shaq wrote:

I have found a few with AGP 4X and Pentium 3. The dual socket board has AGP pro which is 4X. ASUS CUV4X-D Rev 1.03 Dual Socket37 […]
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I have found a few with AGP 4X and Pentium 3. The dual socket board has AGP pro which is 4X.
ASUS CUV4X-D Rev 1.03 Dual Socket370 P3 AGP AGPpro
Asus P3V4X single slot has AGP 4X and 1 ISA slot. This is one I'm leaning toward.
ASUS P3V4X Apollo Pro 133A
ASUS CUV4X

There's a very extensive list here http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_S … 70_motherboards
Perhaps this will help 😀

shaq wrote:

First off I am wanting to know if there was ever a Pentium 3 produced that had an AGP 8X slot. I am pretty certain there wasn't but I figured I would ask the experts here at vogons. Assuming there isn't the next question is was there a Pentium 4 motherboard with an AGP 8X slot AND at least 1 ISA slot? Is there also a chipset that has windows 95 drivers or at least the Win98 ones will work.

I am thinking of doing a 6800 Ultra for video and having ISA audio for some DOS compatibility. I may do ISA (AWE64) AND PCI (Audigy 2 ZS?) audio as long as I can configure them to play nicely or just do a quick driver install when I need the ISA. The ISA also will provide a game port for games that need them. I know of at least two that cant use USB joysticks. I am thinking about Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz if that has ISA and AGP 8X and 512MB of RAM if WIn95 is okay with that much.

Well that's a start for a list of the basic parts I need to find. Thanks for advice/help.

I never heard of any AGP 8x PIII boards so they probably are very rare. P4 boards with ISA slots are also rare, and generally produced for industrial applications and are definitely on the expensive side, if you are not lucky to find a good deal.

You did not mentioned what you really will do with this proposed machine (i.e. which games?) but since you already mentioned a W95 / W98 multiboot configuration, I will base my suggestions to that fact.

First of all, P4 is, in my opinion, a more than sane overkill choice for W98. If you want an ISA slot, it will get unnecessarily expensive. It will be also somehow too-fast for dos games, which will make the ISA slot-for-dos-sound-compatibility a moot point. So, an internally conflicting choice.

In my opinion, the best choice for a W9x machine is a PIII CPU, up to and including Tualatin 1.4GHz, which will give you all the sane amount of overkill anyways. My current W95/W98 rig has a Gigabyte board with Apollo 133T chipset (off the shelf Tualatin support) and it is AGP 4x.

For RAM, although 256MB stick is more than overkill, you can always put a 512MB stick if you want. In my experience, both W98 and W95 works without a glitch with it.

For the GPU, I wouldn't go above a Geforce 4 Ti, again which will give you all the necessary power to maxing out everything for almost anything comes out till 2000-2001, without compromising compatibility much.

For the occasional late DOS game, you probably need to have DOS sound compatibility. My choice here is almost always an ISA SB AWE64. PCI cards can have the required qualities and DOS compatibility, but AWE64 just works, without any extra hassle.

All these things I mentioned above will have off the shelf support for W9x which is also quite valuable.

tayyare's post above pretty much sums up everything I was going to say.
The above system should be fine for 99% of DOS and Win9x games. AWE64 for dos and Audigy 2 ZS is a great WIn9x sound card, both work fine together in the same system.

I would guess this gives you more flexibility then a P4 based system, but if its raw power your after rather then compatibility. I would build a socket 478 based system (easier to find Win9x drivers) and rely on the Audigy 2 ZS's dos legacy drivers which do ok and a P4 should easily be able to play any dos games from within windows.

AGP 8x on a P3 never existed since AGP 3.0 wasn't a thing untill 2002, even earlier P4 boards were AGP 4x ny. Also AGP 8x cards are backwards compatible with 4x slots and sometimes 1x/2x slots, there are very few P4 consumer boards with ISA slots like the QDI Platinix 2DI-Al (http://www.flaterco.com/kb/plague/board.jpg) and most of P4 ISA equiped boards are industrial, no mentioning later boards (antyhing with a southbridge newer than ICH5) will likely have slave ISA slots and drop Windows 98 support, also Athlon XP is clock per clock faster than Pentium 4

My suggestion: P3 or Athlon/Athlon XP system if you want ISA slot and DOS support

OK. You have all given great advice. I do have this Pentium 2 350 I could use for DOS and just get rid of the ISA slot. But I have to be able to run Win95. Which P4 chipsets (or AMD) still have good Win95 drivers? I have found a fast Tyan 1.0 Ghz P3 with an ISA and AGP 4X to consider, but looking at P4 options now. Any suggestions?

