After doing some more research the current plan is:

• Install 3x 512MB of RAM for 1.5 GB total
• Configure Win 98 to only use 512 MB with HimemX
• 1 TB SSD with multiple partitions for both Win98 (FAT32) and WinXP (NTFS)
• Dual sound cards (Diamond MX300 and Audigy 2 ZS); MX300 for Win98 and Audigy for XP

CPU (XP 2000+) and GPU (GeForce 4200 Ti) should be fine under both OS's.

I'm guessing this is a rhetorical question. I've got a similar rig except, for sound I'm using a sq25oo and a ymf 744b. No creative. I'm using a fx 5900xt instead of a 4200 and, I have a single voodoo 2 in there becasue why not.

I didn't limit ram with I'm running a full 2gb with rloew patches. For CPU i'm running Pentium M socket 479 on Intel 865 chipset.

in my pure XP build I have a Xfi.

That's pretty similar to my nForce2 build back in the day. One recommendation: don't install any service packs on XP if you want it to remain usable. 2001-era stock XP ran beautifully on a 1.5GHz system with 512MB (let alone 1.5GB) of RAM. 2008 Windows XP SP3 bloated so hard you needed at least 2GB to keep it all in RAM and anything short of a dualcore Athlon64 or Core2Duo will feel like a slug even with enough RAM to stop it thrashing.

Warlord wrote on 2022-11-29, 20:59:

I didn't limit ram with I'm running a full 2gb with rloew patches.

Hadn't considered that option for RAM, so I'll take a look at that patch. My biggest concern was dealing with Windows 98's typical 512MB limitation, so that may just completely alleviate that.

dionb wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:30:

That's pretty similar to my nForce2 build back in the day. One recommendation: don't install any service packs on XP if you want it to remain usable. 2001-era stock XP ran beautifully on a 1.5GHz system with 512MB (let alone 1.5GB) of RAM. 2008 Windows XP SP3 bloated so hard you needed at least 2GB to keep it all in RAM and anything short of a dualcore Athlon64 or Core2Duo will feel like a slug even with enough RAM to stop it thrashing.

That's really good to know, thank you!

I'll stick to the original XP release. 😀

Warlord wrote on 2022-11-29, 20:59:

I didn't limit ram with I'm running a full 2gb with rloew patches.

I'm using that patch as well, but I recently found out that some games (and possibly other software?) still have issues when more than 512 MB RAM is detected on a Win9x system.

Case in point, the Final Fantasy 7 installer will error out with some weird message about "not enough swap space". Using msconfig to (temporarily) limit the RAM to 512 MB solves the issue. There was at least one more game which had a similar error: Metal Gear Solid, if I'm not mistaken.

i'm going to my other place tomorrow where that rig is at and I'll check it out. i had to replace notepad with metapad because of a similar problem but the issue definatly was with notepad.

dionb wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:30:

2008 Windows XP SP3 bloated so hard you needed at least 2GB to keep it all in RAM and anything short of a dualcore Athlon64 or Core2Duo will feel like a slug even with enough RAM to stop it thrashing.

Maybe also a 1kW PSU to power it and a 10kg copper heatsink to dissipate all the heat the bloated WinXP SP3 creates? 😀

I'm running a measly Pentium 4 + 2GB RAM with SP3 and all the updates that was released for it and it runs great, I think it eats around 200-300MB RAM if I recall correctly. I don't doubt at all the system requirements went up and Shponglefan will be better off staying <SP3 with his rig but holy over exaggeration batman.

I'd find it justify for myself. This performance level is really low-end for XP and setting up dual boot compromising W98 for some games which have otherwise low system requirements don't appeal me. I'd just build a fast XP PC which could cover most of the era and use a KVM switch for the same CRT I'm using for my W98 PC. Of if what I only need it for is really only those early or non-demanding XP games, I'd just get a thin client. I'd expect a $20 HP Compaq T5735 with its Sempron 2100+ and Radeon X1250 would do well in those games.

Or even installing the GoG version on a (more) modern PC and moving over the game files to the W98 PC might work. I don't know those games, but looking at the system requirements, they might don't actually need XP.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-30, 06:20:

dionb wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:30:

2008 Windows XP SP3 bloated so hard you needed at least 2GB to keep it all in RAM and anything short of a dualcore Athlon64 or Core2Duo will feel like a slug even with enough RAM to stop it thrashing.

Maybe also a 1kW PSU to power it and a 10kg copper heatsink to dissipate all the heat the bloated WinXP SP3 creates? 😀

I'm running a measly Pentium 4 + 2GB RAM with SP3 and all the updates that was released for it and it runs great, I think it eats around 200-300MB RAM if I recall correctly. I don't doubt at all the system requirements went up and Shponglefan will be better off staying <SP3 with his rig but holy over exaggeration batman.

The system itself eats about 250MB with SP3, as opposed to about 70MB for no SP. However the bloat goes beyond the system into the various libraries. In use, your system eats far more resources.

