hmm why the Onda A97S and not the AM2NF3-VSTA? I would think it would have far better compatibility and its far less hard to find. Granted its am2+

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:15:

hmm why the Onda A97S and not the AM2NF3-VSTA? I would think it would have far better compatibility and its far less hard to find. Granted its am2+

This board and a few of the other ASRock options that are discussed often were on my list, but I was unable to find any available at a good price at the time. Even now a quick search on eBay for the AM2NF3-VSTA shows 0 results. Additionally, counter-tarrifs applied to electronics coming from the USA eliminated US based sellers, which did reduce my options a bit.

The Onda was readily available at the time for a good price, and had the ports I was looking for (minus floppy). I also liked that it was brand new.

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:28:

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:15:

hmm why the Onda A97S and not the AM2NF3-VSTA? I would think it would have far better compatibility and its far less hard to find. Granted its am2+

This board and a few of the other ASRock options that are discussed often were on my list, but I was unable to find any available at a good price at the time. Even now a quick search on eBay for the AM2NF3-VSTA shows 0 results. Additionally, counter-tarrifs applied to electronics coming from the USA eliminated US based sellers, which did reduce my options a bit.

The Onda was readily available at the time for a good price, and had the ports I was looking for (minus floppy). I also liked that it was brand new.

ebay is not the only place to buy parts, but one or 2 come up on ebay about every month they just tend to sell fast. One sold from Germany just last month and not one long before that for 50$ form the uk. However if tarrifs are a problem for you I would be more worried about your income than a price of a motherboard. The most I seen a AM2NF3-VSTA go for is around 300 but most of them go for around 50 to 100. even with tarrifs and even if the tarrifs are say 500% that's will pocket change at best.

that being said I do find the Onda interesting. I like how it has holes for a VRM heatsink, the VRMs would likely run rather hot with 6 core PII so having the option to add one is nice.

There are also other options such as Gigabyte GA-K8NS, Asrock K8NF3-VSTA or ASUS K8N-E with NVidia nForce3 250. Socket 754 CPUs are more than enough for Windows 98.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:42:

There are also other options such as Gigabyte GA-K8NS, Asrock K8NF3-VSTA or ASUS K8N-E with NVidia nForce3 250. Socket 754 CPUs are more than enough for Windows 98.

anther one most seem to forget about is the Biostar K8M800 and that one is supper common. I had one for a wile, cheap board but its not bad for the price. you would likely have to recap it and it does not support PII and I bet that's why it gets looked over so much.

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:41:

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:28:

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:15:

hmm why the Onda A97S and not the AM2NF3-VSTA? I would think it would have far better compatibility and its far less hard to find. Granted its am2+

This board and a few of the other ASRock options that are discussed often were on my list, but I was unable to find any available at a good price at the time. Even now a quick search on eBay for the AM2NF3-VSTA shows 0 results. Additionally, counter-tarrifs applied to electronics coming from the USA eliminated US based sellers, which did reduce my options a bit.

The Onda was readily available at the time for a good price, and had the ports I was looking for (minus floppy). I also liked that it was brand new.

ebay is not the only place to buy parts, but one or 2 come up on ebay about every month they just tend to sell fast. One sold from Germany just last month and not one long before that for 50$ form the uk. However if tarrifs are a problem for you I would be more worried about your income than a price of a motherboard. The most I seen a AM2NF3-VSTA go for is around 300 but most of them go for around 50 to 100. even with tarrifs and even if the tarrifs are say 500% that's will pocket change at best.

that being said I do find the Onda interesting. I like how it has holes for a VRM heatsink, the VRMs would likely run rather hot with 6 core PII so having the option to add one is nice.

It has nothing to do with my income, why pay the government a 25% counter tariff and 13% sales tax, and then likely a some kind of courier import fee if not sent by USPS and sent by UPS, Fedex, etc? Now the $50 motherboard has doubled in price. The government already gets enough of my money, but thats not what this discussion is about 🤣

Returning to motherboard itself, like you said, the Onda is interesting. I found no chatter about it at all (besides chat about potential chipset compatibility on MSFN), so thought I would roll the dice and report back my findings as countless others have done here as well... its fun being a pioneer of sorts and spreading knowledge about feasible options to expand the hobby and make it more accessible. These 20+ year old parts aren't exactly becoming easier to source.

