I would go with a 1Ghz P3, to take better advantage of that 9700pro 😀 and just because I can up the ram to 128meg.

What I don't have that I think I need: IDE DVD or CD Rom Drive or one of those IDE to SATA converters to use a SATA DVD drive A […]
Show full quote

What I don't have that I think I need:
IDE DVD or CD Rom Drive or one of those IDE to SATA converters to use a SATA DVD drive
A case (can I use a modern one? Was thinking of the Corsair SPEC 1 Mid tower)
Floppy Drive
Soundcard (Creative Soundblaster Live?)

You can use either Sata or IDE, the Sata to ide adapters are very slow, but perfect for cd-roms as cd-roms dont hit full speed anyway, but if you are going to do a lot of dos gaming or a lot of gaming that relies on music playback from cd , I would go with a older IDE drive that has a analog audio cable.

I am a fan of using modern cases with windows and pimping it out with leds and making it look good, but this is up to you.

Floppy drives are a must, they are useful in a pinch (bootdisks)

Soundcard, depends on if you are going to do any dos gaming, and if your pc has a ISA slot for windows gaming I would use a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 or a Vortex 2 , depends on what OS you are running, Dos and windows, Sound Blaster 16 PNP

Bossman wrote:

Asus P3B-F 1.04 Motherboard

FaSMaN wrote:

I would go with a 1Ghz P3, to take better advantage of that 9700pro 😀 and just because I can up the ram to 128meg.

The manual of the Asus P3B-F shows that you can change the multiplier (with dip switches, DSW) from 2.0 to 8.0, so a 1Ghz might not be possible but max. a 800MHz PIII.
See also here:
http://assets.hardwarezone.com/2009/reviews/m … s_p3bf/p3bf.htm

I don't own a P3B-F, but being a popular late generation i440BX board; I would say it runs with any Slot 1 CPU. The multiplier switches/settings are ignored by retail Pentium III CPUs.

Thanks for the information. I will try and find a 1 Ghz later on, but sounds like i have what it takes to get started, once I add the DVD/floppy

melbar wrote:

The manual of the Asus P3B-F shows that you can change the multiplier (with dip switches, DSW) from 2.0 to 8.0, so a 1Ghz might […]
Show full quote

Bossman wrote:

Asus P3B-F 1.04 Motherboard

FaSMaN wrote:

I would go with a 1Ghz P3, to take better advantage of that 9700pro 😀 and just because I can up the ram to 128meg.

The manual of the Asus P3B-F shows that you can change the multiplier (with dip switches, DSW) from 2.0 to 8.0, so a 1Ghz might not be possible but max. a 800MHz PIII.
See also here:
http://assets.hardwarezone.com/2009/reviews/m … s_p3bf/p3bf.htm

The information in the manual is outdated, ASUS released updated BIOS revisions long after the manual was printed.

The ASUS P3B-F v1.04 motherboards can run up to Pentium III Tualatin CPU's! All it needs is the custom BIOS that includes Tualatin microcodes and and a Slotket adapter.

The custom BIOS can be found here or if you, for whatever reason, prefer the official BIOS which only allows for up to SECC2/Slot-1 Pentium III 900Mhz or Celeron 1100 (socket370 with slotket adapter) can be found here, simply use the dropdown menu and select Others then you will see the BIOS downloads section.

I highly recommend the custom BIOS as it allows for many more CPU possibilities for the ASUS P3B-F v1.04 motherboards. 😎

Bossman wrote:

64 GB of RAM

Why would you need such a big amount of SD-RAM? 🤣

PcBytes wrote:

Bossman wrote:

64 GB of RAM

Why would you need such a big amount of SD-RAM? 🤣

maybe that guy pleasure is to watch memory being count on the boot of a computer ? It's a common pathology of lacking memory when you are young.

ElBrunzy wrote:

PcBytes wrote:

Bossman wrote:

64 GB of RAM

Why would you need such a big amount of SD-RAM? 🤣

maybe that guy pleasure is to watch memory being count on the boot of a computer ? It's a common pathology of lacking memory when you are young.

I know watching memory being count is actually nice to watch 🤣

But seriously,64GB of RAM? That's weird.

ElBrunzy wrote:

PcBytes wrote:

Bossman wrote:

64 GB of RAM

Why would you need such a big amount of SD-RAM? 🤣

maybe that guy pleasure is to watch memory being count on the boot of a computer ? It's a common pathology of lacking memory when you are young.