Tetrium wrote:

shaq wrote:

I have found a few with AGP 4X and Pentium 3. The dual socket board has AGP pro which is 4X. ASUS CUV4X-D Rev 1.03 Dual Socket37 […]
Show full quote

I have found a few with AGP 4X and Pentium 3. The dual socket board has AGP pro which is 4X.
ASUS CUV4X-D Rev 1.03 Dual Socket370 P3 AGP AGPpro
Asus P3V4X single slot has AGP 4X and 1 ISA slot. This is one I'm leaning toward.
ASUS P3V4X Apollo Pro 133A
ASUS CUV4X

There's a very extensive list here http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_S … 70_motherboards
Perhaps this will help 😀

Yes great list for P3. That will save some time.

Can I ask why you want to run Both 95 and 98? A lot of Windows 98 drivers will work for Windows 95, but the Pentium 4 world while good for an overkill Windows 98 system, I am not sure Windows95 is viable. It might be TOO fast.

shaq wrote:

But I have to be able to run Win95.

There is very little reason not to just run Win98SE instead of Win95. Was there something specific that led you to believe otherwise?

I don't believe every game released for Win 95 I compatible in Win 98. I installed Longbow Gold and Longbow 2 on Win 98 and the videos did not work. I believe every game I will play on this new system will be Win95 compatible. SOme if the IMagic sims I have say Win95 only in the manuals. This build will be for mainly late Win95 flight sims so it needs to be pretty powerful. Is there a speed that Win95 will have problems? I have read that Win98 is limited, but I forgot the exact speed. I don't think most games will be too fast. For instance I can play Janes F18 on my 4.5Ghz quad in Win7 and it runs fine. Actually a little slower than I would like, but that is a game engine limitation I guess.

But it looks like I will settle on a P3 ~1.0Ghz with 4X AGP and 1 ISA slot with a Via Apollo Pro 133A or 133T chipset.

shaq wrote:

I don't believe every game released for Win 95 I compatible in Win 98.

Then you are likely mistaken, as there seems to be little evidence for any particular game being incompatible with Windows 98.

I installed Longbow Gold and Longbow 2 on Win 98 and the videos did not work.

So you were probably missing a codec for one reason or another – Indeo 5 (iv5play), to take a wild guess.

SOme if the IMagic sims I have say Win95 only in the manuals.

Unless they explicitly state that they will not run under Windows 98, those programs were probably released before Windows 98 and thus would have nothing about Windows 98 in the manual.

This build will be for mainly late Win95 flight sims so it needs to be pretty powerful.

Even if Windows 95 or 98 runs properly, it is entirely possible that when those games were written, no one ever anticipated that they would be running on a 2 GHz system and that you will run into unexpected bugs.

This is all kind of pointless speculation, though. Old flight sims have lots of fans; why don't you look up a flight sim forum and see what people there are using?

Is there a speed that Win95 will have problems?

Probably.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/312108
Discussion at http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/98999-does-wi … rocessor-speed/

I have read that Win98 is limited, but I forgot the exact speed.

I don't know why you think 98 would have a limit but 95 would not.

shaq wrote:

Is there a speed that Win95 will have problems? I have read that Win98 is limited, but I forgot the exact speed. .

I think there is, but I'm not really that of a Win9x guru. 😅
Most systems discussed here are far more advanced to what I had when I used Win98SE on a daily basis (homework, programming, surfin' the web, WinAMP & Shoutcast).
The only thing I could remember was some kind of issue with the AMD K6 processor, which did lead me to this page..:

Installing Windows 95B or 95C on Fast Systems
http://thpc.info/dual/xp2knt/95b95cfix.html

Jo22 wrote:

I think there is, but I'm not really that of a Win9x guru. :sweatdrop: Most systems discussed here are far more advanced to wha […]
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shaq wrote:

Is there a speed that Win95 will have problems? I have read that Win98 is limited, but I forgot the exact speed. .

