Asrock 775i65G does not support conroe CPUs, so no E5800.

In anycase, why an E5800? Windows 98 does not support muti CPU / multi core setups, and even a pentium 4 is fast enough for any win9x game you could throw at it.

I recommend picking up any i865 mATX and slap a pentium 4 on it, or even better, any socket 939 or 754 mATX board with a VIA or ALi/ULi chipset you can find. Those have win98 support, and you can get very fast single core socket 939 CPUs pretty easily.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-01-22, 19:56:

Asrock 775i65G does not support conroe CPUs, so no E5800.

In anycase, why an E5800? Windows 98 does not support muti CPU / multi core setups, and even a pentium 4 is fast enough for any win9x game you could throw at it.

I recommend picking up any i865 mATX and slap a pentium 4 on it, or even better, any socket 939 or 754 mATX board with a VIA or ALi/ULi chipset you can find. Those have win98 support, and you can get very fast single core socket 939 CPUs pretty easily.

You are wrong , with latest bios and revision 2.03+ it does support E5800

Socket3 wrote on 2024-01-22, 19:56:

Asrock 775i65G does not support conroe CPUs, so no E5800.

In anycase, why an E5800? Windows 98 does not support muti CPU / multi core setups, and even a pentium 4 is fast enough for any win9x game you could throw at it.

I recommend picking up any i865 mATX and slap a pentium 4 on it, or even better, any socket 939 or 754 mATX board with a VIA or ALi/ULi chipset you can find. Those have win98 support, and you can get very fast single core socket 939 CPUs pretty easily.

I thought the E8500 was wolfdale?

I wanted to go for that CPU specifically because even the single 3.2Ghz core outperforms any single core Pentium 4 that I’ve seen. My understanding is it also runs much cooler than many P4s.

It’s important for me that this build is not only blazing fast in 98, but also has the grunt to perform respectably in later operating systems, for those early 2000s games I can’t get running in 98.

I haven’t done to much research on the AMD side of things. I’ll look into socket 939 with the chipsets you mentioned. Thanks ☺️

ciornyi wrote on 2024-01-22, 20:35:

Socket3 wrote on 2024-01-22, 19:56:

Asrock 775i65G does not support conroe CPUs, so no E5800.

In anycase, why an E5800? Windows 98 does not support muti CPU / multi core setups, and even a pentium 4 is fast enough for any win9x game you could throw at it.

I recommend picking up any i865 mATX and slap a pentium 4 on it, or even better, any socket 939 or 754 mATX board with a VIA or ALi/ULi chipset you can find. Those have win98 support, and you can get very fast single core socket 939 CPUs pretty easily.

You are wrong , with latest bios and revision 2.03+ it does support E5800

That's awsome, I have one of these boards, can't wait to try it out with newer chips

Ive just setup a Win98 rig that supports an E6700 but unfortunately it doesnt have AGP only PCIe

My Asus K8V SE worked very well with Windows 98. There is a known bug with some Socket 754 motherboards where AGP performance suffers with later BIOS, so you have to be aware of that. I tested it, and anything after BIOS 1004 has a noticeable drop in performance with Win98 (but WinXP isn't affected).

Both ASUS and Gigabyte also had late LGA775/865G mATX motherboard revisions which had Conroe support.

CorruptJelly wrote on 2024-01-22, 20:49:

I haven’t done to much research on the AMD side of things. I’ll look into socket 939 with the chipsets you mentioned. Thanks ☺️

There are some interesting things on the AMD side, e.g. I have an AM2 board with AGP and a Via chipset... but I haven't actually managed to get 98SE running. Suspect I need PATA storage because unlike some Intel setups, it doesn't have the ability to map the SATA controller to the memory addresses that 98SE expects. But if you want to be adventurous like me, the Biostar AM2 K8M800 board can be found with CPUs and RAM affordably on eBay.

Same chipset is available on 754 boards (the K8 chips all use the same HyperTransport interface to the chipset so weird combinations of sockets and chipsets are possible.). Not sure if 754 vs 939 matters for a retro system running a single-core/processor-only OS. Various folks e.g. Phil's Computer Lab on YouTube have done 98SE builds on 754 boards.

The i865 boards that support later LGA775 chips are probably a better option than my AM2, but as you've already determined, they've already been pretty much all snatched up. So then if you want to go older, you're into Hotburst territory... and... ewww, who wants a hotburst?

(I admit, one of the things that drew me to AMD for this project is doing something totally different from what I would have had at the time and subsequently ewasted. And as a huge huge huge Intel fanboy who would never, ever have touched an AMD with a Via chipset, well, that seemed weirdly appealing for a retro build)

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-01-23, 02:12:

Both ASUS and Gigabyte also had late LGA775/865G mATX motherboard revisions which had Conroe support.

I have looked for both the Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH and the Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH-AS, but I can only find the early revisions of the board which don’t support core 2.

