building a cheese-machine to run Win98SE only

[ManDooM]

Epox 8RDA3I $54
Rosewill Radeon 9600 non-pro 128mb 128mb $65
Rosewill DDR400 128mb x2 $40
Maxtor 40GB 7200 2mb $48
Dynapower Metis Case w/ 430W (right...) psu $24.50
NEC FDD $7

I already have an XP 2100+, a Lite-On 52x CD-RW, and Win98SE.

Total with shipping: $267.59

Remember - the idea is CHEAP and it's bred for one purpose: to end the world of Men. I mean to run Win98SE. And all the games that won't run on the NT base.

 

[SwiftWind]

seems a way overkill for a 98se machine....I'm sorry, but I must ask, what games are you trying to run? installing 98se is extremely suicidal (in my opinion)

 

[ManDooM]

Myth series
Summoner
Fallout series
Dungeon Keeper series
Populous: The Beginning
Command and Conquer
Daggerfall
Quake 1
Warcraft 2
Baldur's Gate series
Planescape: Torment
Ultima Series
Grim fandango
Neverhood

to name a few

 

[ElFenix]

i think more ram and less everything else

 

[ManDooM]

Really? I've never seen a Win98 game recommend more than 128mb (that's x2 by the way for total 256 in dual channel). I guess dual channel is probably unnecessary, though. I can't go any lower with the case/psu. And if I go less with the hard drive I'll actually be paying MORE for some ridiculous reason. What video would you recommend? A 9200? Maybe this one instead?

 

[Sentinel]

damn, i think that setup looks pretty good, should run well enough to make cheese.

 

[Sandor]

Out of curiosity, do you need a second dedicated system? If not, another hard drive with a dual boot between win98SE and your current OS should suffice. If you do need another system, then just ignore me

 

[DaveSimmons]

256 MB is perfect, the machine I replaced last December was a P3-933 with 256 MB and I played half of those games on it (including Fallout 1-2 and PS:Torment), plus others like Morrowind.

A 2100+ is way overkill but if you already have it you can't get anything cheaper without buying from the FS/FT forum (then you could). 2 x 128 sticks seems pointless unless that's cheaper than 1 x 256, dual channel doesn't help much and your CPU is twice as fast as it needs to be.

If you were in the Seattle area I could offer you a nice deal on that P3 933 in its old Antec SX-830 case, plus its blazing Geforce3 card

(I still play Win98SE games myself, playing Jagged Alliance 2 Urban Chaos mod right now, but I now have a Win98SE partition added to my FLAC music server which is a tualatin celeron 1.3 with gf2mx card.)

 

[thermalpaste]

You need an athlon-xp to play quake-I???????? a 486DX should be sufficient....

 

[Elcs]

Im tempted to recommend an Nforce2 board with IGP then perhaps bumping up the ram.

I have to say that the 9600NP is probably way too much. A second-hand GeForce4 Ti would be sweet but still overkill for those games.

I was going to suggest getting a T'Bred B or Mobile Barton just for the underclockability + cooling issue. You dont want a aeroplane to play some antique games on but I missed your statement on the OP about having a 2100+ already so ignore that.

 

[DrCool]

Elcs

nVidia chipsets don't 'officially' support windows 98, it's a good combination for headaches, and hairloss.

I just finished throwing together a new win98SE system myself, specs:

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ @ 1884MHz
512MB PC2700 DDR
ASUS A7V333 (VIA KT333 Chipset)
GeForce 2 440 MX AGP DUAL HEAD (PERSONAL CINEMA)
LINKSYS 10/100 LNE100TX v5 PCI
SEAGATE 80GB 7200RPM HD
LITEON 40X CD-RW

so far, this puppy is running butter smooth. I'm going to be using it as a testbench, so i have an extra toy to tweak and play with.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: DrCool
Elcs

nVidia chipsets don't 'officially' support windows 98, it's a good combination for headaches, and hairloss.

I see. My mistake.

