tbh I think the most daunting thing here (from my point of view) is getting Windows 98 to dual-boot with another copy of Windows 98, somehow. I have a dual sound card setup (one OS) and it seems to function just fine swapping between the cards (I just enable/disable each in Device Manager and reboot to swap between them). With dual video cards I'd expect more trouble, even if one were AGP and the other PCI. Although I suppose if there are two separate installs where you just ignore the other card, the games wouldn't get confused by the presence of the second card.

Does seem more complex than it has to be, but the love of all this tinkering is why we're here, eh?

The reason why I thought of separating the partitions is that the MX300 works best with DX 7 and the Audigy works best with DX 9. Trying to run them together seems like it would be trouble.

Looks like an ambitious build. I cant comment on what issues you may face, as I haven't tried it. But will watch with interest.

It's completely feasible and honestly not that difficult.

I did the same thing with two Windows 98 partitions to run MX300 and Audigy 2 ZS cards on the same system. See my Pentium 4 build in my signature.

I use BootIt Bare Metal for partition management and as a boot loader. It makes it trivial to have a pile of partitions on a single computer.

I'm currently running a Vortex 2, SB Live, ATC-6631 and PicoGUS along with GF4 Ti4200 + V2 SLI while sticking to DX7 so I'd say it's all very doable. CF, single OS (+DOS), different hardware profiles. Multiple partitions is probably overkill? I'd sooner go with a card per OS/config setup, easier to get it backed up and restored in the long run.

such wrote on Yesterday, 11:08:

Multiple partitions is probably overkill? I'd sooner go with a card per OS/config setup, easier to get it backed up and restored in the long run.

My apologies, I’m not very well versed in these matters—how does your solution work in practice? I don’t think I’ve had exposure to it.

Shponglefan wrote on Yesterday, 10:22:

It's completely feasible and honestly not that difficult.

I did the same thing with two Windows 98 partitions to run MX300 and Audigy 2 ZS cards on the same system. See my Pentium 4 build in my signature.

I use BootIt Bare Metal for partition management and as a boot loader. It makes it trivial to have a pile of partitions on a single computer.

Yeah back in the day I just swapped the active with fdisk. Mildly inconvenient but fine.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on Yesterday, 11:13:

such wrote on Yesterday, 11:08:

Multiple partitions is probably overkill? I'd sooner go with a card per OS/config setup, easier to get it backed up and restored in the long run.

My apologies, I’m not very well versed in these matters—how does your solution work in practice? I don’t think I’ve had exposure to it.

No need to apologize 😀 I'm on 440BX so I went with CF to IDE for compatibility, but it's basically the same type of setup with SD to IDE.

The idea is you get a CF card adapter you plug into IDE as you would an ordinary HDD, and the CF card functions as your HDD, it's compliant with the standard. You lose the fun times of spinning rust (which I genuinely do enjoy), you gain reliability and the fact that you can plug that CF card into your PC via a USB adapter. So, you can set everything up, then easily plug that CF into your modern PC, image/back up your entire CF partition and whenever anything goes wrong you can just write that partition image back to your CF card. A couple of minutes and you're back.

Next you can mount that CF to IDE adapter at the front of your case (one example: https://www.printables.com/model/617340-cf-id … ive-bay-adapter) and at that point you can simply swap out whatever OS or config catches your fancy. Multiple instances of 98, 2000, Me, ye olde Linux distros etc.

Whether you CF or internal drive also might depend on what system you are actually building.

For a later model Pentium 4 era system with native SATA support, I would go with a SATA SSD drive. It will be faster than a CF card. On the other hand, if you're going for an early era system with native IDE then you can use a CF adapter and go with multiple cards.

I've done both, though I tend to prefer CF cards on older systems with DOS / Win 95 combos. If I was just doing multiple Win 9x installs, I would go with multiple partitions on an SSD.

Thank you, guys 😊

The PC I bought to use as the basis for this build comes with a 160Gb WD Velociraptor, so I was hoping to use that. But if the CF card is significantly more convenient, I will look into it.