It is doubtful that the 433 Celeron will run on that motherboard. Different pinout and 2volt power requirement.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Ajax/SupportFunction … duct&Value=1377

Parke - hey thanks! That's a handy reference - much appreciated

I'll work with the 1.2MHz I have SL656 (Tualatin) - this inexpensive mobo seems to auto-detect and set the FSB or I'd be tempted to drop it from 100 to 66 and see if it boots.

I wonder if I can use setmul with it to disable the 256k L2 cache on a Tualatin Celeron ? That should knock the bugger on the head, eh?

CPU:
I don't see the need to limit your CPU. Anything S370 is crazy fast for dos and will already have problems. Faster CPU's will help you on the windows side of things though.
Alot of games will work no matter the CPU, the few that will have problems can be found here, and sometimes can be patched.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

Video:
The onboard video is probably enough for dos but windows side you may want something better.
Given your interest era of dos-early windows a 3dfx card is ideal but they are stupid expensive.

For this era I like to use another card with its own 3d api like the S3 Virge, but you can find a list of alternatives here.
3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

Most important would be to check any cards dos compatibility. Remember your not after 100% success rate, just to make sure any games your interested in will be ok. Even the worst card in this list plays most games just fine
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Sound:
Sound Blaster 16 for free? yeh it's hard to beat that!

Overall I think your on the right track. It wont play 100% of games but no system will, but this will play a very high percentage of dos games just fine

So, my opinion...

First of all buying a board without AGP is a mistake. It severely limits your options and makes things more expensive. You have to remember - using completely period correct card is not really an option - you are using not period correct monitor, likely want way, way higher resolution than would have been used back then and nowadays we expect much higher FPS than would have been acceptable back then. So with videocard you usually want to go a bit into the future, which is complicated by lack of AGP. Even if you get something later from 3dfx, which would cost an arm, a leg and a kidney, you may still not get the performance you'd want.

Something like FX5500 PCI may be an ok choice, but do research compatibility with DOS stuff as i am not into really old DOS games and have no idea...

CPU... IMO faster=better. Either of this CPUs is going the be way too fast for speed sensitive DOS games and you'll need to find a way to slow it down anyway, but faster one will give you better performance in later stuff.

There is likely no harm in increasing RAM all the way to 512MB, but also 128MB should be more than enough.

If you are considering IDE-CF/IDE-SD - do consider IDE-SATA and small SSD instead. SSDs are better suitable for the job of running OS, more reliable and obviously faster.

Gotek is useful, but my opinion - it is also optional. Everything depends on how you'd prefer to transfer data, technically with W98 and USB you can just use a thumb drive.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-07-31, 00:13:

Most important would be to check any cards dos compatibility. Remember your not after 100% success rate, just to make sure any games your interested in will be ok. Even the worst card in this list plays most games just fine
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Wow - great resource - thanks!

I knew I came here for a reason. 😉

If you somehow find the 1.2 is too fast, it's a very simple matter to cut it to 12x66 instead of 12x100.
Same for the ram. Just set both to 66 and it's 800 with slow ram.
CL3 for that extra slowness.

If that's not enough, there's disabling cache.

myne wrote on 2025-07-31, 00:50:

If you somehow find the 1.2 is too fast, it's a very simple matter to cut it to 12x66 instead of 12x100. Same for the ram. Just […]
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If you somehow find the 1.2 is too fast, it's a very simple matter to cut it to 12x66 instead of 12x100.
Same for the ram. Just set both to 66 and it's 800 with slow ram.
CL3 for that extra slowness.

If that's not enough, there's disabling cache.

Thanks - I've never 'underclocked' before - only 'gently' overclocked AMD processors in the distant past.
I'll give it a try!

It's exactly the same. Only you don't have to worry about stability.

Pentium II/III is not an ideal choice for early DOS games. It will be too fast for some speed sensitive games. It is not that flexible on how to slow it down in hardware. Disabling cache will drop the speed dramatically though, and that may work for some games. You can try some of the many software-based slowdown tools. It should be great for Win98 though.

I would probably put a PCI Geforce FX 5500 in it. Those are fairly cheap and quite compatible for WinX games. Less so for DOS, but really depends on the games you want to play.

For sound, its great that you have ISA sound card. Should have great DOS compatability.