obobskivich wrote:

Agreed with Jorpho and oerk. The only drivers I've ever seen an old motherboard really "need" are for AGP or some onboard device. Old AGP may or may not work very well; depends on the chipset and the board. Most other onboard devices, barring a quality ATA controller or something, should be turned off as previously stated. If you go with a fairly well known motherboard you shouldn't have problems finding whatever it needs, and it shouldn't be too hard to find someone else who has owned (or maybe currently owns) one to help you with information.

On the NIC - agreed on 3Com or Intel (I haven't spent much time with Realtek devices in general, oddly enough). I've got some older Etherlink PCI cards that work out of the box with most versions of Windows, and other operating systems, and provide good performance to boot. I know there are ISA variants of some of those cards as well (some even have thin-net connectors).

When they first start integrating EIDE controllers to the motherboards (late 486 era - mostly 486 PCI boards) and they generally came with drivers for Windows 3.x (32bit disk access) but nothing more. With Windows 9x around, they all work out of the box anyway. Early Pentium and late 486 era boards with onboard devices (graphics, sound, etc. ) was a rarity rather then the rule. And I'm sure the drivers for them can be found around, since they were mostly not board specific, but chipset specific, so even if you want to use them for a reason, there won't be much problem.

As the most other guys said, 3Com and Realtek NICs are super compatible, mostly even out of the box in case of Windows 98 and mostly with Windows 95. I have no personal experience with Intel, but especially 3Com 3C905 (PCI) and 3C509 (ISA) cards have no problem with Windows 9x, either with native drivers, or their own drivers (available in every corner of the web).

ScrewB wrote:

bjt wrote:

I'm thinking about selling this machine, it might fit what you're looking for.
Where are you located?

Crusty Desktop AT Pentium

Looks interesting. I am in the US.

How much you want for it?

Sorry, not sure I'd want to risk sending it across the Atlantic. Postage is likely to be prohibitive too.

You could also go for Pentium Pro, which is also very high end for Win95, no MMX, fast, and more "period correct" than a P2 (came out around when Cx5x86 and AM5x86 launched) and is relatively more exotic than the P2 due to its prohibitively higher price as a early adopter's luxury 😀

leileilol wrote:

You could also go for Pentium Pro, which is also very high end for Win95, no MMX, fast, and more "period correct" than a P2 (came out around when Cx5x86 and AM5x86 launched) and is relatively more exotic than the P2 due to its prohibitively higher price as a early adopter's luxury 😀

I'm not saying that it is not good for Windows 95, but Pentium Pro actually shines with Windows NT, considering its fully 32bit optimized architecture.

NVM.

I am buying this beast off my friend http://puu.sh/i1SPI/3d411f4eb7.jpg

300 mhz PII, 4.5 GB seagate IDE drive, 64mb pc-66, scsi controller, riva 128 agp

I am going to max the ram out, toss in a voodoo card for glide, add a couple of Seagate Cheetahs, replace the PSU with a 400w Seasonic, and finely replace all the fans with Noctua industrials.

ScrewB wrote:

I am buying this beast off my friend http://puu.sh/i1SPI/3d411f4eb7.jpg

300 mhz PII, 4.5 GB seagate IDE drive, 64mb pc-66, scsi controller, riva 128 agp

I am going to max the ram out, toss in a voodoo card for glide, add a couple of Seagate Cheetahs, replace the PSU with a 400w Seasonic, and finely replace all the fans with Noctua industrials.

neat! is the jaz and zip drive scsi, because those are SO VERY USEFUL to transfer large files between computers if you cant/wont use ethernet.

http://puu.sh/i5Cbn/4d1aae7ceb.jpg

looks like it

leileilol wrote:

kixs wrote:

High end machine for Windows 95 would likely be something Pentium non-MMX based.

Win95's lifetime has seen the P2-333, so...

If you're going to cross the line from Pentium to P-II, then you might as well install 98SE. P-II has plenty enough power to run 98SE with reasonable speed and you get greater support for more technologies with 98SE. I would only downgrade to 95 on a machine that was sluggish under 98.

tayyare wrote:

leileilol wrote:

You could also go for Pentium Pro, which is also very high end for Win95, no MMX, fast, and more "period correct" than a P2 (came out around when Cx5x86 and AM5x86 launched) and is relatively more exotic than the P2 due to its prohibitively higher price as a early adopter's luxury 😀

I'm not saying that it is not good for Windows 95, but Pentium Pro actually shines with Windows NT, considering it's fully 32bit optimized architecture.

Yes and NT support for multiple processors. Many Pentium Pro machines have two or more processors.