First post, by Gurfaild
Hi,
This is my current XP/98SE build. I hope it will be fast enough for all Windows games that I can't get to run on my "modern" build while also being somewhat compatible with late DOS stuff:
- Pentium M 770 (Dothan, 2.13 GHz, FSB533)
- IBASE MB-892 (Intel 855GME with ISA and SATA)
- Nvidia Quadro FX 3000, BIOS modded to GeForce FX 5900
- 1024 MB + 512 MB DDR333, single channel
- 2x 120 GB SATA SSDs (one for XP, one for 98SE) in a hot-swap bay
- IDE DVD-ROM drive
- 1.44 MB FDD
- SB Audigy 2 ZS
- Lite-On PS-5281-7VW power supply (250W)
Windows XP and 98SE work fine. I tried installing Windows 8.1 to see if I could get a version of Windows to work that still gets security updates, but the video drivers crashed every few minutes.
For Windows 98SE I had to install PATCHMEM. This seems to work fine, but only reports 1022 MB RAM in System Properties. I also installed the SB16 emulation drivers, but I still might install an actual ISA sound card. I don't know which model would work alongside the Audigy - I'm thinking of using something with a YMF719, but I don't know if that's feasible. According to what I've found on the internet, this board should support ISA DMA, but it's not mentioned in the manual.
It actually took me about two months to get this computer working - when I first got it, I was using a PSU that destroyed the MOSFETs in the CPU VRM whenever I switched it on (but it worked fine with other boards) and it took me quite an embarrassingly long time to try another power supply. Later I found that only one of my 1 GB DIMMs worked - the other caused the PC to hang randomly, so I replaced it with a 512 MB one.
