Welcome to VOGONS!

Mainboard:
The ASUS TUSL2-C is a good board. You'll be pleased with it.

OS:
The TUSL2-C lacks an ISA slot. If you want to run Win95, I think I would look at a board with an ISA slot for an ISA sound card. Otherwise, you'll be fine running Win98SE.

Sound:
Your SB Live! will be just fine.

Memory:
If you have two sticks of ECC PC100 that work ok, are you sure you have two dead slots? Could it just be an odd incompatibility? Personally, with the low cost of unregistered PC133, I would recommend buying two 256mb modules and trying them out. It's a low-cost, high-reward experiment.

CPU:
Your Celeron 1200 should be just fine with the TUSL-2. However, Tualatin-S 1400mhz CPUs are available on eBay for < $10. Why not upgrade?

HDD:
Lots of NOS and used IDE options available for dirt-cheap on eBay or elsewhere.

Video:
I too have always wanted a later Matrox system, but have always chosen the greater power and flexibility of NVIDIA. Get a GF4 Ti4600 and don't look back. Drivers v45.23 are your best bet.

Even with your Celeron 1200 and a GF4 Ti4200, you should be able to play anything up to ~2002 flawlessly. If you upgrade, even better.

Monitor:
Keep an eye out on CL for used and NOS CRT monitors. Patience will reward you. If you want a cheap LCD, visit your local GoodWill shops and keep an eye on CL.

Since you have an older P1-era machine available, I would use that to build a Win95 system with a Matrox card.

Keep us updated! 😀

Vortex 2 PCI is a grat card for Windoes 95 (and 98) with very good DOS compatibility.

Thanks guys! I have been working day and night to make this machine work but nothing seems to be ok. It's quite a journey so I will keep this thread updated. Oh and sorry for my bad english, it's not my native language. So...

I have dedided to start with W95 on a Seagate Medalist 6422 and got lots of issues. It was (is) a nightmare... getting flashbacks from W95 era. 😁

Problems so far:

1. W95 with USB flash drive support. (Solved)
2. Nvidia driver nvcpl.dll doesn't load problem (Partially solved, Nvidia Control Panel icon still won't load)
3. Issue with intel 815 EP chipset PCI driver!
4. AGP support (Solved)
5. HDD LED always on

The fist CPU I used didn't work (black screen). Fortunately I had another one laying around. But the problem is that Tualatin CPUs have a thick headspreader on top, and putting on some of the coolers are really a pain. Long story short I had broken one of the hooks. 😁 I almost given up, but had a Spire WhisperRock IV and that one still holds to the MB. Yaay! 😁
Then I had installed W95. The installing procedure went flawlessly. But then everything went downhill. Nvcpl, none of the soundcards working, USB doesn't work...
I had using my W95 B and I did everything but USB did not work. The solution was I got a copy of a W95 C and installed USBSUPP and USBUPD2. After that I had installed the 815 EP Chipset Driver. And eureka! USB is up and running. Then I istalled the Universal Storage Driver and USB Mass Storage works like a charm.

My current set up:

EIZO FlexScan L360 14" LCD
SUPER POWER Case + Codegen 300W Power Sluppy
Asus TUSL2-C
Tualatin Celeron 1200Mhz (SL5Y5)
Spire WhisperRock IV CPU Cooler
Crucial CT32M72S4D8E.18T 100Mhz (CL2)
Geforce 2 MX 400 (Abit Siluro 64 MB)
Seagate Medalist 6422 (for W95)
Quantum Fireball LCT 15 20GB (for W98)
Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 (Value)
Orchid Righteous 3D II (Voodoo 2 board)
Acorp 9L100D-B (RTL8139D) for LAN
Genius Gamepad
LG GSA-4120B (DVD)
Nec 3.5 Floppy drive

Pictures are coming later. 😀

Oh I forgot! 😁
So I needed to upgrade the bios from 1009 to 1014. And the newer Geforce drivers won't work properly on W95. Currently I'm using Detonator 30.82.

KT7AGuy wrote:

OS:
The TUSL2-C lacks an ISA slot. If you want to run Win95, I think I would look at a board with an ISA slot for an ISA sound card. Otherwise, you'll be fine running Win98SE.

I have 2 of them actually but none of those support Tualatin CPUs. Thats why I'm staying with my old friend. 😀

KT7AGuy wrote:

Memory:
If you have two sticks of ECC PC100 that work ok, are you sure you have two dead slots? Could it just be an odd incompatibility? Personally, with the low cost of unregistered PC133, I would recommend buying two 256mb modules and trying them out. It's a low-cost, high-reward experiment.)

