For the fastest win98 system i decided to go for a athlon XP processor to run al the games from Pentium III 450mhz and above.. because it uses less power then the older thunderbirds on socket A.. This athlon XP is a less power consuming one, using a Thoroughbred..

Nice board, I got one too and what is your revision? Mine is 1.01 I think. I upgraded to something better from asus KT333.

Athlon XP 1700 Palomino
Asus a7v333 with 2GB of ddr1 installed (2x 512+1gb)
BFG 7800GS (G70 core)
BFG Ageia PPU pci edition
Two V2 8mb editions in sli
320gb wd + 250wd for data and boot. Will be adding more drives once upgraded to a new case and psu some day. Running xp sp3.

Have you thought about that Geforce 4 and Voodoo2 SLI combo?

I'm building a similar system to yours and was wondering if it could be redundant... because of some of the replys in this post.

I confess not having much experience with 3dfx (a recent discovery to me) , so can anyone offer a quick explanation? Edit: is it because a Geforce4 has good OpenGL ???

About the amount of Ram: IMOH any win98-game you'll try to play on this PC that asks for more than 512MB RAM would be better off on one of your more modern builds, so I'd keep to that. Building my system with 256MB myself.

Nice setup, Robin4. Brings back memories of the system I used as my main rig for quite some time - Abit KT7A non-raid, Athlon XP 2000+, 512mb of PC133 RAM, Geforce 3 Ti200, SB Live! Value, DFI PCI nic, Promise Ultra 100 TX2 IDE controller, two 80 GB WD hard drives. After installing Win98SE and Windows 2000, it ran really well until the mobo and CPU finally quit late last year 🙁 . Now I use a Pentium 4-based system, and am currently doing some upgrades to it.

Filosofia wrote:

Have you thought about that Geforce 4 and Voodoo2 SLI combo? […]
Show full quote

Have you thought about that Geforce 4 and Voodoo2 SLI combo?

I'm building a similar system to yours and was wondering if it could be redundant... because of some of the replys in this post.

I confess not having much experience with 3dfx (a recent discovery to me) , so can anyone offer a quick explanation? Edit: is it because a Geforce4 has good OpenGL ???

About the amount of Ram: IMOH any win98-game you'll try to play on this PC that asks for more than 512MB RAM would be better off on one of your more modern builds, so I'd keep to that. Building my system with 256MB myself.

You don't have to aim for any thing special when it comes to the main card for 2D and none Glide 3D gaming. Since you are doing Win 9x then Geforce3 and Geforce4 are good stable choices. As for the ram 512mb is more than enough for win 98 and will do just fine even in xp provided that you didn't install bloatware.

Filosofia wrote:

Have you thought about that Geforce 4 and Voodoo2 SLI combo? […]
Show full quote

Have you thought about that Geforce 4 and Voodoo2 SLI combo?

I'm building a similar system to yours and was wondering if it could be redundant... because of some of the replys in this post.

I confess not having much experience with 3dfx (a recent discovery to me) , so can anyone offer a quick explanation? Edit: is it because a Geforce4 has good OpenGL ???

About the amount of Ram: IMOH any win98-game you'll try to play on this PC that asks for more than 512MB RAM would be better off on one of your more modern builds, so I'd keep to that. Building my system with 256MB myself.

Yeah i found and bought 2 new Powercolor voodoo2s NIB.. So iam going to use them in this build with the g-force 4 graphics card.
The pentium II is my slower win98se system, and this Socket A Athlon XP 2600+ is my fastest windows 98se system. So i could support slower and faster games on both.

First i thought to use the v2s in my pentium rig. But that one has already a Diamond Monster Fusion AGP 3dFX card.. I think thats good enough for a normal pentium 1 rig.

The gforce 4 is for directx and OpenGL games.
The voodoo2s are specific for glide games like Carmageddon.