I know watching memory being count is actually nice to watch 🤣

But seriously,64GB of RAM? That's weird.[/quote]
yes it is weird and it also denote a mental problem.

I think he meant 64MB

IMHO slot 1 is THE motherboard for Win9x builds.
I'd go with what you got now and if something holds you back upgrade, no point upgrading first and finind out you didn't need that faster whatever.

If you don't have a floppy drive, I would get a Gotek drive instead. there are videos on Youtube and you can use the crappy software on a more modern PC to copy files to the USB "floppy" where as a true floppy drive cant be used at all.

If you don't have a sound card, I really like the Audigy 2 ZS, Vortex 2 based cards are also popular.

Only issue with SATA CD drive is a lot are missing the audio cable which some games liked to use for music, but again worry about that if you hit it as IDE drives will be old and hit or miss on how much life is left in it.

ElBrunzy wrote:

yes it is weird and it also denote a mental problem.

whats so weird? i have 16bg on my bulldozer 6200 and under linux i can easily use it up, browser + vm does the job, every single time

Hi Bossman, I too am in the process of acquiring parts for my Win9X / MS DOS 6.22 dual boot system. I plan on using software and L1/L2/L3 cache trick to slow down my system between Normal / Pentium class / 486 / 386. Here's what I have (+ is purchased/have, - is need to purchase):

+ K6-III+ 450mhz CPU 2.0V
+ Asus P5A ATX Motherboard
+ 512MB of RAM (2x256MB PC100 SDRAM)
+ PCI Voodoo3 2000 (I purchased this locally for $25 complete in original box!)
+ AWE64 GOLD
+ 60GB IDE DRIVE
+ 24X CD-ROM Drive
+ Floppy to USB adapter
+ PS2 Keyboard / mouse
- Modern ATX case with PSU
+ ROLAND Sound Canvas SC-55
- ROLAND MT-32
- MIDI cables
- Gravis gamepad Joystick
+ 19" 4x3 aspect ration Samsung LCD monitor

I didn't have this much fun since the '90's when I used to build and sell PC's at the local university! I can't wait to get this all setup and software configured and then play some retro DOS games with my 7 and 4 year old kids!!!

I very very strongly suggest that you find a power supply that has a -5v rail as it is required for many isa sound cards! Without the rail you will likely not get sound or odd things happen but nothing that will hurt anything. Beyond that you did really good with your build so far 😀

nforce4max wrote:

I very very strongly suggest that you find a power supply that has a -5v rail as it is required for many isa sound cards! Without the rail you will likely not get sound or odd things happen but nothing that will hurt anything. Beyond that you did really good with your build so far 😀

Nice to have, but cards that require -5V are old and rare. I can only think of 80's stuff, like Roland LAPC-I and the first couple cards from Creative.

Wow thanks for all the replies. I hadn't checked in a few days.

So my parts came from my parents house, and some others i bought off of eBay. So far I have assembled the hardware and gotten it to boot.

However i am having a minor issue, the hardware monitor keeps complaining that the -5V voltage is at -6.14V. Something I can do about that or is it safe to ignore?

I figured out my DVD issue. My copy of Win98 was not bootable, Used a boot cd instead.

Upgraded to 512 MB of RAM.

I got the unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack. Will give that a go this evening.

I am having an issue with the ATI 9700 Pro however. Periodically (when installing Sim City 3000 for example) the screen will go black and the whole system will be unresponsive. I am guessing this is because the card is running in 2x AGP mode.

I changed the dip switch to disable the 2x AGP mode, but under this case the system powers on but does not boot. I'm guessing that is making the timing wrong for the CPU? or RAM?

Any ideas?

leonk wrote:

+ Asus P5A ATX Motherboard
+ 512MB of RAM (2x256MB PC100 SDRAM)

Remember of the cacheable RAM of super-socket 7 boards:

When you have for example, the ALI Aladdin V chipset (D and E) with revision up to 1.04 of Asus P5A has only 128MB cacheable!!!
If you have may revision 1.05 or 1.06 , then there is no issue with 512MB.

http://www.amd-k6.com/cacheable-ram-on-socket-7-platforms/

Test from anandtech:
"Unfortunately, the current design of the ALi Aladdin V Chipset only allows for the first 128MB of RAM to be cached, meaning anything above that would end up slowing you down more than it could possible speed you up. "
http://www.anandtech.com/show/116

Edit:
Yes ,sorry , you have the + version of K6-2/3, then everything is alright, limit is 4GB...

wouldnt you have to disable the mobo cache to make use of the processors cacheable size?