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Reply 40 of 229, by chinny22

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Nothing wrong with the ram in your link
https://www.ebay.it/itm/124613596252

If you do a search for "pc3200 cl2 1gb" you may be able to find ram for a good price with better CL rating but truth is it wont make that much difference.
Now your not overclocking you should be ok with used RAM if you prefer something sexy, All my ram is used and only ever had 2 doa sticks and that was old SD Ram!
but again for Win98 you wont notice any real world difference and XP will be slight at best no matter what you get.

I'd group the Radeon 9800 with the GF6 cards, 9x comparability is hit or miss but it is fast.
These cards can make scene in a dual boot system where the extra power is useful for XP.
But if 9x is the primary focus I'd definitively drop back to a GF4ti or one of the higher end FX cards

HDD, No one way is the correct way but this is what I do.
C:\ 2GB, Win98, FAT32
D:\ lots of GB, Games and Data, Fat32
E:\ lots for GB, Recovery, FAT32
F:\ 10GB, WinXP, NTFS

I use Fdisk to create the partition that way you know Win98 will understand the disk layout.
By putting the NTFS drives at the end of the disk it'll stop drive letters moving around.

I like your layout if you did want to keep 98 and XP's games separate.

You may be able to find NOS IDE optical drive, but I'd just take a gamble on a used drive.
Personally I almost never use CD's, and just mount the iso. I find CD's annoying (I never put them away and then I can't find them) I prefer to do without music in my few games that use CD audio. but that is personal preference.

Reply 41 of 229, by kolderman

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-10-27, 08:29:
How high do you really need to go for XP though, after about 2005 or so games started supporting hor+ widescreen and work just f […]
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kolderman wrote on 2021-10-26, 22:53:

- no AGP graphics card on that asrock mobo will be adequate for the full range of WinXP gaming

How high do you really need to go for XP though, after about 2005 or so games started supporting hor+ widescreen and work just fine on any modern PC. A late AGP card can run games up to 2004 pretty fine.

kolderman wrote on 2021-10-26, 22:53:

- the amount of ram needed for WinXP often causes problems for Win98

as I already said, there's multiple workarounds for that

kolderman wrote on 2021-10-26, 22:53:

- almost all late-win98 games will run just fine under WinXP

yes, if running them is all you want, but many of them might still have reasons to be run under win9x, for example EAX in NFS 4 is broken with wdm audio drivers (that you need to use on XP) and only sounds correctly with vxd drivers (used on win9x). A particularly big reason for me is that I have an aureal vortex 2 which I love and many games have A3D sound and theres only good drivers for win9x for that card. Then theres older win95-era games that will often not work quite right on XP.

kolderman wrote on 2021-10-26, 22:53:

- being able to slow down a cpu cam benefit both win98 and dos games

To be able to properly slow down the CPU for the games needing a 486dx2-66 or a 386dx-25, you will really need a socket 7 pc, disable l2 cache and you get 486, disable l1 cache and you get 386. Anything above socket 7 and super 7 will be much more troublesome. But socket 7 while good for DOS is weak for win9x games.... And as I said, is there really any good reason not to just use emulation? Any dos games you know of that will not work, look or sound correctly on emulators and will just need real hardware? I have yet to discover any

Socket 370 is just as good if not better, and runs win98 games just fine. Emulation is rubbish in my experience, graphics are muddy and don't scale well, very limited audio emulation options, no 3dfx acceleration, etc.

AGP cards will run some winxp games, but if you want high levels of AA and resolution, you are much better off with a gpu from 2008 or above like a 5850HD or gtx560. There are plenty of games up until around 2007 that will report issues with modern PCs, that is when widescreen really became default.

Each to his own but I always recommend dedicated XP builds because they can really be unleashed with later hardware that is still XP compatible. I actually dual boot my XP build with win7. Builds that try and span 98 and XP tend to be the worst of both worlds, compromising on almost everything and excelling at nothing.

Reply 42 of 229, by chinny22

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kolderman wrote on 2021-10-27, 09:50:

AGP cards will run some winxp games, but if you want high levels of AA and resolution, you are much better off with a gpu from 2008 or above like a 5850HD or gtx560. There are plenty of games up until around 2007 that will report issues with modern PCs, that is when widescreen really became default.