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

It has nothing to do with my income, why pay the government a 25% counter tariff and 13% sales tax, and then likely a some kind of courier import fee if not sent by USPS and sent by UPS, Fedex, etc? Now the $50 motherboard has doubled in price. The government already gets enough of my money, but thats not what this discussion is about 🤣

clearly it is about our income if your worried about at the most 150$... that's less than a tank of gas in some cars/places these days. Heck its less and eating out for dinner.

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

Returning to motherboard itself, like you said, the Onda is interesting. I found no chatter about it at all (besides chat about potential chipset compatibility on MSFN), so thought I would roll the dice and report back my findings as countless others have done here as well... its fun being a pioneer of sorts and spreading knowledge about feasible options to expand the hobby and make it more accessible. These 20+ year old parts aren't exactly becoming easier to source.

I never even knew Onda was a thing until now. how stable is it on 9x? And dose it give the option to disabled cores in the bios?

AlexZ wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:42:

There are also other options such as Gigabyte GA-K8NS, Asrock K8NF3-VSTA or ASUS K8N-E with NVidia nForce3 250. Socket 754 CPUs are more than enough for Windows 98.

I actually have a ASUS K8N-E set aside for a Socket 754 system... I will get around to it at some point 🤣

Please share your VGA_XP32_070824.zip, thank you!

This VGA_XP32_070824.zip has WinXP drivers, not Win9x.
https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … riverid=1867709

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:07:

clearly it is about our income if your worried about at the most 150$... that's less than a tank of gas in some cars/places thes […]
Show full quote

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

It has nothing to do with my income, why pay the government a 25% counter tariff and 13% sales tax, and then likely a some kind of courier import fee if not sent by USPS and sent by UPS, Fedex, etc? Now the $50 motherboard has doubled in price. The government already gets enough of my money, but thats not what this discussion is about 🤣

clearly it is about our income if your worried about at the most 150$... that's less than a tank of gas in some cars/places these days. Heck its less and eating out for dinner.

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

Returning to motherboard itself, like you said, the Onda is interesting. I found no chatter about it at all (besides chat about potential chipset compatibility on MSFN), so thought I would roll the dice and report back my findings as countless others have done here as well... its fun being a pioneer of sorts and spreading knowledge about feasible options to expand the hobby and make it more accessible. These 20+ year old parts aren't exactly becoming easier to source.

I never even knew Onda was a thing until now. how stable is it on 9x? And dose it give the option to disabled cores in the bios?

You got me, Im broke.. currently typing this out from Wendys Wi-Fi in the parking lot while running my Onda from the cigarette lighter looking at my negative Robinhood account.

Stability wise, so far its been solid. Disabled virtualization CPU tech in the BIOS, along with ACPI stuff, SATA to Native IDE... Running Nvidia 56.64 and it seems to be OK.

As for the CPU cores, the Athlon II 170u is a single core processor. In the BIOS I dont see any options to enable the second core, however I dont even know if its 100% possible. I just remember reading that it could be done on some motherboards as apparently the 170u is just a dual-core Sempron with one core disabled. But again, I cant confirm this.

marxveix wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:24:

Please share your VGA_XP32_070824.zip, thank you!

This VGA_XP32_070824.zip has WinXP drivers, not Win9x.
https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … riverid=1867709

I cant remember exactly where I got it, but the download from here returns the same file hash as the one I used.

https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/GRAPHICS-BO … ver-8-392.shtml

As I stated, the driver is in the SBDrv folder. If you run setup.exe in there, it will actually explicitly say its the Windows 98 driver once the installer opens. However, I just point the Unknown Device in Device Manager to the SBDrv\SMBUS folder and install directly from the .inf file contained there.

Curious build. Such a new platform would not be my first choice for 98 for sure. Mostly because of older game compatibility with pci-e graphics (though with that card it should be fine).

It is possible to make older hardware, s370/s478/s462 etc, reasonably quiet using modern fans and cases, but i do understand wanting old case because of looks...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:37:

Curious build. Such a new platform would not be my first choice for 98 for sure. Mostly because of older game compatibility with pci-e graphics (though with that card it should be fine).

It is possible to make older hardware, s370/s478/s462 etc, reasonably quiet using modern fans and cases, but i do understand wanting old case because of looks...

On the topic of graphics, I should note the Quadro FX 1300 does support table fog, but unfortunately doesn't support palleted textures, which I thought it might considering the cards lineage.