I think there is, but I'm not really that of a Win9x guru. 😅
Most systems discussed here are far more advanced to what I had when I used Win98SE on a daily basis (homework, programming, surfin' the web, WinAMP & Shoutcast).
The only thing I could remember was some kind of issue with the AMD K6 processor, which did lead me to this page..:

Installing Windows 95B or 95C on Fast Systems
http://thpc.info/dual/xp2knt/95b95cfix.html

Thanks for the link. I may need it for a P3 1.0-1.4

Jorpho wrote:

Then you are likely mistaken, as there seems to be little evidence for any particular game being incompatible with Windows 98. […]
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shaq wrote:

I don't believe every game released for Win 95 I compatible in Win 98.

Then you are likely mistaken, as there seems to be little evidence for any particular game being incompatible with Windows 98.

I installed Longbow Gold and Longbow 2 on Win 98 and the videos did not work.

So you were probably missing a codec for one reason or another – Indeo 5 (iv5play), to take a wild guess.

SOme if the IMagic sims I have say Win95 only in the manuals.

Unless they explicitly state that they will not run under Windows 98, those programs were probably released before Windows 98 and thus would have nothing about Windows 98 in the manual.

This build will be for mainly late Win95 flight sims so it needs to be pretty powerful.

Even if Windows 95 or 98 runs properly, it is entirely possible that when those games were written, no one ever anticipated that they would be running on a 2 GHz system and that you will run into unexpected bugs.

This is all kind of pointless speculation, though. Old flight sims have lots of fans; why don't you look up a flight sim forum and see what people there are using?

I am doing that. Some of them have been made more W7 compatible, but some still aren't. I don't see many old builds at all. In fact most older sims are losing players these days. Most all the work on them stopped several years ago. I did try to install some of them on W7 and they will not let you install on that OS unless you can do compatibility tricks on them. But the machine I installed Longbow on was very mature and had drivers for nearly everything. It was used off and on for 5 years. I didn't install Win95 because I really wanted to. I would rather have Win98 work right away. But I guess I will figure it out on my own. I am ordering one of the P3 1Ghz boards and I might install Win98 first and Win95 only if necessary.

shaq wrote:

I don't believe every game released for Win 95 I compatible in Win 98.

One compatibility issue I know of that affects games released in the Windows 95 period is that there are games out there that can't run on a Pentium MMX processor or later because they used some rare instructions that were thrown out when the Pentium MMX processors were introduced. There were patches to fix this, and the issue pops up both on Win95 and Win98 as it's hardware related.

shaq wrote:

I am doing that. Some of them have been made more W7 compatible, but some still aren't. I don't see many old builds at all. In fact most older sims are losing players these days. Most all the work on them stopped several years ago. I did try to install some of them on W7 and they will not let you install on that OS unless you can do compatibility tricks on them. But the machine I installed Longbow on was very mature and had drivers for nearly everything. It was used off and on for 5 years. I didn't install Win95 because I really wanted to. I would rather have Win98 work right away. But I guess I will figure it out on my own. I am ordering one of the P3 1Ghz boards and I might install Win98 first and Win95 only if necessary.

Considering both Win95 and Win98 were released back in the 1990s, and you want to build a system dated in the early 2000s, there should be more than enough old threads dealing with running those flight sims on systems that age, even though most people will likely have used Windows ME, 2000 or XP...
There are threads on Windows 7 because most people want to keep old games running on new systems, not play with old hardware.

I've got an Elitegroup AG315P-64 video card in my Windows 98 system. It's certainly not the most powerful card 98 can handle but it's quite good performing for Windows. It even has Svideo and composite out if you wanted to connect a TV for some reason.. 🤣

Jo22 wrote:

shaq wrote:

Installing Windows 95B or 95C on Fast Systems
http://thpc.info/dual/xp2knt/95b95cfix.html

Thanks for the link. I may need it for a P3 1.0-1.4

Not necessarily. The rig in my sig has a PIII Tualatin 1.4GHz CPU and it is multiboot with MS-DOS 6.22 / Windows 95 OSR2.1 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME / Windows 2000. It's in fully/stable working condition with all of these OSs and I had no speed or hardware related problems during the installation of any of the same OSs (well, except USB issues with Windows 95 and SVGA driver issues with Windows 3.11).