Each to his own but I always recommend dedicated XP builds because they can really be unleashed with later hardware that is still XP compatible. I actually dual boot my XP build with win7. Builds that try and span 98 and XP tend to be the worst of both worlds, compromising on almost everything and excelling at nothing.

agree, truth is though each OS has it's main limiting factor that'll hold back performance in dual OS builds

DOS, ISA sound card & CPU Speed
Win9x, Graphics card
WinXP, Graphics card.

As I don't really have any speed sensitive dos games my Slot 1 PC I can ignore CPU speed and put the fastest one in I can get my hands on (1GHz)
large (for dos) amounts of ram or HDD don't really matter as work around exist so Win98 can be kept happy as well.

Win98 is even more forgiving, with only the graphics card holding you back. It's very rare for a game not to work on a stupid fast CPU, Work around exist for large amounts of RAM and HDD. A graphics card with good compatibility is the bottleneck especially if your trying to play later titles at high resolutions with AA and the like enabled.

WinXP is the most forgiving as the last cards with XP support have perfect compatibility and way more performance then XP titles need. CPU, RAM, HDD limitations are no longer a consideration at all.

Reply 44 of 229, by God Of Gaming

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Thing is, specific vintage hardware that is "interesting", is nowadays very hard to get, and if ebay happens to be your only source of vintage hardware, you should prepare to sell your organs and your newborn child

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 45 of 229, by vinxi2

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That's exactly my situation, here I can't seem to find "retro-stores". They are scattered through the country, so eBay seems the only option.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-10-27, 09:46:

If you do a search for "pc3200 cl2 1gb" you may be able to find ram for a good price with better CL rating but truth is it wont make that much difference.

The problem is that I can't seem to find 2x1 GB stick CL2.5, I always find 512 MB or just 1x1GB stick. Here are my searches:

https://www.ebay.it/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trk … l2+2gb&_sacat=0
https://www.ebay.it/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trk … 2+2gb&_osacat=0

There is also the fact that people don’t write the CL in auctions, or even the SKU like this store that sells Corsair and Kingston:

https://www.ebay.it/itm/252709333772
https://www.ebay.it/itm/262646464813

HDD, No one way is the correct way but this is what I do. C:\ 2GB, Win98, FAT32 D:\ lots of GB, Games and Data, Fat32 E:\ lots f […]
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HDD, No one way is the correct way but this is what I do.
C:\ 2GB, Win98, FAT32
D:\ lots of GB, Games and Data, Fat32
E:\ lots for GB, Recovery, FAT32
F:\ 10GB, WinXP, NTFS

What do you put in the Recovery partition? The Windows 98 CD? Drivers?

Since I'd like to clone the HDD as soon as I have a Windows 98 stable (with your help of course 🤣) should I get a 500GB or 1TB? Is there a difference?

Your layout is way better, there seems to be no reasons to separate games for the two OSes, right?

Do you use the fdisk in the Windows 98 CD? Will it see the entire 500GB/1TB?

Reply 46 of 229, by God Of Gaming

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What I like to do is use one smaller capacity, 10k or 15k rpm hdd, like a scsi seagate cheetah, or a sata wd raptor, and partition that for all the windowsi, and then add large capacity 5400rpm or 7200rpm HDDs for game installs, as many as the computer case can fit, since I'm not the type to only keep games I currently play installed, I like having my whole library installed and ready to launch at a mouse click.

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 47 of 229, by Joseph_Joestar

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-26, 21:17:

So this is like a "Windows 98 dream machine", and I also thought that getting the "last possible hardware" could also mean a more "reliable" PC.

I think it's the opposite actually. The further you move away from the turn of the century, the more problems you'll encounter with Win98. Hardware made around 2002-2003 provides a sort of compromise where you can play most Win9x games in 1280x1024 at 60+ FPS with AA and AF fully maxed out, while still retaining proper compatibility with DX5 games and such.

Stuff produced later than that either necessitates drivers that are too new to properly work with Win9x games, or suffers from odd compatibility problems. See here for example: Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 48 of 229, by vinxi2

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-27, 12:38:

Stuff produced later than that either necessitates drivers that are too new to properly work with Win9x games, or suffers from odd compatibility problems. See here for example: Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures

From what I'm able to understand with my little knowledge, in this thread the GF4 Ti seems to be the most compatible one with Windows 98 games, like chinny22 said.

I understand that there could be no AGP graphic card that can be compatible and powerful for both XP and 98.

God of gaming mentioned the Radeon 9800 as the sweet spot.

In this thread GeorgeMan choosed the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, but God of gaming said that the Windows 98 compatibility is not that great.