 

[0roo0roo]

i ran 98 on 32mb ram lol

 

[Zebo]

better mobo and $10 cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/app/view...amp;manufactory=BROWSE


Better HD, quieter, faster and longer warranty only $3 more

http://www.newegg.com/app/view...amp;manufactory=BROWSE


Get more ram. ..http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=20-218-061&depa=0


Rest looks good

 

[bluemax]

For the games you mentioned, you should go REALLY cheap and just get one of those ECS all-in-one embedded processor motherboards. One with a Duron with the false name of 1600+ to 3100+ doesn't matter - they'll all be plenty fast. The embedded pseudo-3D video is plenty too, those games don't need much for 3D performance.
256MB - 32MB for video and you're still rockin' Windows 98SE.

There - you've knocked about a hundred bucks off your build - and it's easier.

 

[artemedes]

I was one of those relectant to go to win2k (and xp), so when i finally did I used XOSL to set up different partitions and hide them from eachother. At one point I had it set up to run win98/2k/suse 9.1. This works great if you don't want a second computer or don't want to spend the money to have a dedicated computer. Since XOSL hides the partitions and makes the main one C: it works great for multiple OSs and is much better than the dual boot method used by 2k/XP.

Worked great until I bought a 6800 GT and couldn't get it to work in win98. The old 4400 ti was actaully faster and smoother in certain games like warcraft 3 under win98. This was also on an Abit Nforce2 (nf7-s2) motherboard. You can download the drivers directly from nvidia, so I don't know what to make of the "not officially supported" comment. Then there is stability. Everyone that used win98se years ago remember it as unstable, but I have found it very stable with the nforce drivers from nvidia, which was part of the reason I was reluctant to move on (no need to). It is also very fast. If it worked with my new card I would still have a 98 partition.

Ram: Just because it is win98 doesn't mean that newer games won't take advantage of more than 256. I have had 512 in all my win98 boxes for almost 3 years now. Having said that, for the programs you listed I am sure 256 would be more than sufficient.

Anyway, have fun playing those games.

 

[HiDeAtHfInItIoN]

That thing is gonna scream! :Q

 

[DrCool]

Artemedes and ECLS

it looks like my information was outdated..

http://tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2599f

Initally the nForce chipset was said to only support Windows 2000 / XP, but it seems that changed shortly before launch.

I still stand by the fact that i've heard many horror stories about Win 9x and nForce chipsets..

 

[Zebo]

Dual boot = free.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Elcs

Originally posted by: DrCool
Elcs

nVidia chipsets don't 'officially' support windows 98, it's a good combination for headaches, and hairloss.

I see. My mistake.

I'm using an nForce board and have been running win98se til I had to switch to win2k pro for Doom 3. The nForce boards do support win98se. My NF7-S v2 came with drivers for it. IIRC, the the most current drivers for it (98se/ME) are from May '04.

OP, You'll find win98se very fast on this new hardware, and, contrary to what is often said, it's also very stable too.

If you get a Nforce board, the only patch you need is for sound.

Fern

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, with a tad bit more RAM (would recommend 512MB), you could easily dual-boot Win98se and W2K or XP on the same machine.

Btw, there is a thread in Hot Deals about a 60GB Maxtor HD for $30 or $40 OTD, might consider that instead.

There is unfortunately an increasing amount of hardware that is no longer supporting any Win9x OSes, so allowing the machine to dual-boot would be a wise idea. Why build a machine specifically to be obsolete and unusable for anything else in six months to a year?

Likewise, a R9600 isn't necesarily overkill, if one considers the rig to be a "low-end dual-boot gaming rig", rather than just a "DOS/Win98se gaming rig". Be aware that some of the older DOS games may only work with a full register-compatible video card, I don't know how ATI vs. NVidia compare in that situation. In fact, a V3 3000 used to be considered quite compatible with a lot of older DOS games that used Vesa BIOS (VBE) extensions to set video modes, and there are a number of DOS-based games that added Glide support. So if you were really going to go for an "old-school" gaming rig, might want to keep that possibility in mind, or even the possibility of adding in a V2 PCI alongside the R9200.

I think that the biggest issue, for DOS games, is true soundblaster compatibility. Good luck with that one, if you don't have any ISA slots for a real SB16/SBAwe64 card.