I want to go further on this build, because this system isnt very hard to build, and i want to finished it soon. Because i dont have finished not much systems at all.. Mostly what i did was looking for computer parts.
But i like,if i can complete one system more. How the system is now, iam not realy happy with it.. For now it only lacks an harddrive, but iam also guessing to look for an other motherboard..
Because i red on Anandtech, that this Soltek isnt very speedy or stable at all:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/786/13

I had chosen this motherboard because of its ISA slot, and because it can support faster processors. And because of the SD-Ram modules i had a lot left of them.. But now iam doubt if iam want to go further with this motherboard.. What i dont like about it:
-Dont like boards with soundcards on it (because mostly its only a very cheap replacement)
-Maybe because of the wrong placed IDE connections, now the flatcable is hanging over my graphics card.. I also need to remove the graphics card if i want to remove the flat cable.
-I dont had tested this board, but i dont know what to expect about his worse stability (because i dont like blue screens in windows 98 se at all.)

- Iam thinking it would be better to replace the board with a more decent Athlon XP board instead, and it also could be handy if the board does have sata 150 on the board. So i dont have to fiddle with converter boards.
My experiences with sata to ide convertor board isnt great, because i dont like that cheap chinese junk, that maybe suddently could give you data corruption.

If the Socket A motherboard with SATA you get uses a Silicon Image chip for SATA then you can upgrade the BIOS of both your motherboard and the Silicon Image BIOS to support SATA II HDDs.ASUS A7N8X Deluxe uses a such chip.

I think i can better look for an older board.. SATA wouldnt be highly recommend for me.. PATA would do also. I think it would be more interesting if the board have six pci slots instead of 5 on the later boards..
Iam looking more for KT133A / KT266 / 333 boards.. I thought they would be easly to find, but those board hard more hard to find then 286 boards!!

Robin4 wrote:

I think i can better look for an older board.. SATA wouldnt be highly recommend for me.. PATA would do also. I think it would be more interesting if the board have six pci slots instead of 5 on the later boards..
Iam looking more for KT133A / KT266 / 333 boards.. I thought they would be easly to find, but those board hard more hard to find then 286 boards!!

I think they aren't sold a lot anymore because either the supply of the boards has run out or the people who still own such a board think noone will want them and don't even bother putting them up for sale. That combined with many of these boards affected by the capacitor plague means these boards will become harder to come by. I'm somewhat on the lookout for parts for a nice Northwood rig but those parts aren't all over the place anymore either (or are sold for too much money).

These days in The Netherlands it's mostly LGA775 and Athlon 64 which is cheap at the moment.

Edit: Robin, you should go check Marktplaats now, search for motherboards and on the first page alone is one KT133A board made by MSI and it's caps on first glance seem to look alright.

Edit2: There is an A7V333 for sale on marktplaats right here

Robin4 wrote:

Want to finish my fastest win98se build (maybe iam going to make a dual boot xp with it, but iam not sure for now) So i decided […]
Show full quote

Want to finish my fastest win98se build (maybe iam going to make a dual boot xp with it, but iam not sure for now)
So i decided to find a good solution for that build.
The case is absolutely perfect, but the inner component where not.. I was not happy about the motherboard (maybe i sell it later, iam not sure about that)
But trying find a good Socket A (462) board isnt funny nowdays.. Its much easier to find much older motherboards like 286 - till socket 7) Because most people stored them away..
And when people going to recycle for gold they trashed mostly the newer stuff, like slot1 / socket 370 / socket 462 motherboards.. I really couldnt find anything in my country.. So i had to look further.
I decided to look for better socket A motherboards. But the newer doesnt have that one ISA slot anymore.. So i thought about that.. I decided that i need to drop the ISA slot idea.. But most cards in that days where usual pci expension cards. Then one other problem i had to cope with.. The limited ISA slots. 6 PCI slots on early S462 where normal in these days, but now on the newer boards i had only 5.
So my plan was to look for a board with intergraded NIC onboard so i could spare one PCI slot..

