VOGONS


First post, by fiat124

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Hello all! I just dug out an old PC thats been in storage for 10+ years and would like to use it for some general classic gaming.
I opened it up, cleaned it out, reseated everything and it powers up and works fine (currently has Windows XP on it but I want to install Win98SE / DOS).
I have a few questions though, but first, here are the specs:

AMD Athlon K7-750 (Slot A)
MSI MS-6191 Motherboard (v1.6 Bios)
2x 128MB DIMMs
Diamond v770 Ultra AGP Video card (Riva TNT2 Ultra)
Creative ES1373 Sound (Onboard the MSI)
WD 15GB IDE Drive
Samsung 8x CD-RW Drive

Questions:

1 - I'd like to move from the IDE drive to a SATA boot drive. I've done a little research on PCI SATA cards. Are there any that are easy to get working with 98SE?
(Via VT6421 vs SIL3x12 vs something else)?
2 - Is the onboard ES1373 sound card good enough or should I add a discrete sound card? Something like a CT4810?
3 - The retention bracket for the AMD Slot A CPU is broken. Anyone know where I can source a new one? I havent seen any on Ebay recently.
4 - Is it worth it to upgrade from 256MB to 512MB? The DIMMs on Ebay arent that expensive but its been a LONG time since I ran Win98SE.

Many thanks!

Reply 1 of 7, by PARKE

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Search for [LOTES Slot 1/A Pentium 2/II/3/III CPU Retention Bracket/Module Set]

Reply 2 of 7, by fiat124

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PARKE wrote:

Search for [LOTES Slot 1/A Pentium 2/II/3/III CPU Retention Bracket/Module Set]

Found it, thanks!

Reply 3 of 7, by gryffinwings

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For SATA drives, recommend using something newer, due to the built-in features to maintain the longevity of the drive, here's a link to the drive that was recommended to me because it basically has everything you need, new drive, SATA to IDE adapter and mounting hardware.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDMXLE060/

For the sound card, I do recommend one, for Windows 98 SE, the latest you could go is the Sound Blaster Audigy, although I've heard some people getting the Audigy 2 series cards to work with some fiddling with Audigy 1 drivers. If you need DOS compatibility, I'm not sure what to recommend as most DOS games had ISA sound cards that were compatible. The problem you run into with DOS games is a lot of them were set up for the Yamaha OPL2 or OPL3 chip, which modern sound cards do not have, so to get the best experience with DOS games, it's better to run an older system that had ISA card slots.

For RAM, 256MB should be fine, I've heard that you can run into issues running more than 512MB. 512MB would probably be the max, although I've heard with some fiddling around you could probably get more to work.

Main Computer: Custom - Intel 12900K, Asus Nvidia 3080 Ti, 64 GB DDR5.
Retro Computer: Packard Bell Legend I - AMD 286, 640KB RAM
Retro Computer: Shuttle XPC - Pentium 4 2.8 GHz FSB 400 MHz, ATi Radeon 9600 Pro, Sound Blaster Live!, 2GB RAM.

Reply 4 of 7, by oeuvre

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You could also get a PATA to SATA adapter. Those work well.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 5 of 7, by tayyare

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1. Actually no need fopr a SATA controller, as oeuvre said, you can just buy a IDE / SATA converter. A 5 USD max. solution for you 🤣
2. During that times, onboard sound was not mature enough, so almost always introduced issues into the mix. I suggest a separate sound card. Which card you need to choose will depend on what you want to do with it and personal taste. My go to card with any W9x build is AWE 64, since I always want hasslefree DOS compatibility. If I had nothing to do with DOS, then I would probably will go with a nice version of SB Live. I'm a SB guy, though, there are other brands/models and all kinds of personal preferences around.
3. Have no idea, sorry.
4. Yes you can, but there is no need to or profit from it, for a W9x build. I have 512MB in mine, because I already have tens of memory modules in my inventory. I would not have paid for it though.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 6 of 7, by fiat124

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tayyare wrote:
1. Actually no need fopr a SATA controller, as oeuvre said, you can just buy a IDE / SATA converter. A 5 USD max. solution for y […]
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1. Actually no need fopr a SATA controller, as oeuvre said, you can just buy a IDE / SATA converter. A 5 USD max. solution for you 🤣
2. During that times, onboard sound was not mature enough, so almost always introduced issues into the mix. I suggest a separate sound card. Which card you need to choose will depend on what you want to do with it and personal taste. My go to card with any W9x build is AWE 64, since I always want hasslefree DOS compatibility. If I had nothing to do with DOS, then I would probably will go with a nice version of SB Live. I'm a SB guy, though, there are other brands/models and all kinds of personal preferences around.
3. Have no idea, sorry.
4. Yes you can, but there is no need to or profit from it, for a W9x build. I have 512MB in mine, because I already have tens of memory modules in my inventory. I would not have paid for it though.

1. I went ahead and ordered both a IDE/SATA adapter and a SYBA PCI 2 Port SATA controller.
2. When I started building PCs in college back in the early 90s, I always went with SB cards as well. I tried a few off brands (like Turtle Beach) just to see how they performed but always went back to a discrete SB. Since I built this old PC for my mom back in 2004 or so, the onboard audio was good enough for her and worked with XP, so I never installed a SB. I had an AWE32 and AWE64 back in the day but I believe those are both ISA only and this MSI board only has PCI slots. Is the PCI SB Live! pretty good?
3. Parke above got me pointed in the right direction for the Slot A retention bracket.
4. I can get 2x 256MB PC133 DIMMs for about $15 so I think I'll go ahead and do it.

Thanks!

Reply 7 of 7, by chinny22

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Slot A, cool! they aren't that common anymore.

Re the soundcard it's not a bad card. Also known as the Sound Blaster PCI 64.
More info here and most importantly the MB midi patch here
Ensoniq / Creative AudioPCI

Play around with it in dos but I would still add an ISA soundcard in the long run though