I have 3 sticks of pc133 256MB! The problem is only DIMM3 seems to be working. I have tried out every possible variations. Every ram works in another MB. So... 😁 I decided on crucial because it's a HQ memory, and I don't really need 133. Celeron only needs 100Mhz.

KT7AGuy wrote:

CPU:
Your Celeron 1200 should be just fine with the TUSL-2. However, Tualatin-S 1400mhz CPUs are available on eBay for < $10. Why not upgrade?

Maybe I will but for now It's fine. 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Vortex 2 PCI is a grat card for Windoes 95 (and 98) with very good DOS compatibility.

Unfortunately I'm having great trouble getting that to work. I know the card works and I know the board works because in W98 I had no trouble.
I have tried this: http://members.optusnet.com.au/kirben/intel.html but It didn't solved the problem. None of the PCI cards seems to be working. I have no clue what to do. Tried installing w95 like 10 times by now. Tried new 815 EP chipset drivers, tried every kind of drivers for the cards but none of them seems to be working.
You guys have any idea what to do? 😁

Problem solved!
Somehow Plug n Play OS was enabled in the Bios. Now SB Live! works.

So tried to get the Monster Sound driver working with this http://members.optusnet.com.au/kirben/intel.html but instead I god BSOD. 😁 So yet again format W95 install... 😁 (I have tried safe mode, didn't work. 😁)

Zeddicus wrote:

I rememember some games worked better on 95 than 98 and vice versa.

Perhaps before you tear your hair out trying to get Windows 95 to behave, you should think about this a little more? I'd like to hear about these games that demonstrably run better under Windows 95 than in Windows 98. Windows 98SE will let you use the WDM drivers for your SB Live, which can be considerably more stable.

So my question is, can I make a dual boot with 95/98? With 2 partitions, or do I need 2 HDD?

If you have two hard drives, you can easily (for certain definitions of "easily") switch between them by toggling the boot order in the BIOS. If you use two partitions on the same drive, then you will either need a boot manager or simply a means of toggling the "active" flag for each partition. In either case, both Windows 95 and Windows 98 have to be booted from drive "C", so your drive letters will change whenever you boot to a different OS.

I just need a HDD with lesser than 2GB, because of that machines bios doesn't work with newer HDDs.

2 GB is a weird number for a BIOS limitation. Are you sure that isn't 8 GB?

Zeddicus wrote:

So yet again format W95 install... 😁 (I have tried safe mode, didn't work. 😁)

If you expect to be formatting and re-installing often, it may be worth considering making a disk image after a fresh install, and then restoring the image if something happens that you don't like.

Also, consider disabling your onboard serial and parallel ports in the BIOS if you don't plan on using them.

Allright. Everything works now except the Vortex 2 Monster Sound mx300. That will need further investigation.

Jorpho wrote:

Perhaps before you tear your hair out trying to get Windows 95 to behave, you should think about this a little more? I'd like to hear about these games that demonstrably run better under Windows 95 than in Windows 98. Windows 98SE will let you use the WDM drivers for your SB Live, which can be considerably more stable.

It's in only my memory that some games ran better in 95 than 98 but if thats not the case doesn't really matter because I need a W95 machine for nostaliga. I know it's much easier to build a W98SE rig, I had done that before 4-5 years ago but that wasn't really nostaliga for me. 😀

Jorpho wrote:

If you have two hard drives, you can easily (for certain definitions of "easily") switch between them by toggling the boot order in the BIOS. If you use two partitions on the same drive, then you will either need a boot manager or simply a means of toggling the "active" flag for each partition. In either case, both Windows 95 and Windows 98 have to be booted from drive "C", so your drive letters will change whenever you boot to a different OS.

Thank you I didn't remembered that. Dual HDD solution will be just fine for me.

Jorpho wrote:

2 GB is a weird number for a BIOS limitation. Are you sure that isn't 8 GB?

It sure is. And is bugging me. I will post pictures of the board tomorrow. All I know there was a 2GB caviar in it which worked for a while. And that I have tried with my Seagate Medalist 6GB with no luck. (Even with the limit to 2GB jumper setting.)

Jorpho wrote:

If you expect to be formatting and re-installing often, it may be worth considering making a disk image after a fresh install, and then restoring the image if something happens that you don't like.

I didn't expected this to happen, but of course you are right. 😀

Jorpho wrote:

Also, consider disabling your onboard serial and parallel ports in the BIOS if you don't plan on using them.

That was the first thing I did. 😀