I'd say start with 98SE first and see how it runs as 98SE is a bit better known around here. So if you get into trouble, chances are better that someone will be able to help provide a solution. And 98SE usually has very few reasons not to be preferred over 95 on such a rig.

CDROM drive should be plenty for a Pentium 1.

Heck, I'd mostly only start using DVD drives with rigs like Coppermine and such.
But if you are in doubt...why not both? 😜

Why not both 😁
98SE isn't bad especially when you have USB onboard.

I'd vote for 98SE on that one as well, doubly so if it has USB (or if you plan to put a PCI USB card in it). I tend to prefer 95 on a 486 (if I want 9x at all - often I prefer just dual-booting DOS and OS/2), but on anything Pentium or later, 98SE seems to be the winner (with 98SE pretty much always beating 98FE on everything, ever, and 95c beating any other version of 95).

With 486s, I would stick with DOS/WfW 3.11. WfW just to access a Samba share, because you don't want to carry floppies back and forth. With WfW 3.11, you can simply map a Samba share to a drive letter and drag and drop files across the network - very convenient.

Oh, definitely WfW with DOS, yeah. Didn't even think of it because I've been using OS/2 for all that kind of stuff, but yeah.

If you do use OS/2, there's a port of OpenSSH, too, which can be nice if you have a Linux box or a Mac.

I have Warp 3 abd Warp 4 in box with manuals and everything and I love them. I completely skipped Windows 95 back in the day. OS/2 is absolutely better at everything than Win95. I ran a BBS on OS/2 Warp 3 even. I have very fond memories of it but I cant imagine how bad it would be to hunt down deivers for OS/2 today.

The board has a USB header so I have 2 USB ports at least when I buy a USB bracket which I will tomorrow. I will go with Win98SE and an unopened box of Philips 5x cdrw I managed to buy for $5 😀 Now all I need is a floppy drive and PS2 keyboard/mouse. All but ready to build.

I was shocked how easy it was to track down OS/2 drivers, actually - the Hobbes OS/2 archive is still alive, for one thing.

Reviving this topic because I have some updates and ergo some questions.. I managed to get it to post! although the CMOS battery appears to be dead (CMOS checksum error and CMOS battery failure error at POST) but some things I'm not sure about: The board has the following case headers marked: TURBO LED, HDD LED, RST, SPEAKER and KEY LOCK.

Before getting it to post I had a brief scare where I got no video.. It turns out the board does not like my CF-IDE adapter and won't boot with it (Will become an SSD for my Tualatin build), so I'll have to use a 120GB IDE HDD I have lying around. It is probably too big for a Win98 Pentium system but IIRC it should work - Win98SE HDD size limit is 127GB right?
The case has no KEY LOCK plug but that's ok. What confuses me is that TURBO LED is connected and it's always on. However, there is no TURBO SWITCH header, so the switch does nothing and the PC is always on TURBO - is this normal for 430VX boards?
Also, the frequency led on the case does not show anything, am I to unscrew the front panel and configure that manually?
There is a 1x4 pin header right next to the AT power connector on the mainboard, and it's completely unmarked.. Any idea what this could be?
The USB header on the board is 2x5. Most USB bracket plugs these days are 2x5 with Pin 9 blocked - Can I safely mutilate and open Pin 9 on the plug and use it on these headers? I'm assuming it's just old and presumes I can use 2 1x5 headers instead, so 5V pins should be 1-2 regardless?

Thanks 😀

Thanks to all your help the PC is almost up and running, all that is left is to install Win98SE and drivers.

I have two final questions:

First, is it worth upgrading from 4x8MB to 2x32MB on a Pentium 166MMX Win98SE system? Will 32MB to 64MB make a big impact in general Windows use and gaming? I think yes but I wanted to confirm..

Second, the AT case I have has a Win98SE license label on it and I mean to use it, but I'm not sure if it's an English key or a local language key.. Does anyone know whether Win98SE keys are language specific?

On the first point, yeah, I think going up to 64MB of RAM will help. I'd regard 32 as the practical minimum to not have Win98 drag, so 64 would be a good thing.

On the second, I don't actually remember. I'm pretty sure they are language-specific, but OEM keys might not be. It's worth trying it - worst case, it doesn't work.

Thanks, 2x32MB EDO-RAM ordered. I'll try the Win98SE key as soon as I have some writable CD media and report back 😀