Hey everyone!

I need the advice of the Vogons community on a passion project I am working on with my 10 year old son.

So for a little background on this project...A little over a year ago we lost my grandfather (my sons great-grandfather) to brain and pancreatic cancer. It was a very rough battle and it got really bad at the end as my grandmother refused to take him to a hospice facility and I ended up taking care of him in his final days as the rest of my family bailed. I was very close with my grandfather. My parents worked a lot and he practically raised me and also developed a very close relationship with my son. He was a computer enthusiast and was actually one of the first people at OSU to work on their first computer back in the early days of computing (the mainframes that took up an entire room). He always was tinkering on something and I have very fond memories of helping him assemble computers and tinker around on early machines. After his passing, I was helping clear some things out of my grandparents basement and came across on an old Compaq Deskpro EN from the late 90's (1998 to be exact.). I remember it as being one of the machines he and I used to tinker around on when I was young and decided that it would be a fun project from my son and myself to work on and get it running in memory of him.

My goals are to have it be a decent Windows 98 machine just to play some older games and run some old programs I remember looking at with my grandfather. I have run across two questions/concerns I have and want to get some advice from people that are more familiar working with older machines than I am.

1) I realize there are issues/concerns using old power supplies and I had planned on just installing a new ATX power supply at first but after doing some research, discovered that the current PSU is proprietary to Compaq/HP and isn't a simple swap. The psu is a Compaq Series PS2013 (334112-001). I have spent the better part of a week trying to research to see if there is an adapter I can buy, pins I can switch, etc...but anything I find is not helpful or contradictory at best. I know I could replace the capacitors in the PSU and I think I have the soldering skills to do that, I just really am nervous about using an antiquated PSU that would possibly damage other internal components and would feel more comfortable retrofitting a modern PSU if at all possible.

2) My grandfather was somewhat of an audiophile and was always tinkering around with soundcards, midi equipment, and wav tables. My goal is to have an older ISA card (An Soundblaster Awe64 from what Im researching) and a PCI card (I was thinking a Diamond Monster). I know both of those command a premium right now but I also am reading that those are the better ones to use. Id love some additional input and suggestions...especially with compatibility between the two.

Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated. I realize this Deskpro EN probably isn't the best machine out there to run a Windows 98 rig but I want to try my best to make this one work as it has so much sentimental value.

If needed, here is some additional information for the build as it currently sits:
Compaq Deskpro En Desktop (unsure of the model, most components say 1998 and the part #'s seem to match up exactly to this manual https://www.manualslib.com/manual/30265/Compa … ies.html#manual)

Main board: 007998-017 / 008123-102
Riser Card: 009663-002
PSU: Compaq Series PS2013 (334112-001) pinout seems to correspond with this https://old.pinouts.ru/Power/compaq_deskpro6000_pinout.shtml

I have installed 384mb of ram, a pentium II 400mhz @100, a modified Nvidia Geforce2MX, replaced the CMOS, and cleaned and applied new thermal compound to the CPU and heatsink.

THANK YOU for the help!!