 

[DaveSimmons]

In fact, a V3 3000 used to be considered quite compatible with a lot of older DOS games that used Vesa BIOS (VBE) extensions to set video modes, and there are a number of DOS-based games that added Glide support.

I think that the biggest issue, for DOS games, is true soundblaster compatibility. Good luck with that one, if you don't have any ISA slots for a real SB16/SBAwe64 card.

Good advice. Along with my "high end W98SE" tualatin 1.3, which is perfect for later games like Baldur's Gate 2, I have a Voodoo3 2000 and Monster3D (Aureal) soundcard set aside for building a low-end box for DOS and really old Win95 games like the 3DFX version of MechWarrior 2. I'll probably pair them with an old slot-1 motherboard and P2 266 MHz or Celeron 667 from my junk parts bin. (I really need to clean house, I have a spare p2-266, cel-667 + slotket, p3-550e for slot 1, plus p3-700, p3-933, and tualatin-1.2 for socket 370.)

The Aureal soundcards actually had much cleaner soundblaster emulation than the SB Live and Audigy cards I've used since upgrading.

 

[CraigRT]

looks fine if you ask me... i wouldn't bother buying even less, because that's just silly.
for the price, you can get an OK machine that could even run XP if you wanted to quite easily.

i say go for it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Good advice. Along with my "high end W98SE" tualatin 1.3, which is perfect for later games like Baldur's Gate 2, I have a Voodoo3 2000 and Monster3D (Aureal) soundcard set aside for building a low-end box for DOS and really old Win95 games like the 3DFX version of MechWarrior 2. I'll probably pair them with an old slot-1 motherboard and P2 266 MHz or Celeron 667 from my junk parts bin. (I really need to clean house, I have a spare p2-266, cel-667 + slotket, p3-550e for slot 1, plus p3-700, p3-933, and tualatin-1.2 for socket 370.)

The Aureal soundcards actually had much cleaner soundblaster emulation than the SB Live and Audigy cards I've used since upgrading.

Tell me about it.

I have (had? grr.) a Vortex2 PCI card around here somewhere, that I was always intending to do pretty-much the same thing with. I was always very impressed with it's SB emulation features, they seemed to be much superior to even Creative's own SBLive-family cards. Also, the sound quality of the Vortex2, along with the hardware A3D capability (especially in UT), was "awesome".

I had an Abit BX6-r2 that I was planning on upgrading with a 1.2 Tualatin Celeron, hopefully OCed to 1.6, along with a 16MB AGP V3 3000, ISA SB Awe64, and 3 low-density 256MB PC-133 SDRAMs.

Sadly, that all sort of fell apart, I killed the VRMs on the mobo trying to do an unsucessful volt-mod on a slotket to get the Tualatin chip working, and then the Vortex2 card disappeared (I might have accidentally sold it at the flea), and my friend has the V3 3000 now. Bah. I always wanted a nice 1Ghz i440BX-based rig to keep around, just for old times' sake. Such a classic machine, almost like a classic car, really.

The moral of the story? Don't try to both pin-voltmod a slotket, and then randomly try changing slotket VID jumpers besides. The result is a slot-1 mobo with fried VRMs, from shorting out vcore and gnd. (Ironically, the CPU lived fine, although the HSF got insanely hot in a very short period of time. Go figure. Guess Intel built those Tualatin chips pretty tough.)

 

[DaveSimmons]

Sadly, that all sort of fell apart, I killed the VRMs on the mobo trying to do an unsucessful volt-mod on a slotket to get the Tualatin chip working, and then the Vortex2 card disappeared (I might have accidentally sold it at the flea), and my friend has the V3 3000 now. Bah. I always wanted a nice 1Ghz i440BX-based rig to keep around, just for old times' sake. Such a classic machine, almost like a classic car, really.

d'oh!
If you're in the US, I might not end up using my Abit BF6 for my "old box" since I also have an i810 Abit WB6 mATX, Asus i815e CUSL2 and i815ep CUSL2-C to pick from, plus an emachines mobo with celeron 333 my brother decided to ship me instead of landfilling. Hey, I've been too busy for a FS/FT thread the last few years! (I say while neffing here.) I may also have a spare V3 once I decide whether t use the PCI or AGP version (I have one of each).