I very clearly remember getting a netbook around 2010. It came with 1GB of RAM with a crapware-filled pre-install Windows Vista. Obviously that had to go. I installed Windows XP. It worked fine. But as I wanted to use this for the intended purpose (surfing the internet) I needed to update it fully to be secure. After upgrade, with an otherwise clean install (only added Chrome, PuTTY and WinSCP), it became so slow as to be unusable once you started an application. 1GB was rather paltry even back then so I upgraded to 4GB. That stopped the thrashing to disk, but it was still monumentally slow in use. I then grudgingly upgraded to Windows 7 - and suddenly it flew. On identical-spec hardware, Windows 7 is a lot faster than XP SP3 (although you really need the RAM there), and that's saying a lot as a clean install XP with no SP will run adequately on a sub-1GHz P3 with 512MB RAM.

Your hardware is much better then what people were using when XP was first released so as long as the games aren't tat demanding you should be fine.
also you know the Audigy 2 works under Win98 right? So this setup means you have best of both worlds A3D 2.0 and EAX 😀

chinny22 wrote on 2022-11-30, 10:55:

also you know the Audigy 2 works under Win98 right?

If you call constant bluescreens when turning off the PC, scandisks during booting and randomly resetting volume levels and other driver issues working then sure 😀

That's on take of exactly one, maybe Audigy 2 works better on later boards than 440BX but on my system SB Live is perfectly issue free while Audigy 2 was not.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-30, 11:20:

If you call constant bluescreens when turning off the PC, scandisks during booting and randomly resetting volume levels and other driver issues working then sure 😀

That's on take of exactly one, maybe Audigy 2 works better on later boards than 440BX but on my system SB Live is perfectly issue free while Audigy 2 was not.

Not sure what to tell you? I've got Audigy 2 cards working happily on 3 Win9x builds, 2 of which are BX systems
Asus P2B-DS
Dell/Intel SE440BX-3
Asus P4P800

Agree the Live is an easier install under Win9x but as OP already has the card and EAX4 may be useful for the XP side of things

chinny22 wrote on 2022-11-30, 12:17:

Not sure what to tell you? I've got Audigy 2 cards working happily on 3 Win9x builds, 2 of which are BX systems Asus P2B-DS […]
Show full quote

Not sure what to tell you? I've got Audigy 2 cards working happily on 3 Win9x builds, 2 of which are BX systems
Asus P2B-DS
Dell/Intel SE440BX-3
Asus P4P800

Agree the Live is an easier install under Win9x but as OP already has the card and EAX4 may be useful for the XP side of things

Entirely possible I was just unlucky and the board and the card just didn't like each other or something.

Still I've become a bit wary of recommending Audigy 2 cards for Win98. If you are having issues with the only VXD driver there arent any other versions to try (as far as I know).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-30, 02:43:

Case in point, the Final Fantasy 7 installer will error out with some weird message about "not enough swap space". Using msconfig to (temporarily) limit the RAM to 512 MB solves the issue. There was at least one more game which had a similar error: Metal Gear Solid, if I'm not mistaken.

Probably platform dependent. I've installed and played FF7 on many "overkill" Win98 builds (recently on a Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM) and I always use R. Loew's patch. So far, I haven't encountered RAM related issues with any games or their installers. 😀

bloodem wrote on 2022-11-30, 13:35:

Probably platform dependent. I've installed and played FF7 on many "overkill" Win98 builds (recently on a Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM) and I always use R. Loew's patch. So far, I haven't encountered RAM related issues with any games or their installers. 😀

I saw it for the first time while installing FF7 on my Athlon64 system with 2 GB RAM. I wanted to check how Yamaha's software synth (which ships with the game) compares to the native XG music of my YMF744 card. And it was either during the install process or when I first started the game that I got that weird "not enough swap space" message. I definitively couldn't play the game until I limited the RAM to 512 MB via msconfig. Same deal for Metal Gear Solid.

I can reproduce this error every time on that system, but as you say, it might be platform specific. There's also an unrelated issue with Audigy drivers which refused to install with 4 GB RAM for this user.

chinny22 wrote on 2022-11-30, 10:55:

Your hardware is much better then what people were using when XP was first released so as long as the games aren't tat demanding you should be fine.
also you know the Audigy 2 works under Win98 right? So this setup means you have best of both worlds A3D 2.0 and EAX 😀

Oh, absolutely. I had planned to add the Audigy for Win 98 as well, but my primary card for that setup is still going to be the MX300.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-30, 07:12:

I'd just build a fast XP PC which could cover most of the era and use a KVM switch for the same CRT I'm using for my W98 PC.

I do have a faster XP system, but the way I have my different workstations set up using a KVM with that system isn't practical.

Another option I've considered is using my Core2Duo parts to build a whole different XP system (and maybe dual-booting it with Windows 7) for use with my CRT setup.

But I figured the simplest would be to just dual-boot my existing Windows 98 system.

Stock Windows ME runs fine with 1 GB RAM. I have a dual boot ME/XP P4 rig with 1 GB RAM and a GF4.

Errius wrote on 2022-11-30, 16:29:

Stock Windows ME runs fine with 1 GB RAM. I have a dual boot ME/XP P4 rig with 1 GB RAM and a GF4.

How compatible is ME with hardware like Vortex2 (A3D) based cards?

I was under the impression official support for those cards ended with Windows 98.