ulimate win98 and xp machine

[Robhalfordfan]

hi all

only for ideas and advice for now

I have my ultimate machine for dos - win95 games/stuff
I have my uber modern machine - modern games/internet etc
I am looking to tweak or start from scratch my win98-xp machine to be the best rig of it kind


I am looking for to build a machine that can be best and fastest for xp but to also be fully compatible with win98

This machine is for games and stuff that too much to run on my dos-win95 machine and also to use xp for applications and games that isn't supported with 98

what kind of mobo/processor/graphics card/sound card that would work and have drivers for both win98 and xp

xp and 98 but will have own hdds/ partitions

Or

Have on a laptop instead of a tower for space saving

 

[Retro_Lover]

This is mine.

Pentium III 700 Mhz Socket 370.
Intel Socket 370 Motherboard.
256Mb SDRAM.
Nvidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR SGRAM.
Orchid Righteous 3Dfx Voodoo2 8Mb PCI.
Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! PCI.
Compact Flash to IDE ATA 40 pin + 1GB CF Card.
16x CDR Drive.
2x Floppy drives.
PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard.
Windows 98SE + Windows XP Dual boot.
15" Viewsonic SVGA CRT Monitor.

While not the best of it's time, going to the next CPU (Pentium 4) + Motherboard makes compatibility with Win98/SE/ME slightly harder due to lack of motherboard drivers.
I could have went the AMD route and it would have been the better CPU, it's just that I found getting hold of old AMD motherboard drivers for Win98 much harder than using Intel.
WinXP would benefit from more RAM, but Win98 probably wouldn't.
I did't use a Harddrive because it's getting harder to find working reliable drives from that era, it's easier to use a modern CF to IDE solution, and faster.
The 2 floppy drives were for backing up old Amiga floppy disks using disk2fdi.

 

[SaviorX]

some utilities which will be useful:

Unofficial Service Pack for 98SE 3.57: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/unofficial_windows98_se_service_pack.html
Unofficial Service Pack for XP (SP4) 3.1b: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_xp_service_pack_4_unofficial.htmlneeds

NTFS for Win95/98/ME: https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98/

 

[Robhalfordfan]

Thanks but i should have it but xp and 98 but have own hdds

And current setup is that pc has 1Ghz amd processor and 900mb of ram and hope to up that for more powerful during xp era but still have full win 98 compatibility

 

[freehand]

I have a Black [FONT=arial, helvetica, tahoma, sans-serif]Viewsonic Professional Series P227f (CRT) 21 inch Monitor.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, tahoma, sans-serif]Very little use and is a thing of beauty.[/FONT]

 

[Robhalfordfan]

lovely, I hope get a proper crt monitor one day but no space for one at moment

 

[Harrison]

Whilst you can get 98 and xp running ok on the same hardware, to have the best setups different hardware is best for each.

If you really wanted a single machine then a Pentium 3 with a Soundblaster pci probably a good compromise.

For me i have a win 98 machine which i also run dos games on. A Pentium 2 400MHz, 128mb ram, g400 or tnt2 agp graphics card and a Voodoo 2, PCI Soundblaster sounds card.

Fit xp i tend to only run it as a virtual machine on my main gaming rig thread days.

If i were building a dedicated xp machine i would probably base it around an Athlon 64 CPU and an ati 9800 pro. Or maybe something newer like an ati 4870.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

[SaviorX]

I currently have 3 'DOS' setups:

a Dell Dimension PIII 550Mhz, 640MB RAM, Radeon 7000 64MB, Montego II PCI, running Win98SE / DOS7.1

a Compaq Presario PII 300Mhz, 384MB RAM, ATi Rage Pro 4MB + Guillemot Voodoo2 12MB, running Win95sr2.1 / DOS7.0

a Tandy 2500RSX Am386sx25 (w/80387-33 @ 25mhz), 9MB RAM, SVGA 512k, SB16 Vibra, running WFW3.11 / DOS 6.22 / GEOWorks Ensemble

I have XP and 7 on more modern systems.

I plan on eventually having a dedicated system for each of Win2k, NT3.5x/4, BeOS, OS/2 Warp 3/4 as well.

I actually miss the days when this was what everyone had and I pretty much worked on them daily...

 

[sprcorreia]

I have lots of hardware and I was able to try many different configs. Eventually for Windows XP and 98 I settled with a 3,2GHz HT P4, industrial 875P motherboard that has 2 ISA slots and fully compatible with ISA sound cards and a Asus 6800GT 128MB. The machine is fast enough to run XP and is 100% compatible with Windows 98. Hell, I can even boot it to play MS-DOS games with great sound due to the ISA slots.

Windows XP era has a wide range of hardware but having it to run 98 is a different matter.

 

[Dagger]

I kept thinking about a the ideal windows 98 machine, mainly for nostalgia reasons and playing old dos games of course but in the end I just knew if I got another machine it would clutter the place up with all my other retro stuff. So in the end I settled for using Dosbox which does a great job and gives me the best of both worlds.

 

[SaviorX]

VMs are probably the best way to 'emulate' earlier Windows/DOS systems on newer machines.

I have had no issues with running anything from DOS5.0/Win3.1 to Windows XP through Oracle VirtualBox or Microsoft Virtual PC, under Windows 7 (6 cores @ 3500mhz 24gig ram / 4 cores @ 3000mhz 16gig), I haven't tried any non-MS Systems on them (BeOS, OS/2, Ubuntu/Linux/Unix etc) but they seem pretty rock-solid for MS stuff anyways...which is actually amazing given how badly older Windows systems would BSD on actual hardware (granted Win95sr2.x and 98SE were far better than the initial releases)

 

[Harrison]

VM is definitely great these days and fairly robust. Plus if it crashed you just restart it. The only one i bet might crash the host machine would be Win Me. ;-)

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

[Robhalfordfan]

thanks for ideas but I don't want use emulation, I wanna use real hardware and dos games in this build, I am not worry about cause I already p-133 dual booted with dos and win95 for dos games

this is for games and applications from late 90s to mid/late 2000s

 

[Harrison]

A P133 was good for most DOS games that were struggling a bit in the a 486DX2 66 era (remember when that was the must have cpu?) , but it won't be that good for any games beyond about 1997. You need at least a P2 400 for anything released in 98+ and a P3 for anything released beyond 2000.

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[SaviorX]

I actually quite like 486dx4/100-120 or P90-133 for strictly DOS applications, they were pretty much what was around at straight-DOS (6.xx) EOL (the 120 and 133 being released just a few months prior to Win95) and is basically what you would have had as a top-of-the-line DOS/Win3.xx system back then.

 

[Robhalfordfan]

i got a processor for this rig amd 2.2 ghz socket A, just need to heatsink and fan, psu and graphics card - which i posted another thread here - https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?96899-geforce-6800-graphics-card