First post, by aroneox
Building a Windows / 98 gaming rig.
Goals:
* Use gutted eMachines eTower 566 complete with infamous “Never Obsolete” sticker
* Stable video card that supports DVI, VGA and composite out
* Play Doom, Quake, Quake II, Blade Runner, Zork (and other text adventures).
* Pentium III
* SSD hard drive
* Frugal budget
I’ve been collecting miscellaneous parts for this build over the last several months. Here is what I have so far:
* eMachines “Never Obsolete” tower case
* ASUS P2B-F Intel Slot 1 440BX motherboard — rev. 1.0, but has updated voltage regulator chip that should handle Coppermine P-III
* Pentium II 450mhz slot-1 processor
* 512mb PC100 ram (4x128mb)
* Enermax EG301P-VB 350 watt Power Supply
* Chaintec GeForce FX 5200 128mb AGP (DVI, VGA, “TV Out”)
* VisionTek ATI Radeon 7000 64mb AGP (VTKRAD7K64)
* Aopen(?) Cobra AW850 PCI Soundcard (w/ case-slot breakout connector board)
Up front, I’m mostly an old school Mac guy. I’ve built a couple white box PCs in the K6-2/3 and early Athlon era (Windows 2000), and have done a ton of PC maintenance in office environments. But I wasn’t in the DOS or early Windows scene when they were happening, so my knowledge there is really lacking.
Acquiring the eMachines Tower is what really got this project started. For me it’s the lynch pin for this build. Having it for the lulz is very much part of the fun in this project.
I know the eMachines Tower really doesn’t have the best ventilation. Because of that I’m obviously concerned about heat dissipation. My goal of P-III may be a non-starter because of that. And it may limit my graphics card options. I would rather have a stable and relatively quite system, and compromise on the retro-sleeper bragging rights of the processor and graphics card, as long as it can run my software goals well.
I would really like the graphics card to drive three monitors simultaneously: An LCD flat panel via DVI (for the OS), an SVGA capable Multisync CRT via VGA (for games), and a Tandy 9” green phosphor monochrome monitor via composite (for Zork).
Need some help discerning what graphics cards are compatible with the 2x AGP slot? Which graphics card capable of running the goal games well, and what will be the most stable (been reading that ATI drivers on Win 98 are flakey)?
Pentium III goal is more of a “I want a Pentium III because it was cool in the day” and it'd be cool to spec out a Slot-1 1.33ghz P-II, but it's not a necessity. Because this motherboard has an updated voltage regulator chip, I believe I can take advantage of the cooler running Coppermine P-III’s. So even if I’m not able to get the spec’d out 1.33ghz P-III, maybe there’s a nice compromise somewhere between heat output and performance.
Forego the P-III? Is the P-II 450 (coupled with the correct graphic card) plenty of horsepower for the goal games?
Recommendation for stable USB 2.0 card?
Recommendation for stable IDE to SATA adapter (using a 240gb Kingston SATA SSD)?
Gladly taking input on other things I may not have thought to ask.