Then looking for a board (didnt want to spend that much actually)

I found this board:

MSI K7N2 Delta2 Ver 1.0 I dont know if its any good..
What iam beware of, it cant boot SATA disks in windows 98SE/ME (only from windows xp i guess) So actually i need use PATA instead for the older OSses, maybe there is a walk through fix for it)
I also saw that the newer version does have a chipset cooling (fan) on it, so i guess this one could be very hot (iam not going to oc the system) Then i can always replace the heatsink with a fan.
I just have to test that motherboard and sees if it would work out.

On the second board, it was close your eyes and press the buy button..
There where already some watchers on this one.. Maybe it was a little bit expensive.. But i just love New In Box things..
So i dont get headache to find that I/o Shield, then ill ready have a board i can use from the box with everthing included:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281150243184?ssPageNa … 984.m1497.l2648

Yesterday i already bought two socket A motherboards. One i got very cheap, the other is more expensive, but that board comes new in box with everthing included.. ( first time i didnt wanted to spend to much money on it) But i dont like to hassle it comes with (no manual, no cables, no I/O shield ect) I had thought about the fact if it would be a great idea to go for an older board.. The newer boards having 5 pci slots instead of 6 on the older ones, this could tackle my upgrade options on the system, because the sytem would have 2 voodoo2 in SLI onboard, and wanted to install an PCI soundcard, NIC card maybe other I/O cards.
So i thought that it wouldnt be better to find a board with intergraded NIC on the board it self, so i could spare one PCI slot.. And having more room for upgrade PCI boards..

I had already looked at that Asus A7V333 board, for me its a no-go if i wanted to still use SLI and also needed to install a nic to the board *to limited pci slots) And the board i had bought yesterday do have more processor options, and the quality of these boards are much better.. LGA775 iam not intrested on for this system. I have already a S775 system that i will run the latest windows XP on, but iam guessing to dualboot that system with windows 7 32-bit.

Now lets go further on this system..

I have a nice quality case
Now i have 2 nice MSI motherboards:
MSI K7N2 Delta2-FSR
MSI K7N2 Delta2-LSR (this NIC doesnt support Gigabit)
Want to use an Athlon xp 2600+ 266Mhz in it (processors i had already)
I think to go with at least 1GB of memory. ( i think i have still 1GB DDR400 here)
Harddisk iam think of going with 250GB (and split the disk with 2 partitions 125GB each)
Now i have a Nvidia Gforce 4 here from Asus.. ( is it wise to upgrade it to 6800 series maybe 7800 series)

Dont know which operating system to install.. I like to install windows 98 se on it, but give me some limitations i think..
1. I need to edit the config file to support 1GB in windows 98se ( so i think would it be better to go with windows ME / Win2000. ( i know Windows ME having those bug, lets go later further on this)
2. I think i go to run in problems, because windows 98 se dont using LBA-48 to support bigger disks then 137GB.. ( maybe an 250GB disk would be enough splitting it in two partitions.) But i would limited me here on bigger disks.

First why windows ME?

I know of the bugs in this OS, i only have seen that there are unofficial SPs and fixes for this OS.. I like to know, do these unofficial patches fixes those bad bugs in that operating system? Or would it still be worse to use it?
My other bet is Windows 2000.. I know this operating system was designed for office / work instead of home entertaining / home use.. I know back in the time there where games that also supported that OS.. I dont know how much of those games where supported because i had never used windows2000 before (in that time i already using windows xp instead)
Is windows 2000 a good platform to play windows 98 supported on (games that wont run on windows xp, with fiddling on compatibiliy modus)

With this system, iam trying to aim more on games that wont run on my slow pentium III 550Mhz system and till the first period of windows2000 /windows xp. All of the faster games for windows xp i can play it on my S775 rig.

Robin4 wrote:

Dont know which operating system to install.. I like to install windows 98 se on it, but give me some limitations i think.. 1. I […]
Show full quote

Dont know which operating system to install.. I like to install windows 98 se on it, but give me some limitations i think..
1. I need to edit the config file to support 1GB in windows 98se ( so i think would it be better to go with windows ME / Win2000. ( i know Windows ME having those bug, lets go later further on this)
2. I think i go to run in problems, because windows 98 se dont using LBA-48 to support bigger disks then 137GB.. ( maybe an 250GB disk would be enough splitting it in two partitions.) But i would limited me here on bigger disks.

