Very specific details that you have to look for make the day instead of wasting time picking them up and find out does not meet the needs of 98SE needs. S478 are most likely combo. If has AGP slot, that very good. If machine has larger than 512MB installed, you need to cut back to 512MB or purchase set of DIMMs to meet this requirement for 98SE. Hard drive has to be up to 128GB max.

You need AGP slot for best compatibility especially if chipset is driver compatible for 98SE.

Usually 775 socket machines is good for XP if the slot is PCIe. Motherboards based on 775 with AGP is very narrow period of time that will reduce the success of finding them.

Video card usually very cut down if found in these computers. Have to buy one with AGP from ebay like Geforce2 MX 400 or Geforce4 MX440 either one must have 8 chips for 128 bits is important to look for.

Unfortunately.

Cheers,

I have doubts about that. There's way more modern boards out there than old ones. It will take a lot of time before they are scarce, plus for the most part, stuff you run on them will run fine on your latest-greatest hardware which is one reason the newer boards don't have much value and are unlikely to gain more value.

You mean like 386’s are priced currently? I don’t think those systems will ever match 386 prices, but It’s my guess everything will continue to get more expensive. So eventually...

Not sure why "pre-socket 7". In my observation, SS7 are the most expensive of all, for pretty good reasons.

But in answer to the question - no, with some very minor exceptions like s478 boards with 3.3v universal AGP slots, or a working ISA slot.

Regular s478 and s775 boards are very common, and not *that* interesting - most games from these eras can be forced to run on Win10 with some tweaking (or just play a remastered version). The demand/supply equation will likely never see them rise in price much if it all.

Socket 939 is somewhat expensive already, but partially. Nforce 4 was very brittle and prone to failure, so less working boards remained. And dual core 939 CPUs are uncommon this days.

no, with some very minor exceptions like s478 boards with 3.3v universal AGP slots, or a working ISA slot.

I would add Intel 850E boards to that and maybe RDRAM 1066 without ECC. But that's just "cool" factor.

P.S.
In most cases these platforms are interchangeable. So unlike something around 486 era, they have very long way to go for being rare. There are some local stuff which is very praised and valued though. Like DFI LanParty motherboards, some top-tier CPUs or overclocking memory.

I see three cut-off points:

Pure dos - pre directx software and hardware (incompatible or inadequate performance with Win9x)
Win9x (up to Me) - pre WinXP software and hardware (incompatible or inadequate performance with WinXP)
WinXP software and hardware (incompatible with Win10)

We can build systems that span two or even three of these, but best compatibility is reached with dedicated systems.

The Win98 platform has specific hardware limitations, and will probably retain its nostalgic value. Lots of great titles are being re-released from this age, so the original hardware will remain interesting. So will the pure DOS era for its ground-breaking role, but that hardware is indeed getting (too) expensive. If it costs an arm and a leg, it kills the fun.
The WinXP era will still hold its own in years to come, and it's still fairly cheap to get good hardware. I like running a bland WinXP on dual Xeon workstations from 12 years ago.

Currently, it's all laptops or all-soldered mini-pc's, so future generations won't have as much fun. Looking at the car collectors, I guess we'll see the same trends. It's all psychology anyway 😀.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-09-07, 22:02:

Socket 939 is somewhat expensive already, but partially. Nforce 4 was very brittle and prone to failure, so less working boards […]
Show full quote

Socket 939 is somewhat expensive already, but partially. Nforce 4 was very brittle and prone to failure, so less working boards remained. And dual core 939 CPUs are uncommon this days.

no, with some very minor exceptions like s478 boards with 3.3v universal AGP slots, or a working ISA slot.

I would add Intel 850E boards to that and maybe RDRAM 1066 without ECC. But that's just "cool" factor.

P.S.
In most cases these platforms are interchangeable, so unlike something like 486 they have very long way to go for being rare.

Windows XP will likely serve as the great equalizer here . It was supported for over a decade. So if you want an XP machine, you basically get to chose among a huge number of officially supported platforms up to and including the third or fourth generation (can't remember which) Core i series .

Up to Ivy Bridge processors including Ivy Bridge Xeons officially supported.

Cheers,

define expensive, because if i go on ebay i can find socket 2 and socket 3 boards easy for not much money.

Warlord wrote on 2020-09-08, 00:19:

define expensive, because if i go on ebay i can find socket 2 and socket 3 boards easy for not much money.

