First post, by CelticDubstep
So, for years I had a great Windows 98SE gaming system that pretty much checked all my boxes. However, due to various life events as well as failing hardware (RIP Voodoo 3 3000 AGP), my 98SE gaming days were put on the back burner. However, I've recently been getting back into my hobbies and last night I completed my "retro" Windows XP build which I'm extremely happy with and now I'm ready to move on to my 98SE build(s).
Between 2016-2018 after I discovered my Voodoo card died, I started picking up various parts to build out a new system but life happened and it was put on pause. For the past 6 months I've been picking up various parts for a new 98SE build(s). I'll list the parts below... this obviously isn't a complete list so if something isn't listed, feel free to mention it as I may have it. (?) means I know I have more than one but unsure of amount.
Components:
3DFX Voodoo 5 5500 AGP (just don't ask me how much I paid for it...*cries*)
(2) 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
ISA Sound Blaster AWE32 (or AWE64, don't remember)
ISA ESS Sound Card (don't recall specfic model)
ISA Some other random cards but unsure what... maybe a MediaVision? Sound Blaster 16? I dunno...
PCI ESS Solo1 Card (bought it since it's PCI and has FM synthesis for DOS)
(2) PCI Yamaha YMF744B-R Sound Cards (bought it since it's PCI and has FM synthesis for DOS)
(?) Sound Blaster Live/Sound Blaster PCI 128 cards
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
(?) PCI Aureal Vortex cards (I don't think I have any Vortex2's)
(?) AGP Tons of various cards, too many to list.
(?) Tons of PCI NIC's (I don't use it for Internet obviously, but useful for access my file server)
(?) Tons of SSD's ranging from 80 GB to 512 GB.
(?) Tons of IDE & SATA drives ranging from 2 GB to 2 TB
(?) Tons of IDE & SATA Optical Drives
No PCI or ISA Video Cards
Motherboard/CPU:
-ASUS Slot 1 motherboard with a PII 333/66 on it. AGP/PCI/ISA. It won't support a faster CPU.
-iWill KK266-E Motherboard with an AMD Athlon TBird 1333 Mhz. It uses SDRAM and has tons of features such as an ISA slot, 6 PCI slots, and AGP. It also has onboard IDE in addition to an onboard IDE RAID controller. It uses the VIA KT133a Chipset I believe (which I hear is horrible?)
(2) Syntax SV266AD (KT266A chipset) It's a basic board, but does have a Universal AGP Slot (tested the Voodoo 5 on it) and uses DDR RAM. I have no I/O Shields however.
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (or 2600+, don't recall)
(?) Several Compaq Deskpro Slot 1 Towers. PIII 500 Mhz for sure, and several PII Systems 350 Mhz+
Dell Dimension XPS T500 I believe? Either way, It's a Slot 1 with either a PIII 450 or 500.
Packard Bell Tower Pentium 166 Mhz (but we won't go there... it's in very rough shape)
Monitors:
No CRT Monitors
27" 1080P AH-IPS LED Monitor. Beautiful monitor with low latency. It has aspect scaling on DVI and HDMI, but not VGA. VGA is full screen mode only unfortunately.
(2) 19" 5:4 Monitors (same models). They are LCD TN panels and rather old, so has a higher latency (aka ghosting), poor viewing angles, and colors aren't great. They also aren't in the best shape as at least one of them has a scrach mark in the center of the screen (not terrible, but a bit annoying).
I have a TON of newer systems, but they'd be too new for 98SE I believe as they all have PCI Express. Anyway... What configuration(s) would you go with to cover most DOS/3DFX/Windows Era Games? Thanks in advance as always. Personally, I was thinking 3 systems... The first having high end parts and DVI output (so I can use my monitor scaling) with nGlide (just cause). The 2nd having the Voodoo 5 5500 focused on 3DFX Windows Era Games. The last system being more DOS focused with the Voodoo 3 3000 (which has great DOS support and would support DOS Glide games) with an ISA sound card, like the AWE32? or perhaps an older ISA card?