Socket 5? Looks like you'd be fine with Socket 7.
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-001826.htm

I'm not familiar with any particular advantage that one Intel chipset might have over another, so long as it supports the features you want.

The graphics card you want will depend on what you want to run. Old Windows or 3Dfx games, perhaps?

Pretty much any IDE CD-ROM drive would be fine. The IDE hard drive you choose will depend on what the motherboard supports (specifically its BIOS); one of the older limitations was 8.3 GB.

I have a Pentium Pro and a 486 at home. 😀

I've only once seen a 430NX board. It came out of a old Gateway 2000. That might be the best way to go. Look for a old Dell or Gateway system on eBay. Otherwise, a Socket 7 board with 430FX/VX/TX would work fine too. You could go even newer, with a VIA MVP3 or ALI Alladdin V, but I understand the nostalgic value of finding the closest possible hardware to an old system you once had.

http://computers.search-desc.ebay.com/socket- … 22socketQ205Q22

You can easily get around IDE controller limitations if you add a cheap IDE PCI card, such as a Promise Ultra 100. Then you can use a new HDD and enjoy the much quieter computing brought with a modern hard drive. Fluid dynamic bearings ftw.

Yeah, any IDE CDROM should work. However, I dug up a old 12X for a retrocomp because of how much quieter they were. Back when games streamed off CDs, CDROMs didn't sit and spin 7,000 RPM and put out 70db of noise.

As for a graphics card, I'd try to find a card using a S3 Virge of some kind or Tseng ET6000. They are great for compatibility. ET6000 is super fast for DOS stuff. Not sure if the difference will matter much tho. And, pretend Virge doesn't have 3D. You could add a Voodoo1/2 if you desire some GLQuake action.

As for OS, definitely go with Win95C (OSR 2.5 I think). You can find a copy of that rather easily. 😀 It will be much faster than 98 on such a machine.

Good to see you back swaaye, I left you a couple PMs (I got the Soundscape working in Win98se, Dark Forces sounds great with a SS and a Roland SCB-55 on my MPU-401AT 😀 )

Stu,

Welcome to the wonderful addition of older computing 😀 (I'm 30 btw, so I grew up in the 386 days).

Search by my user name, I started getting into this habbit back about a year ago and just recently re-got back into it now again. I've posted/started quite a few topics that you might be interested in.

As for other places to visit:
Hardware/General
Old School DOS Boxes (No, not DOSBox), this is what drove me to get a Optiplex GXpro: http://www.oldskool.org/guides/oldonnew/friendlyboxes

DOS Games, kinda lite on content: http://www.dosgames.com/forum/

Vintage Computer Forums (way old school, pre-Pentium days) http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/index.php

Atari Age, HUGE forum, lots of talk on stuff from 'back in the day' game related: http://www.atariage.com/forums/

Awesome Archive Site, Computer Chronicles was a kick butt TV show
http://www.archive.org/browse.php?field=/meta … puterchronicles

Forum dedicated to Adventure games: http://www.justadventure.com/yabb/YaBB.pl

Moby Games, THE place on line to get reviews/info/pics of old school / new school games. That dang place has pushed me over the edge on a lot of my gaming ebay purchases 🤣: http://www.mobygames.com/home

Music
Sierra Music Central: http://smc.sq7.org/

Quest Studios, consider it a sister site to Vogons, very detailed talks about Sierra and Music/Sound cards, love the place, lots of people cross talk on here and there:
http://queststudios.com/quest/Sierra1.html

My main sites I visit are Vogons, Quest, AtariAge, then of course Moby Games and then eBay.

swaaye wrote:

As for OS, definitely go with Win95C (OSR 2.5 I think). You can find a copy of that rather easily. 😀 It will be much faster than 98 on such a machine.

98 is slower than 95C? That's news to me. I would think the primary difference would only be 98's improved stability. Anyway, if speed is a concern, 98lite (which ideally requires files from 95A) is probably the way to go.

Stick with windows 95c. I have seen windows 98 crash but to this day i have not seen a windows 95 crash and windows 95's don't have the blue screen of death error. The only problems my grandpas windows 95 with 7.5 ghz and a pentium 100 mhz harddrive has is it freezes up when trying to go to dos mode and says incorrect dos version then says going back to windows and freezes up right their and loading msdos prompt it will say incorrect dos version and immediatly close. The only strange thing is dos games can still run and another problem is when you put in a cd it does not read it and when you double click on the cd drive on my computer it says the drive is not ready and it does it for every disc inserted. It does not have a 5.25 floppy drive so it can only play 3.5 floppies.

but to this day i have not seen a windows 95 crash

I've seen plenty win95's to crash really bad.