Could I put two GPUs in the PC and use each of them for an OS? Or should I swap them?
My primary focus is definitely Windows 98 by the way.

Reply 49 of 229, by Joseph_Joestar

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-27, 12:54:

From what I'm able to understand with my little knowledge, in this thread the GF4 Ti seems to be the most compatible one with Windows 98 games, like chinny22 said

Yeah, that's pretty much the sweet spot. GeForce4 Ti cards are powerful enough to max out almost every Win9x game while retaining good compatibility with older titles and being able to use known good driver versions.

ATi cards are generally not recommended for Win9x gaming since they lack the features mentioned in my previous post.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 50 of 229, by vinxi2

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I saw that Geforce 4400 and 4600 are really pricey on eBay! Like €200+!
The 4200 is way cheaper and affordable. Is it powerful enough?

I found an instruction manual, back in the day I had an Abit Siluro FX5200.

Anyway, the motherboard is on its way.
I still can't find CL2.5 RAM and waiting for the CPU store to reply.

Reply 51 of 229, by Joseph_Joestar

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-27, 13:55:

The 4200 is way cheaper and affordable. Is it powerful enough?

I use one and have yet to find a Win9x game where my FPS drops below 60 at 1280x1024.

If you want to use a higher resolution than that, or play early WinXP games, you may need something stronger. But for anything released in 2001 and earlier, a GeForce4 Ti4200 is more than enough.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 52 of 229, by vinxi2

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-27, 14:13:

I use one and have yet to find a Win9x game where my FPS drops below 60 at 1280x1024.

If you want to use a higher resolution than that, or play early WinXP games, you may need something stronger. But for anything released in 2001 and earlier, a GeForce4 Ti4200 is more than enough.

Joseph (but I'm also asking to the other people who is helping me) can you please give me a little GPU chart to simplify?

If we're talking about GPUs that have reasonable prices (not 200€+) and there is a stronger one, may be runs cooler and that is good for both OSes, I would rather buy that one. (hoping it's fanless too 🤣)

I tried to "fuse" everyone advice:

GeForce 4 TI4200 - Windows 98 10/10, Windows XP 0/10 (not even early game)
Geforce 6/6600/6800/7800 GS AGP - Fast, but suffer from bumpgate, not reliable
Radeon 9800 - Fine for both? But ATI is not recommendable for Windows 98 and has compatibility issue
Radeon X800/X850 - Very powerful for both, but Windows 98 drivers are in beta. Again ATI is not recommendable.

Last edited by vinxi2 on 2021-10-27, 17:17. Edited 7 times in total.

Reply 53 of 229, by chinny22

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-27, 11:16:

Your layout is way better, there seems to be no reasons to separate games for the two OSes, right?

Do you use the fdisk in the Windows 98 CD? Will it see the entire 500GB/1TB?

Yeh Italian ebay brings up less results then UK for CL2 or even 2.5 RAM? I wouldn't worry about it though CL3 is more then fine. It's already so overpowered for Win98 your not going to notice that 1ms difference the faster RAM may of made

My recovery partition is the Windows 98 setup files, drivers and apps like Daemon tools. most game ISO's live on the network but a few get copied across if I haven't found a No-CD crack so I can mount them in the virtual CD drive.

I've never cloned a drive but I'm strange and actually enjoy installing Windows 😜

I haven't com close to fill a 500GB drive on a Win9x box even with game iso's but then I have the network.
I do use the the patched version of fdisk, that is a good point. if you copy it to a cd you an run it direct off that even if you boot off the original 98 CD.

I think swapping video cards is a bad idea. your stuck with 1 AGP slot so I'd just limit yourself to whichever card you go with

Last edited by Stiletto on 2021-10-27, 19:04. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 54 of 229, by Joseph_Joestar

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-27, 17:01:

Joseph (but I'm also asking to the other people who is helping me) can you please give me a little GPU chart to simplify?

From the GPUs that you listed, only the GeForce4 Ti4200 has good compatibility with early Win9x games. It's by no means a worthless card for WinXP though. You can play games released as late as 2004 on it, if you don't mind lowering the resolution a bit and turning off AA and AF. Specifically, I recently replayed the original Splinter Cell (2002) as well as Pandora Tomorrow (2004) on that card, and they ran more or less fine at about 30 FPS.

My earlier remark simply meant that you can fully max out most games from 2001 and before on a Ti4200 at 1280x1024, including AA and AF and get 60+ FPS. Games released after that will still be playable, just not on max settings.

