First post, by Alt-F4
First post here, so hello and apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place. This is my first foray into a retro build, so I'm looking to get some general advice before I head down a wrong path. I'm currently waiting for a new PSU to arrive before I get started. Here are the parts I have on hand...
- Intel D865PERL motherboard
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz (Northwood) 533MHz FSB 512K cache
- 2x 1GB DDR400 RAM
- BFG NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT OC (AGP)
- Creative Sound Blaster Live! CT4760
- 3.5" Floppy Drive
- IDE CD-RW Drive
- Intel 80 GB SATA SSD
- 80GB SATA HDD / 60GB IDE HDD (if necessary, see below)
- 1280x1024 75hz LCD monitor
- Windows 98 Retail CD-ROM
- Windows XP Home Upgrade (with SP1) CD-ROM
A few quesitons:
1. Is it okay to install from the retail discs for 98 and XP, and then update them to 98 SE and XP SP3 after the fact? Or should I skip that and download up-to-date installers instead?
2. Will I have issues installing Windows 98 with just one stick of 1GB RAM? That is the lowest I can go at the moment by removing one of the sticks. I've read conflicting information about 512MB or 1GB being the max RAM supported out of the box for Windows 98. I know there are hacks you can do down the line to make it work with more RAM installed which I plan to explore for the sake of consistency when switching back and forth with XP, but otherwise I guess I'd have to buy a 256MB/512MB stick just for the install.
3. This motherboard has two SATA ports in addition to IDE but the BIOS has a "legacy" ATA/IDE mode (which I believe is required to run Windows 98). From what I've read, this allows for SATA drives to be seen as IDE drives by the OS, but limits you to four drives total (a limitation of IDE) - primary master & slave, secondary master & slave. The manual lists the following configurations in legacy mode:
- PATA Pri only
- PATA Sec only
- PATA Pri and Sec
- SATA P0/P1 only
- SATA P0/P1, PATA Sec
- SATA P0/P1, PATA Pri
The optical drive needs an IDE interface, so I think that leaves me with either using just IDE, or setting it to one of the latter two options for SATA + IDE. Although, if I'm reading this correctly, I think that strictly limits me to two SATA drives and two IDE drives, each with one master and one slave. I'm thinking the simplest option would be to set the IDE optical drive as the secondary master, and the 80GB SATA SSD as primary master split into three partitions, something like ~20GB FAT32 for win98, ~50GB NTFS for winXP, and then the rest (~10GB) as FAT32 for misc storage and for transferring files between the two. I'm not sure how this legacy mode will handle multiple drives but it seems like I can add an extra SATA and/or IDE HDD to these two, so let me know if it is easier to just put the OSes on two separate drives. I just like to avoid spinning disks whenever possible.
If there is anything else I should know that I haven't thought of yet, please let me know! I'd appreciate any advice or general tips before I get started on this. Thanks!