Yep, this right here. Most of my 486 boards came in scrap lots as well.. so I ended up paying between almost nothing to around $5 a board.

Some pretty good points here, thanks.
Most of these newer systems were produced in record numbers. (does anybody know a good source for the number of sold Intel CPUs/year?)
Personal computers were ridiculously expensive back in the 80's and 90's so not many people could afford them. Average computer costs slowly dropped to 1/5 in 20 years (let's not drag the gaming industry here because that's a completely different animal) so the market was flooded with cheap computers. That supports the theory that newer systems won't ever get as expensive as older systems. Too many of them, there must be thousands of new old stock sitting in different warehouses everywhere. Recycling won't reduce their numbers because people in recycling centers take these systems back home to sell them as retro.

I'm talking about complete computers, not parts. A complete 386 is $100< + shipping, that's expensive for a hobby toy. More popular systems cost even more and that's just the price for the computer; peripherals excluded.
A scrap lot is an excellent source if you are lucky, otherwise you just buy a lot of junk for $75-150 (sold listings prices) and maybe a few decent items. It all adds up eventually. You still need many more working parts to build a complete system so $100 is not an exaggeration. How many scrap lots do you need to get all the required parts together? Also not everyone wants to deal with heaps of electronics every time they want to build a single computer. Another reason: brand. I can't build a Compaq Prolinea or <insert specific brand> from scrap lots.

"It's all psychology anyway": completely agree. People are willing to spend more if nostalgia is involved. So won't the same thing happen to newer systems? People trying to find their childhood systems and paying through the nose for them?

You have to consider supply, not just demand.

kolderman wrote on 2020-09-07, 20:28:

Not sure why "pre-socket 7". In my observation, SS7 are the most expensive of all, for pretty good reasons.

Oh? Where are you observing?

There are lots more SS7 boards out there than So4 and older, so despite higher demand prices are lower. Take a look at this current sale on Amibay- by someone who knows what he has and what it's worth:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?113594-V … -S7-Slot-1-S370

The highest prices are for specific sought-after XT, 386 and 486 boards, the SS7 boards are near the lower end, only beating uninteresting non-Super So7 boards or undocumented 486 ones.

But in answer to the question - no, with some very minor exceptions like s478 boards with 3.3v universal AGP slots, or a working ISA slot.

Regular s478 and s775 boards are very common, and not *that* interesting - most games from these eras can be forced to run on Win10 with some tweaking (or just play a remastered version). The demand/supply equation will likely never see them rise in price much if it all.

I'm not so sure. These systems are being thrown away as fast as the older ones used to be. Moreover, they run much hotter and stress regulating circuits more on the boards meaning their technical lifespan will be shorter. So478 systems just spontaneously died back in the day and haven't stopped doing so. An actual working So478 board might end up being rarer in 10-15 years time than say a decent 386 which will essentially run forever (if you replace the tantalum caps every now and then). I recall similar discussion decades ago about Slot1/So370 systems vs really old stuff. Crappy EX/ZX/ApolloPro+/i810/SiS620 systems certainly aren't commanding a premium, but special ones are getting close if not surpassing it - take a look at what people pay for say an Asus P2B-D(S), Abit BP6, Tyan Thunder 2500 or similar. They can beat most XT-486 prices easily. I foresee that really nice 2000-2005 boards will do so too in the not too distant future, and maybe even surpass them simply because of shorter technical lifespan and less options to fix.

kolderman wrote on 2020-09-08, 08:18:

You have to consider supply, not just demand.

True, new systems are also pretty stable and reliable, the biggest problem was the capacitor plague that is fixable most of the time and rarely caused permanent damage.
Old boards with the NiCd battery corrosion won't ever be the same and properly executed repairs are very rare. Flawless boards are hard to get.
There are exceptions tough, s775 systems with the Extreme CPUs are expensive now.

Yeah there's a lot of S775 boards out there, but most will be (uninteresting to collectors) OEM boards and I've had a number of potentially-desirable ones die on me.

Nostalgia is the main driving force. I would assume the majority of us got back into reto machines in mid/late 30's?
But our fondest memories are with the PC closer to our teens, lets round of to 10 years of age.
That would place the next wave of people wanting to recreate their childhood PC from the 2000's so S478/754 era
In 2030 move the goal posts will be moved again.