Incidentally, this is why almost no one here builds a system which spans both the Win98 and WinXP era. Most people make 2001 the cutoff point for Win9x gaming and build a much more powerful system for WinXP.

Last edited by Joseph_Joestar on 2021-10-27, 17:22. Edited 1 time in total.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 55 of 229, by vinxi2

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-27, 17:18:

From the GPUs that you listed

I listed only the ones that were listed in the thread 😁 but if there are other alternatives that can go beyond 2001 preserving the Windows 98 compatibility I'm here to listen.

Edit: I just read your edit, so basically GeForce 4 TI4200 for Windows 98 and another generation for Windows XP. There are no GPUs that can preserve the Windows 98 compatibility and go beyond 2001.

In this thread the OP choosed the GeForce 6800 Ultra but basically he accepted various games incompatibility in Windows 98 and the bumpgate problem.

In this video Phils tested the Radeon X850 XT Platinum and he says it's outstanding in Windows 98 but the card costs 200€+.

Last edited by vinxi2 on 2021-10-27, 17:30. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 56 of 229, by Joseph_Joestar

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The best you can hope for in terms of both decent compatibility with early Win9x games and somewhat better WinXP performance would be a GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. Those are rare, sometimes prone to failure and cost way too much nowadays.

Other cards from the GeForce FX line are an option as well, but they most often match the higher end GeForce4 Ti models in terms of performance, and rarely exceed them.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 57 of 229, by vinxi2

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Understood, so basically the Geforce 4 TI series (the affordable 4200) seems the only real good option for making Windows 98 a priority, but won't basically do that much with XP.

The FX 5950 Ultra is 200€+ on eBay and prone to failure, so no.

Anyway also the CPU and the 512 MB are on their way, I just had the order confirmation.

In the next few days I should get CPU cooler, 2 GB RAM, HDD and PSU and see if everything POST.

About the HDD I think I'll go with a WD Blue 500GB. Ironically an 240 GB Kingston SSD costs a little less but I don't know if 98/XP are compatible with that.

Reply 58 of 229, by Joseph_Joestar

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-27, 17:54:

About the HDD I think I'll go with a WD Blue 500GB. Ironically an 240 GB Kingston SSD costs a little less but I don't know if 98/XP are compatible with that.

Note that Win98 doesn't work correctly on hard disks larger than 127 GB. I'm not sure if there are any third-party patches which fix this. Maybe someone else can chime in on that.

Personally, I would go for two SSDs in your case, a 120 GB disk for Win98 and a 250 GB (or larger) disk for WinXP. If the BIOS on your motherboard allows you to select which device to boot from on startup, this has the added benefit of not having to worry about partitioning and multiple boot loaders on the same disk.

And don't worry about the lack of TRIM on pre-Win7 operating systems. It's not a big deal for modern SSD which do garbage collection when idle. You can read up more on that on Crucial's website for example. Relevant quote:

Trim and Active Garbage Collection are useful tools that can benefit the speed, function, and longevity of your SSD. But if your operating system doesn't support Trim, it's not a disaster. All Crucial SSDs are designed and tested assuming that they will be used without Trim.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 59 of 229, by leonardo

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vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-26, 21:17:
Hi Leonardo, the fact is that Windows 98 brings me a lot of nostalgia, and back then I couldn't afford a good configuration, I […]
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leonardo wrote on 2021-10-26, 20:24:

Not meaning to sound like a killjoy, but this seems on the extreme high-end for Windows 98. What are you looking to play on this kind of hardware with Windows 98 that wouldn't also work on Windows XP?

Hi Leonardo, the fact is that Windows 98 brings me a lot of nostalgia, and back then I couldn't afford a good configuration, I always went to friends house just to watch others playing.

So this is like a "Windows 98 dream machine", and I also thought that getting the "last possible hardware" could also mean a more "reliable" PC.
I know those are dumb ideas, but that OS really brings back memories.

I fully understand the nostalgia part - I've got two computers that have no reason for being other than nostalgia.
...and what you're trying to accomplish isn't a dumb idea, but you may be aiming a lot higher than what even the most demanding Windows 9x-games would have required. This is only a problem insofar as you run into issues trying to get everything to work.

What you want achieve, is the on the high-end of something that is able to provide a sound nostalgic experience.

Why don't you name some games/applications you're looking to run? Just looking at the system requirements/recommendations for some titles might be more helpful than scattershot commentary from everyone imagining their games on your stuff. 😀

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.