Catalyst drivers?
https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … 7&menustate=6,1

I found them a lot better on my ME build, admittedly with a 9600 Pro but you never know!

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-14, 05:50:

That's pretty weird, it looks like it could be the video driver crashing over and over again which I would suspect is a problem with the card, I'd be surprised if you see anything like that with your next card though it could be other things. Lets see what happens with the new card.

But here's the thing, it's NOT crashing. That's running 3D Mark 2001's demo on a loop in the BG and when the corruption recovers, the program is still running like NOTHING was ever wrong. That part has me really confused. But it could be the DVI encoder or the monitor too or something. I'm going to rule out causes one by one.

texterted wrote on 2020-01-14, 06:09:

Have you tried the "other" version of the Catalyst drivers?
https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … 7&menustate=6,1

I found them a lot better on my ME build, admittedly with a 9600 Pro but you never know!

As the 4.3 drivers predate the release of the X800 by half a year, and make no mention of X800, I'm pretty sure they don't support the X800 series. 😀