Earlier systems don't play a significant part in their memories so less desirable just as plenty people here draw the line at at 386/486 as earlier systems were not a big part of our lives growing up.
Indeed when I got into this hobby 10 years ago S370 was cheap, XP was still currant and S478 was not considered retro with desirable boards going for nothing.
Now 478 is going for the prices S370 was, and people are building pure XP rigs

But I agree, with each generation more PC's were built so 486 parts are easier to find then 386 and so on. it's just 2000's production must of been 10 times what it was previously so sheer numbers will keep the price down. Be interesting how the cap plague and the graphic card solder issue will effect this though.

What may happen is prices for 90's hardware drops in the future with younger generations not interested reducing demand.
and prices on currant hardware in the future as PC sales have dropped in favor of laptops, smartpones, etc.
but both of those scenarios will be another 40 years away

chinny22 wrote on 2020-09-08, 09:20:

What may happen is prices for 90's hardware drops in the future with younger generations not interested reducing demand.

Good point, future generations probably won't bother with ancient tech that runs DOS games because it doesn't really do anything for them.
The children and grandchildren (our children) will probably dump everything we collected after we are gone. It's only junk to them that takes up space.

However people still collect war relics, coins from a thousand years ago and so on, so there are people in every generations who are interested in ancient stuff.
If our children dump our collections in 30-50 years and only a handful remains intact that will drive prices up for those who are still interested in 50-70 years old computers. Just look at tech from the 60's and 70's, prices well over a $1000 for PARTS that are probably dead. I know those are super rare but who knows what will happen to a 286 in 50 years: old style caps all dead and unavailable, silicone chips degraded (a wild assumption I know), hard drives lose all data due to bit rot, all floppy disks fail and so on. There is a chance that in 2070 a functioning original computer from the 90's will cost an arm and a leg. But that's not what this topic is about.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-09-08, 09:20:

Nostalgia is the main driving force. I would assume the majority of us got back into reto machines in mid/late 30's? But our fon […]
Show full quote

Nostalgia is the main driving force. I would assume the majority of us got back into reto machines in mid/late 30's?
But our fondest memories are with the PC closer to our teens, lets round of to 10 years of age.
That would place the next wave of people wanting to recreate their childhood PC from the 2000's so S478/754 era
In 2030 move the goal posts will be moved again.

I'm 30 now, got into the hobby when I was 25 years old. As a child I had access to my father's 486 Toshiba laptop (Prince of Persia, LHX, Supaplex, Blockout) and a Pentium 2 machine (went to my grandparents every weekend to play some Starcraft, Diablo 2, Black & White and Baldur's Gate). However, the defining platform for me would be S478. That's the first computer that I had that could play modern games like Morrowind, X2: The Threat or KOTOR — with Pentium 4 2GHz, 512MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4200 it was a very powerful system for 2002. I've spent hours in front of that thing.

And yet these days S478 holds absolutely no nostalgic value for me. I've tried building a WinXP/S478 machine once and I simply didn't enjoy it.

I also see many younger people in the retro community now — somebody who is around 20 or 25 years old now. Somebody who is unlikely to have ever experienced a DOS/Win9x machine in their childhood. And yet, these people seem to be more interested in anything but PC. Handhelds/PDAs, early mobile phones, consoles. When it comes to computing even G3/G4 era Macs seem more interesting to this generation. And in the rare case they do get involved with PC — it's still the XT-P3 range, not something newer.

Of course there is also the overclocking community who seems to like cards like GeForce 3/4/FX and even newer. They do buy old motherboards and CPUs, but only as a way to get a test bench for their GPU. I don't think we will see an influx of "Ultimate Windows Vista builds" any time soon.

jheronimus wrote on 2020-09-08, 11:13:

I'm 30 now, got into the hobby when I was 25 years old. As a child I had access to my father's 486 Toshiba laptop (Prince of Persia, LHX, Supaplex, Blockout) and a Pentium 2 machine (went to my grandparents every weekend to play some Starcraft, Diablo 2, Black & White and Baldur's Gate). However, the defining platform for me would be S478. That's the first computer that I had that could play modern games like Morrowind, X2: The Threat or KOTOR — with Pentium 4 2GHz, 512MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4200 it was a very powerful system for 2002. I've spent hours in front of that thing....

Yes this was always a generalization. Will always be some people that become more interested in earlier systems, just as plenty of people my age still play modern games on modern rigs.
Did you start with a S478 build? thats the other ting that happens often enough. Start by trying to recreate your childhood PC, catch the hardware bug then it's no longer about the games but building up systems that we knew by name but never came access physically.