VOGONS


First post, by bergqvistjl

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Hi, i'm looking to build a Win98 machine and i've got myself a CPU that I hope should work fine, based on other posts i've seen on here (PIII Tualatin 1.4GHZ SL6BY) - please tell me if i've made a mistake and got something that Win98 won't like or is unstable with...

Also I should mention that i'm planning on dual-booting it with pure MS-DOS 6.22 on a seperate hard disk or partition too, so please tell me if i'm gonna hit any major red flags.

But now i'm looking to get a motherboard for said CPU.

I'd like it to have at least 1 ISA Slot (for an AWE64 Gold card), as well as 1 AGP Slot (for a QDI Rendition V2200 card) as well as PCI slots for a Voodoo2 3DFX card, an ethernet card and possibly a 3rd for a hardware DVD-decoder, although i'll give the last one a miss if i'm pushed for slots.

Can anyone recommend anything? I'd like to get a MicroATX mobo if one exists, but failing that i'm happy with regular ATX.

I have no interest in overclocking anything.

I've heard good things about the JETWAY 993AN v1.2 mobo on here. I have one that says v1.4 on the motherboard. In practice, is this one better or worse than the 1.2, if anybody knows?

Reply 1 of 12, by PhilsComputerLab

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That processor is very good, very fast.

You might need to look around for a while to find a suitable board with ISA slot.

What DOS games are you planning on playing with this beast? Note that late DOS games work very well with PCI sound cards like the Live! or Aureal Vortex2.

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Reply 2 of 12, by bergqvistjl

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philscomputerlab wrote:

That processor is very good, very fast.

You might need to look around for a while to find a suitable board with ISA slot.

What DOS games are you planning on playing with this beast? Note that late DOS games work very well with PCI sound cards like the Live! or Aureal Vortex2.

I've just ordered a Jetway 933AN rev 1.4 on ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151038277060 (the seller has 1 left over now) after seeing good words about the rev 1.2 of it on here. I hope i haven't made a mistake xD The DOS games I have are Grand Prix 2, IndyCar Racing 2 (the Rendition version), Nascar Racing 2 (Rendition version with 3dfx), classic Lucasarts games, stuff like that. If that mobo was a good find then IMO it's worth the £100-ish quid i've spent on it heh, I hope. I bought the CPU for $20 including p&p too.

Reply 3 of 12, by obobskivich

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I don't' have a motherboard suggestion, but I will say I doubt you need a DVD decoder card, and it may actually hinder the system to install one. Back around '01 I had a 2GHz P4 (which will be surprisingly similar to your P3 in terms of performance), and it had no problems running DVDs all by itself. I picked up a Creative DxR3 (one of the last DVD decoders Creative made) a few months ago mostly to get the brand-new-in-box DVD-ROM drive out of it, but I decided to test the card out too - the quality and functionality was certainly acceptable, but it was inferior to software-based solutions that the P4 could run. It also, based on my research, would have very bad compatibility with Windows 2000/XP. Now, I know you said Windows 98 and DOS, but with that P3 you could easily triple-boot with 2000 or XP as well, if you wanted.

Reply 4 of 12, by bergqvistjl

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obobskivich wrote:

I don't' have a motherboard suggestion, but I will say I doubt you need a DVD decoder card, and it may actually hinder the system to install one. Back around '01 I had a 2GHz P4 (which will be surprisingly similar to your P3 in terms of performance), and it had no problems running DVDs all by itself. I picked up a Creative DxR3 (one of the last DVD decoders Creative made) a few months ago mostly to get the brand-new-in-box DVD-ROM drive out of it, but I decided to test the card out too - the quality and functionality was certainly acceptable, but it was inferior to software-based solutions that the P4 could run. It also, based on my research, would have very bad compatibility with Windows 2000/XP. Now, I know you said Windows 98 and DOS, but with that P3 you could easily triple-boot with 2000 or XP as well, if you wanted.

I plan on building a seperate XP machine to run much more modern games (well anything that won't run well on my main Win8.1 PC)

I've just noticed that the Jetway mobo has a VIA Apollo chipset, rather than a native intel one. Can anyone recommend a similar mobo but with a i815T chipset - I hope that's the right one (Still with AGP, ISA, Socket 370)?

All the i815T ones i've seen don't have an ISA slot, were none available with ISA as well as the i815T then?