I have found a Asus P5PE-VM locally, but haven’t seen many people document their experience with this board and 98. So was unsure whether this was a safe bet or not.. Is it safe to assume that this board will ‘just work’ with 98 due to it having the 865G chipset? I’m quite new to retro hardware, so I’m unsure if there are any other factors I should be wary of?

865/875 are fully compatible with Win98.

I have a P5PE-VM that I need to finish re-capping, it’s just been too cold in my workshop area recently. 😁 Anyway, if I can get that done soon I’ll try to remember to throw it on the test bench and get some Win98 experience with it and report back.

There is one thing to clarify though… you originally said E5800, but then in a follow up post you said E8500. For the Asus board I’m pretty sure that the latest chips supported in an official BIOS are from the E6xxx series. However, there is a modded BIOS that allows support for the E7xxx series. Either way, if you’re actually looking to use an E8500 and not an E5800, that still probably doesn’t work for you.

danieljm wrote on 2024-01-23, 18:14:

I have a P5PE-VM that I need to finish re-capping, it’s just been too cold in my workshop area recently. 😁 Anyway, if I can get that done soon I’ll try to remember to throw it on the test bench and get some Win98 experience with it and report back.

There is one thing to clarify though… you originally said E5800, but then in a follow up post you said E8500. For the Asus board I’m pretty sure that the latest chips supported in an official BIOS are from the E6xxx series. However, there is a modded BIOS that allows support for the E7xxx series. Either way, if you’re actually looking to use an E8500 and not an E5800, that still probably doesn’t work for you.

Sorry, the follow-up post was a typo. It is the E5800 that I wanted to use. Although it is very interesting to hear that the P5PE-VM supports a E7xxx processor. If that is the case, I’ll probably go for one from the E7xxx series instead, if you think 98 will play nicely with one of those..?

I would love to hear your experience with the P5PE-VM and 98. That board is actually one of the only ones that is available to me at present, but considering the high asking price from the seller, I want to be 100% sure it’s worth it before I make the investment.

Do you happen to know if your P5PE-VM has that dandy ‘IDE Compatibility mode’ in the BIOS, that fools 98 into thinking a SATA drive is IDE? I can see that feature being infinitely useful..

VivienM wrote on 2024-01-23, 02:41:

There are some interesting things on the AMD side, e.g. I have an AM2 board with AGP and a Via chipset... but I haven't actually […]
Show full quote

CorruptJelly wrote on 2024-01-22, 20:49:

I haven’t done to much research on the AMD side of things. I’ll look into socket 939 with the chipsets you mentioned. Thanks ☺️

There are some interesting things on the AMD side, e.g. I have an AM2 board with AGP and a Via chipset... but I haven't actually managed to get 98SE running. Suspect I need PATA storage because unlike some Intel setups, it doesn't have the ability to map the SATA controller to the memory addresses that 98SE expects. But if you want to be adventurous like me, the Biostar AM2 K8M800 board can be found with CPUs and RAM affordably on eBay.

Same chipset is available on 754 boards (the K8 chips all use the same HyperTransport interface to the chipset so weird combinations of sockets and chipsets are possible.). Not sure if 754 vs 939 matters for a retro system running a single-core/processor-only OS. Various folks e.g. Phil's Computer Lab on YouTube have done 98SE builds on 754 boards.

The i865 boards that support later LGA775 chips are probably a better option than my AM2, but as you've already determined, they've already been pretty much all snatched up. So then if you want to go older, you're into Hotburst territory... and... ewww, who wants a hotburst?

(I admit, one of the things that drew me to AMD for this project is doing something totally different from what I would have had at the time and subsequently ewasted. And as a huge huge huge Intel fanboy who would never, ever have touched an AMD with a Via chipset, well, that seemed weirdly appealing for a retro build)

I confess that I’ve been a bit hesitant to go down the AMD route, as the research I had done previously brought me to the conclusion that it can be a bit of a minefield getting a decent 98 compatible board.

I wouldn’t risk trying my chances with anything above socket 939, as I’ve just heard too many horror stories about people battling to get AM2/AM3 boards to play nicely with 98.

Assuming I did go team red - is there a socket 939 processor that is on par with the core 2? (When comparing individual cores).

Socket 939 AGP platform is one rank lower, when it comes to performance. Also it's mostly VIA, which has issues with SATA. Still an overkill for Win9x though and worth a look if you can buy it cheap.

Fastest AGP platform is technically AM2+ nForce 3 with Phenom II support from Asrock, but this chipset has issues both for Win9x and for "modern" use.

I would go 754 or 939 either one over the oven that is most any P4 platform.
Or compromise with 775.
I'm not a Netburst fan.
There is more than enough power on tap with a socket 754 system, for Windows 98.

