VOGONS


Win98.SE "The Beast"

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First post, by bandicoot67

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Ok guys, I've saved the best for last. I was going through my PCI graphics card box when i realized i had an AGP Radeon 9600 in the mix. So you see i had no choice really. I just had to do this build. This of course meant i also had to paint the case too..
Got a few small touch ups left to do, a fan and extra storage drive to add but i took these pics this arvo in fading light.

Reply 1 of 11, by bandicoot67

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...under the hood and the all important specs!

Reply 2 of 11, by bandicoot67

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...and finally..some prep work pics for inspiration. 😀

Reply 3 of 11, by Srandista

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You could install latest BIOS, for better support of newer GPUs, CPUs, and support fot 4GB RAM.

http://web.archive.org/web/20171204024441/htt … wnloads?did=148

Also, what's that sound card?

Socket 775 - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, Pentium E6500K, 4GB RAM, Radeon 9800XT, ESS Solo-1, Win 98/XP
Socket A - Chaintech CT-7AIA, AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9600XT, ESS ES1869F, Win 98

Reply 4 of 11, by mrgreen

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Why did not you painted the 5.25" bezels?

My first PC had Windows 98 os.

Reply 5 of 11, by khyypio

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That sure is a neat case paint! But those DVD/floppy panels and bay panels are crying for some unified coloring. I would paint them in same silver as that panel where the power button and indicator leds are located. It has quite powerful components for win98 rig, what games you had in mind when choosing parts?

Reply 6 of 11, by bandicoot67

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@ Srandista, oh i thought win 98 max ram was 1G? ..and this MB only has slots for 2G ram max? it was the second reason why i ear marked it for this build, the first being it had an AGP slot 😁 ...the sound card is an ESS SOLO-1.

@ mrgreen, the black bezels are from a cool master case...the ones with lots of breather vent holes and dust filters. I wont be painting them for now.

@ khyypio, thank you sir, apparently Krylon do make a plastic spray paint in metal/aluminium which would look nice and i will investigate hunting down a can, if i can even get it here where i live but for now it's not a major priority.

The whole primary mission for this little fleet of win 98 builds, which has finally come to an end, was to have a regular system to play X-Wing on, that utilized my old CH flight stick pro controller that i was given in about 2002ish and my keyboard overlay i made in 94-95 when i was an engraver/sign maker. I made the surround holder for the slide in overlay which is a piece of 3mm white perspex i've cut holes into with a model K pantograph. The back side pic shows one of the support teeth missing. I have spares somewhere along with a bag of wooden dowel that fit into the other holes. It's probably going to be easier for me just to make a new set rather than trying to find the old ones.
The secondary goal was the sound blaster sound cards (or clones) for an easy stress free "Cool edit 95" install to finish converting my vast record collection.
Between say 1999 - 2007 i converted roughly ten crates of records with a trusty old P3-450 win 98SE.
I only have fifteen more crates of records to go 😒
I've spent many years sorting out all these old PC parts after having troubles with my original 486 and a recent 586 i found on the side of the road which i still have to fix at some point.
Used to be a huge Star Wars fan back in the day but lost all faith after 20 years when i got to take my son to see the new Star Wars series with Jar Jar frigging binks!! Now i can't watch any of the first six but oddly, still enjoy playing all Star Wars video games.
These pics are from my first serious 2015 win 98 build for X-Wing on a P2-700 -256 RAM which i last booted up in 2017, and i only know that because i found a sticker on the side of the case that says when i replaced the coin battery! Im about to pop the hood on it to add some more old ram i came accross 6 months ago so i hope that works.

Reply 7 of 11, by bandicoot67

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Thinking about it now, i may as well just make this my retro PC count back thread instead of starting a new one.

From these retro case's to this last build. Got some space issues right now but once i find my PS2 switch box i bought in 2008...
Until then i'll be booting up and tweaking everything i've build up over the last eight years of goofing around, then taking pics of each system in the same pos as the P2 700 i've been thrashing for the last fourteen days 😎
Saved from the side of the road...

Reply 8 of 11, by bandicoot67

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Pics of a P2 700 i bundled together in a rush after my original X-Wing 486 started causing me grief along with another random 586 i found on the side of the road for rubbish collection around 2012ish.
I don't care what anyone says, but X-Wing...is a darn cool game and im not even a Star Wars fan anymore! I do very much like playing the video games though?
Under the hood,

20gig HDD
Intel Celeron 700
bumped the ram up to 512mb
NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200 seems to run stable..
Creative AWE64 sounds amazing!

Very very happy face.

Reply 9 of 11, by Srandista

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bandicoot67 wrote:

@ Srandista, oh i thought win 98 max ram was 1G? ..and this MB only has slots for 2G ram max? it was the second reason why i ear marked it for this build, the first being it had an AGP slot 😁

Yes, sure, that limit is still true for Win 98, but nobody said, that you can't run more modern systems in dualboot on that motherboard besides 98 😉

Official BIOS have limit for 2GB RAM, but you can get also 2GB DDR2 modules, so with two of them, you'll get 4GB RAM installed. And with linked unofficial BIOS you'll get approximately 3,3 GB of usable RAM, if you'll run XP or 7 on that machine.

Socket 775 - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, Pentium E6500K, 4GB RAM, Radeon 9800XT, ESS Solo-1, Win 98/XP
Socket A - Chaintech CT-7AIA, AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9600XT, ESS ES1869F, Win 98

Reply 11 of 11, by bandicoot67

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Thanks Srandista and DosFreak! I'll investigate the motherboards with the win98SE installs that can handle the extra ram but for now, im very happy they are all running sweet!

Next on the menu..had this one built up for a while i just didn't like the paint job, it's one of my early spray paint efforts.
https://imgur.com/a/Z58iM

Parkard Bell case
Win98SE
P4 @2.8
40 gig HDD
1 gig ram
Geforce 5200 128mb AGP graphics
Two CD-ROMS!
1.44 Floppy

Got a usb sidewinder pro 2 working on this baby! 😎