First why windows ME?

I know of the bugs in this OS, i only have seen that there are unofficial SPs and fixes for this OS.. I like to know, do these unofficial patches fixes those bad bugs in that operating system? Or would it still be worse to use it?
My other bet is Windows 2000.. I know this operating system was designed for office / work instead of home entertaining / home use.. I know back in the time there where games that also supported that OS.. I dont know how much of those games where supported because i had never used windows2000 before (in that time i already using windows xp instead)
Is windows 2000 a good platform to play windows 98 supported on (games that wont run on windows xp, with fiddling on compatibiliy modus)

With this system, iam trying to aim more on games that wont run on my slow pentium III 550Mhz system and till the first period of windows2000 /windows xp. All of the faster games for windows xp i can play it on my S775 rig.

Personally I've used the Dutch version of Windows ME, but there was never a Dutch unofficial service pack made, so I used one of the English ones and only did the tweaks (so I didn't install any files and such, only the tweaks) and/or I end up tweaking ME manually.

I do have an English ME but afaicr I haven't used it before. I did once install the English unofficial SP on a Dutch ME and it "kinda" worked, but turned the OS into a half-English half-Dutch frankenwindows, so try at your own risk (my advice would be to test in a virtual machine before you test on a physical install).

However, if you go for Windows 2000 (which in your case might be the better choice imo considering your hardware) then you could also use nlite (you probably already know that 😜 ). However, considering that you intend to play older games, my advice would be to give ME a try. Perhaps you could dual boot or use 2 harddrives, each with one of the 2 OS's installed and give both a try, see which one you like more.

One question though: Why would you go for 2k over XP? Afaik theres only few advantages to using 2k over XP (one is that some older hardware is better supported in 2k). Both seem to be about equally fast or slow on more recent systems and XP is easier to tweak using nlite.

I think i can better go for the Windows ME route.. Did you also tried unofficial service packs?? ( i like to know if they will fix the bugs in that operation system)
The great news is that my case already have a valid serial key on the back. Iam a little bit afraid of the stability.. Is it really worse when using all the options for unofficial service packs / patches? I guess that the official service packs wont solve those problems, because microsoft just left it that way..

I think just leave it as windows 98 se i guess.. Dont think that windows ME / 2000 would be great..

I also found this:

http://www.flaterco.com/kb/W98.html

Are you going to try a mobile in that board someday? Had that board and a mobile but never got around to doing any testing but anyway was just thinking of a period accurate liquid cool socket A rig. Got a beast of a athlon mp rig that needs to be completed someday.

Robin4 wrote:

I think i can better go for the Windows ME route.. Did you also tried unofficial service packs?? ( i like to know if they will f […]
Show full quote

I think i can better go for the Windows ME route.. Did you also tried unofficial service packs?? ( i like to know if they will fix the bugs in that operation system)
The great news is that my case already have a valid serial key on the back. Iam a little bit afraid of the stability.. Is it really worse when using all the options for unofficial service packs / patches? I guess that the official service packs wont solve those problems, because microsoft just left it that way..

I think just leave it as windows 98 se i guess.. Dont think that windows ME / 2000 would be great..

I also found this:

http://www.flaterco.com/kb/W98.html

Personally I never noticed these instabilities. For me ME was way more stable then 98FE ever was and besides, 98SE needs some tweaking as well and has a few bits I dislike about that OS (no USB support out of the box, you need to tweak something and copy files from the disk to the harddrive or it will keep asking for the disk whenever you change something etc) so to me, both are about equal work.