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

You got me, Im broke.. currently typing this out from Wendys Wi-Fi in the parking lot while running my Onda from the cigarette lighter looking at my negative Robinhood account.

Stability wise, so far its been solid. Disabled virtualization CPU tech in the BIOS, along with ACPI stuff, SATA to Native IDE... Running Nvidia 56.64 and it seems to be OK.

As for the CPU cores, the Athlon II 170u is a single core processor. In the BIOS I dont see any options to enable the second core, however I dont even know if its 100% possible. I just remember reading that it could be done on some motherboards as apparently the 170u is just a dual-core Sempron with one core disabled. But again, I cant confirm this.

I mean, if you are using Robinhood for investing you likely are not doing all to well... yest saying.

if you are using a one core cpu you would likely not see the option to disable cores.

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:48:

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:37:

Curious build. Such a new platform would not be my first choice for 98 for sure. Mostly because of older game compatibility with pci-e graphics (though with that card it should be fine).

It is possible to make older hardware, s370/s478/s462 etc, reasonably quiet using modern fans and cases, but i do understand wanting old case because of looks...

On the topic of graphics, I should note the Quadro FX 1300 does support table fog, but unfortunately doesn't support palleted textures, which I thought it might considering the cards lineage.

technically only 3dfx cards have those, any other card emulates it. Unless if you are playing ff7/8 or shadows of the empire you likely would never need it. However there are wrappers granted I don't know if they work in 9x

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:50:

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

You got me, Im broke.. currently typing this out from Wendys Wi-Fi in the parking lot while running my Onda from the cigarette lighter looking at my negative Robinhood account.

Stability wise, so far its been solid. Disabled virtualization CPU tech in the BIOS, along with ACPI stuff, SATA to Native IDE... Running Nvidia 56.64 and it seems to be OK.

As for the CPU cores, the Athlon II 170u is a single core processor. In the BIOS I dont see any options to enable the second core, however I dont even know if its 100% possible. I just remember reading that it could be done on some motherboards as apparently the 170u is just a dual-core Sempron with one core disabled. But again, I cant confirm this.

I mean, if you are using Robinhood for investing you likely are not doing all to well... yest saying.

if you are using a one core cpu you would likely not see the option to disable cores

That was the joke..... Robinhood, Wendys....

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:51:

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 16:50:

Decivox wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:58:

You got me, Im broke.. currently typing this out from Wendys Wi-Fi in the parking lot while running my Onda from the cigarette lighter looking at my negative Robinhood account.

Stability wise, so far its been solid. Disabled virtualization CPU tech in the BIOS, along with ACPI stuff, SATA to Native IDE... Running Nvidia 56.64 and it seems to be OK.

As for the CPU cores, the Athlon II 170u is a single core processor. In the BIOS I dont see any options to enable the second core, however I dont even know if its 100% possible. I just remember reading that it could be done on some motherboards as apparently the 170u is just a dual-core Sempron with one core disabled. But again, I cant confirm this.

I mean, if you are using Robinhood for investing you likely are not doing all to well... yest saying.

if you are using a one core cpu you would likely not see the option to disable cores

That was the joke..... Robinhood, Wendys....

I know 🤣 and Robinhood is a horrible place to invest with. They are borderline scammers who are well known to manipulate the markets and that's not getting into their fees 🤣. that made your joke even funnier.

If you are a hedge fund and seek alpha, one of the ways is to find the worst investors on the planet who significantly underperform S&P 500 and short their trades. It isn't necessary for these investors to lose money, all is needed is significant underperformance. A prerequisite would be a "free" broker sharing trade information with such a hedge fund. "free" brokers need to make money somehow after all.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-07-28, 17:18:

If you are a hedge fund and seek alpha, one of the ways is to find the worst investors on the planet who significantly underperform S&P 500 and short their trades. It isn't necessary for these investors to lose money, all is needed is significant underperformance. A prerequisite would be a "free" broker sharing trade information with such a hedge fund. "free" brokers need to make money somehow after all.

TBH anyone investing in the S&P 500 fund like voo is losing regardless but this is getting off topic 🤣.

old school gamer man wrote on 2025-07-28, 15:44:

anther one most seem to forget about is the Biostar K8M800 and that one is supper common.

AM2 version has only 2 PCI slots and realistically only one usable, if decent AGP cooling is required.