I've seen every Windows crash horribly 😀
In my experience (and I've been running every flavor of Windows 9x), Windows 98SE was the best of the 9x line. On my system Windows ME ran really great, better than 98SE, but that must have been the system. On the following system I experienced all the problems everyone was complaining about when running ME.
And trust me I've known how to handle 9x. I was the guy everyone was pestering at the time 😀
So I'd recommend 98SE trimmed with 98lite (as Jorpho wrote)

That is impossible because win 3.0 can not crash.

To say the least, the value, coherency, and general relevance of your statements are highly questionable, sir. I have seen Windows 3.0 (well, 3.1, anyway) crash frequently and badly, and I am far from the only one.

That is impossible because win 3.0 can not crash.

Excuse me, I should have been more precise, "I've seen every Windows from Windows version 3.1 upwards crash, except Vista but for that one I have a 9x application that so far crashed every NT based Windows".
And in the context of this thread your statement is not useful at all.

95C is faster than 98SE. I've run both on a 486. Trust me on this. 😀 The difference is astounding. 98lite is probably as fast as 95C because it uses the 95 shell. That might be the way to go, but it's kinda a complex process. And do you really need any of 98's features on a P100? Not really. No USB, no AGP, etc...

As for stability, haha, yeah that's not something I consider when I think about the 9x days. Those OS's aren't exactly "robust". But wow is 9x lightweight compared to NT!

Mike 01Hawk, I found your PM. I never catch PMs. If you hadn't mentioned it in your post, it would still be unnoticed. 🤣. Ensoniq cards are decent choices, but no DB connector sadly.

And do you really need any of 98's features on a P100?

true enough 😀

kneedragger37 wrote:

- *a socket 5 motherboard with the options i had way back when* in particular, I'm looking for something with the Intel 430nx neptune chipset. This seems to be impossible to find. Call me crazy, but it's what I had and I thought it was awesome. If there's a reason to use something else, I'd love some opinions and explanations.

Neptune boards were notorious back then, at least after Triton had become available... 😉 Maybe that's the reason why they are so rare today.
Beware of the abysmal PCI performance (limit at ~40 MB/s) and the buggy RZ 1000 IDE controller that often comes with these boards.

Seriousy, I recommend getting a i430VX/TX instead.

swaaye wrote:

98lite is probably as fast as 95C because it uses the 95 shell.

Well, the whole point of 98lite is that it can use the old shell that did not have Internet Explorer integration - which 95C also has.

And I have found 98SE WDM drivers to be considerably more stable than VXDs, though as you say those would be of limited use on a P100.

WOW! I can't believe how many responses there are -- thanks for all the info. Just so you know, this project I'm working on is going to be using DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11. Still have the 3.5inch disks in my basement. 😀 I am looking to run DOS games mostly.

For the information of those suggesting the newer stuff, now that I've started this, I'm thinking I'll do another project in the near future (yes, I am a glutton for punishment), which will be a Pentium II running win98.

The reason I was looking for the Neptune board was the support for more memory -- up to 512MB as opposed to Triton's 128. Triton II could work, I guess, but I think it's a bit too fancy -- I'm trying to slum it here! 😉

Thanks for all the advice and keep it coming! I'll be sure to post specs on the system as it gets built.

--Stu

kneedragger37 wrote:

The reason I was looking for the Neptune board was the support for more memory -- up to 512MB as opposed to Triton's 128.

What could you run on DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 that would use 512 MB? (Windows 9x, at least, becomes unstable if it tries to access that much RAM.)

What could you run on DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 that would use 512 MB? (Windows 9x, at least, becomes unstable if it tries to access that much RAM.)

Don't know -- I just know it seemed important to me in 1994! I am considering either Triton or Triton II now that Neptune seems unattainable or close to it, and I probably wouldn't want it once I got it!

If I'm sticking with the P-100 and 128MB of RAM that I already have, should I go for the Triton or splurge and go for the Triton II?

Oh, and one more thing... the P/S in my case is 250W... will that do it or should I go for something bigger?

Thanks,
Stu

kneedragger37 wrote:

If I'm sticking with the P-100 and 128MB of RAM that I already have, should I go for the Triton or splurge and go for the Triton II?

Mercury (i430LX), Neptune (i430NX) and Triton II (i430HX) are the only Intel Socket7 chipsets that have a cacheable area greater than 64 MB. Note that some HX boards still cache only 64 MB, because they are not equipped with the necessary external TAG-RAM.

Besides, it might be impossible to equip non-server boards with more than 256 MB, because FPM/EDO SIMMS bigger than 64 MB are quite rare and often are not compatible with consumer boards.

kneedragger37 wrote:

Oh, and one more thing... the P/S in my case is 250W... will that do it or should I go for something bigger?

250W should be plenty for a typical Socket7 machine, at least as long as the ratings on the PSU sticker are somewhat realistic (a cheesy PSU that only delivers two thirds of the amps advertised on the sticker may still work, but can result in an unstable PC).