Reply 5 of 12, by alexanrs

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If you want an Intel chipset with ISA, you'd have to go 440BX, but that doesn't support Tualatins, and even if you mod the processor the BX doesn't support the necessary AGP dividers fpr 133MHz FSB so you'd have to either live with an overclocked AGP bus or with an underclocked processor. For 133MHz Tualatins and ISA, the VIA Apollo 133T is probably your best bet if you need AGP (and you're not sure your card can take the OCed bus)

Reply 6 of 12, by bergqvistjl

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alexanrs wrote:

If you want an Intel chipset with ISA, you'd have to go 440BX, but that doesn't support Tualatins, and even if you mod the processor the BX doesn't support the necessary AGP dividers fpr 133MHz FSB so you'd have to either live with an overclocked AGP bus or with an underclocked processor. For 133MHz Tualatins and ISA, the VIA Apollo 133T is probably your best bet if you need AGP (and you're not sure your card can take the OCed bus)

OK thank you 😀 Yeah I read that i'd need to pinmod the CPU I think to get it to supporrt the 440BX, which is something i'd rather not go into. So my Jetway is safe then? 😜

Reply 7 of 12, by idspispopd

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bergqvistjl wrote:

I've just noticed that the Jetway mobo has a VIA Apollo chipset, rather than a native intel one. Can anyone recommend a similar mobo but with a i815T chipset - I hope that's the right one (Still with AGP, ISA, Socket 370)?

All the i815T ones i've seen don't have an ISA slot, were none available with ISA as well as the i815T then?

i815T doesn't include ISA support, but with addition support chips ISA support can be added. Such boards are quite rare, some Fujitsu-Siemens model was mentioned (found a reference to D1219-C but nearly no information about that one).

Reply 8 of 12, by obobskivich

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bergqvistjl wrote:

OK thank you 😀 Yeah I read that i'd need to pinmod the CPU I think to get it to supporrt the 440BX, which is something i'd rather not go into. So my Jetway is safe then? 😜

Yes the Jetway should be fine, for everything you want it to do. As previously stated, the i815 doesn't support ISA. Nor does the i820 (RDRAM + P3; in theory it may offer slightly better performance than SDRAM). For Windows XP gaming, with a somewhat faster graphics card this system may be capable of serving double-duty, depending on specifically what you want to play/support.

Reply 9 of 12, by bergqvistjl

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obobskivich wrote:
bergqvistjl wrote:

OK thank you 😀 Yeah I read that i'd need to pinmod the CPU I think to get it to supporrt the 440BX, which is something i'd rather not go into. So my Jetway is safe then? 😜

Yes the Jetway should be fine, for everything you want it to do. As previously stated, the i815 doesn't support ISA. Nor does the i820 (RDRAM + P3; in theory it may offer slightly better performance than SDRAM). For Windows XP gaming, with a somewhat faster graphics card this system may be capable of serving double-duty, depending on specifically what you want to play/support.

Well with my Windows XP box, I'll be playing much more modern games.

I'll post pics of the Win98 machine once I've built it though, should look good 😀

Reply 10 of 12, by obobskivich

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One thing to clarify: the Jetway motherboard you linked on ebay is not Micro-ATX. I just caught that in the thread's title, that you were looking for Micro ATX.

As far as "much more modern games" in Windows XP - DX9 titles will generally work with no problems on modern systems, so the upper-limit is generally DirectX 7/8 games, which that Pentium 3 will generally support quite well, as long as it is paired up with a decent graphics adapter. This could all run under Windows 98 in theory as well. Just food for thought.

Reply 11 of 12, by RetroBoogie

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OP, that's kinda funny, because I am installing Win98 alongside MSDOS 6.22 right now (literally). If you run into snags I could probably answer some basic questions, as I had to dig around for help in the installation process. I'm also building a Win98 system, but settled on an AWE32/SB16 for my ISA slot (I realized real OPL3 is important to me). Good luck with your build.

Reply 12 of 12, by bergqvistjl

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RetroBoogie wrote:

OP, that's kinda funny, because I am installing Win98 alongside MSDOS 6.22 right now (literally). If you run into snags I could probably answer some basic questions, as I had to dig around for help in the installation process. I'm also building a Win98 system, but settled on an AWE32/SB16 for my ISA slot (I realized real OPL3 is important to me). Good luck with your build.

Well I did it before very easily. Everyone said I'd run into problems or that I'd only be able to boot it once or something like that, but it works fine 😀