Now that I've had a chance to go through all three systems in depth and really dig into the specs here's what i'll probably do:
- PC1 - Now has DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1 on it with 32mb ram. ISA SB card and PCI graphics, with a pentium 100mhz and cd rom drive and 5.25" 1.2mb floppy, on a 2GB CF card. Intel PCI/Premier II mobo with 430NX chipset
Will Likely leave it how it is, can run all of my DOS and games and some pre-95 games okay. Sill trying to optmize config.sys and autoexec.bat to perfection.
- PC2 - Now has Windows 98SE on it with 128mb ram. PCI Yamaha XG YMF724 soundcard and onboard AGP 2mb ATI RAGE PRO graphics, PII 333mhz slot 1 and 20GB ide drive. MU440EX Motherboard with 440EX chipset
If I sell PC3, I can use the money to look for an upgraded motherboard with AGP, maybe something with PIII support, or something to get my cpu around 500mhz and up, to fill that gap from PC3
- PC3 - Now has Windows ME on it with 256MB Ram, ESS Maestro 1989 audio, intel integrated graphics, Pentium III 700mhz socket 370. i810E chipset on a Mitac 6513WU OEM board
Will likely sell this one as only the higher cpu speed is a plus for me as its double of the 98 Machine. This machine cannot run DOS games but can do early 3D games well (Driver, Sims 1, need for speed etc) without low frame rates.
Now all that being said, It's time to hunt for an decent 2000 era motherboard. Ideally one with SB-LINK so I dont have to buy a separate ISA card.just for dos playback. Otherwise I will have to borrow the VIBRA16 card from the dos machine. (can you have mutiple sound cards installed at once on the same os?) That also means I'll have to look for a CPU and AGP graphics as well, something more than 333mhz, to consolidate the gap from the ME machine. I'll read back through all the earlier posts for ideas, but does anyone have their favorite go-to p3 motherboards? i'm also noticing too quite a few threads about that so I have a lot to read