CorruptJelly wrote on 2024-01-23, 19:17:

I confess that I’ve been a bit hesitant to go down the AMD route, as the research I had done previously brought me to the conclu […]
Show full quote

VivienM wrote on 2024-01-23, 02:41:

There are some interesting things on the AMD side, e.g. I have an AM2 board with AGP and a Via chipset... but I haven't actually […]
Show full quote

CorruptJelly wrote on 2024-01-22, 20:49:

I haven’t done to much research on the AMD side of things. I’ll look into socket 939 with the chipsets you mentioned. Thanks ☺️

There are some interesting things on the AMD side, e.g. I have an AM2 board with AGP and a Via chipset... but I haven't actually managed to get 98SE running. Suspect I need PATA storage because unlike some Intel setups, it doesn't have the ability to map the SATA controller to the memory addresses that 98SE expects. But if you want to be adventurous like me, the Biostar AM2 K8M800 board can be found with CPUs and RAM affordably on eBay.

Same chipset is available on 754 boards (the K8 chips all use the same HyperTransport interface to the chipset so weird combinations of sockets and chipsets are possible.). Not sure if 754 vs 939 matters for a retro system running a single-core/processor-only OS. Various folks e.g. Phil's Computer Lab on YouTube have done 98SE builds on 754 boards.

The i865 boards that support later LGA775 chips are probably a better option than my AM2, but as you've already determined, they've already been pretty much all snatched up. So then if you want to go older, you're into Hotburst territory... and... ewww, who wants a hotburst?

(I admit, one of the things that drew me to AMD for this project is doing something totally different from what I would have had at the time and subsequently ewasted. And as a huge huge huge Intel fanboy who would never, ever have touched an AMD with a Via chipset, well, that seemed weirdly appealing for a retro build)

I confess that I’ve been a bit hesitant to go down the AMD route, as the research I had done previously brought me to the conclusion that it can be a bit of a minefield getting a decent 98 compatible board.

I wouldn’t risk trying my chances with anything above socket 939, as I’ve just heard too many horror stories about people battling to get AM2/AM3 boards to play nicely with 98.

Assuming I did go team red - is there a socket 939 processor that is on par with the core 2? (When comparing individual cores).

I suppose I can't disagree with that, although it seems like it's purely a BIOS thing. The K8M800 and the Via whatever number southbridge on my AM2 board are the exact same chipset that have been used quite successfully on 754/939 boards, so unless those boards have additional 98SE-friendly BIOS features, you'd think the experience should be similar. (Any newer/non-weird AM2 board would be a newer PCI-E chipset and that's a whole other story) I need to get back to trying but with less RAM (yes, I was trying the rloew patch, but that's additional complication) and a PATA<->SATA adapter and hopefully I will have better luck. But otherwise... high-performance single core Athlon, AGP, DDR2 RAM, affordable price shouldn't be a bad combination... (and indeed, when in a fit of frustration, I installed XP on the thing, it's... quite a passable XP system)

The 939 processors were completely dominant before the Core 2 launch. No one wanted hotbursts in 2004-5. The general approach I would suggest: take your motherboard's supported processor list. Start with the highest performing option, see what's out there on eBay or elsewhere. Assuming it's stupidly expensive (the top processors for any socket tend to be), move on to the second and third-highest performing until you find something reasonable. Don't forget to also think about coolers...

Do look at 754 and the 754 semprons too. Might be some reasonable options there from around the time that 939 really went dual-core.

One other thing, and it bothers me saying that as someone who would never have touched a Via chipset 20 years ago: my understanding is that you want Via and not nForce for a retro AMD system. I'm not quite sure the details, but... presumably others can explain.

I have a Asus P5PE-VM hosting a Core 2 Extreme x6800 and 2GB of RAM. I use it for my Windows 95 with AGP retro rocket. Works great!

Asus provides Win98SE drivers for it on their website.

And yes, you can assign the two SATA ports as either the primary or secondary IDE controller in the BIOS (or use it in Native mode in addition to 4 IDE devices).

fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-01-24, 00:23:

And yes, you can assign the two SATA ports as either the primary or secondary IDE controller in the BIOS (or use it in Native mode in addition to 4 IDE devices).

Does anyone know if this is a hardware feature of the ICH...5, or a BIOS feature?

(Or, put another way, is a VT8237R+ capable of doing the same thing and, at least in theory, the right board with the right BIOS might expose that feature, or are you 500% out of luck?)

From everything I've read, this is an absolutely, absolutely critical feature to try and run 98SE off a SATA boot drive.

VivienM wrote on 2024-01-24, 00:33:

Does anyone know if this is a hardware feature of the ICH...5, or a BIOS feature? […]
Show full quote

fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-01-24, 00:23:

And yes, you can assign the two SATA ports as either the primary or secondary IDE controller in the BIOS (or use it in Native mode in addition to 4 IDE devices).

Does anyone know if this is a hardware feature of the ICH...5, or a BIOS feature?

(Or, put another way, is a VT8237R+ capable of doing the same thing and, at least in theory, the right board with the right BIOS might expose that feature, or are you 500% out of luck?)

From everything I've read, this is an absolutely, absolutely critical feature to try and run 98SE off a SATA boot drive.

Windows 98 can boot off of a SATA drive in Native mode, but Windows 9x will use the BIOS to do it. Rloew's SATA driver might make the drive work in 32-bit access within Windows, but I've never bothered to try it.