At some point in the past I created a Zip disk with nothing more then the unofficial ME service pack (for the tweaks), a few programs and a list of tweaks. It's basically my "Get ME ready"-disk, so to say 😁

I'd say give ME a chance, if not on real hardware, at least give it a go in a virtual machine 😜 Personally I don't really get where all this instability stuff is coming from when it comes to ME, like I said before, 98FE was way more unstable to me. Perhaps 98SE is more stable but I hardly experience BSoD and other instability with ME anyway. Just need to know how to take care of that OS, just like you need to know how to deal with 98SE. Just my €0.02 😜

Edit: Just a note, I am in fact a bit biased towards ME. It's true that I like ME and that I did in fact have few problems with it (I'd lie if there weren't any and lying is something I hate to do), so I'd say just use whichever OS you personally prefer 😀

nforce4max wrote:

Are you going to try a mobile in that board someday? Had that board and a mobile but never got around to doing any testing but anyway was just thinking of a period accurate liquid cool socket A rig. Got a beast of a athlon mp rig that needs to be completed someday.

No its not an experimental system, its needs to play games instead.. 😊

Now i have really good news on that MSI K7N2 Delta2-FSR motherboard NBIB.. I got a message from him. He told me he had the board already for shipment.
BUT, he lost some stuff from the box (yeah right how stupid). The parts are all of the cables (IDE USB, everything, CD-ROM, I/O SHIELD) But only had the board and manual left 😒 😒 😒 😒 😠
He want to compensate me with only 15 GBP, what i think it isnt enough for me. Such board just loses his value when its not complete as is need suppost to..
So i tell him, that he better go look for the other stuff what is missing.. And can speak later about the compensation..

So now i hope he will find the lost parts. Just need to pray for that *amen* 😐

Tetrium wrote:

One question though: Why would you go for 2k over XP? Afaik theres only few advantages to using 2k over XP (one is that some older hardware is better supported in 2k). Both seem to be about equally fast or slow on more recent systems and XP is easier to tweak using nlite.

2k has lower requirements than XP, it uses less resources. If you only have 64MB RAM than 2k is preferable to XP (a friend of mine used to do this). I don't think that support of older hardware is much better, both can run the same drivers. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features … ardware_support:
Hardware support

• Support for non-Plug and Play networking devices, such as modems and NICs, and native support for modems slower than 28.8 kbps was removed.
• A number of SCSI host adapters are no longer supported.
• Windows XP drops support for NEC's PC-98 series and Silicon Graphics' Visual Workstation 320 and 540.
• New printer installations are required to use user-mode rendering components.

2k also has the compatibility options per program, although this has to be enabled first. I don't think compatibility with older software is better than with XP.
OTOH newer software often can't be installed or run on 2k.

idspispopd wrote:

2k has lower requirements than XP, it uses less resources. If you only have 64MB RAM than 2k is preferable to XP (a friend of mi […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

One question though: Why would you go for 2k over XP? Afaik theres only few advantages to using 2k over XP (one is that some older hardware is better supported in 2k). Both seem to be about equally fast or slow on more recent systems and XP is easier to tweak using nlite.

2k has lower requirements than XP, it uses less resources. If you only have 64MB RAM than 2k is preferable to XP (a friend of mine used to do this). I don't think that support of older hardware is much better, both can run the same drivers. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features … ardware_support:
Hardware support

• Support for non-Plug and Play networking devices, such as modems and NICs, and native support for modems slower than 28.8 kbps was removed.
• A number of SCSI host adapters are no longer supported.
• Windows XP drops support for NEC's PC-98 series and Silicon Graphics' Visual Workstation 320 and 540.
• New printer installations are required to use user-mode rendering components.

2k also has the compatibility options per program, although this has to be enabled first. I don't think compatibility with older software is better than with XP.
OTOH newer software often can't be installed or run on 2k.

They never mentioned the drop of support for some floppy drives and the older internal LS-120 drives though...or am I missing something??

I really wonder who would use a NEC PC-98 with Windows XP.

PcBytes wrote:

I really wonder who would use a NEC PC-98 with Windows XP.

Tried a lot of crazy things when I had the hardware and the time tinkering, its fun but annoying at the same time. 😵