Josey

I've just found a used "MSI GeForce 7950GT 512mb" for £11. With the patch it should work great, right? Shall I order it?

That's an interesting way to see it. In my experience, nothing that is made today lasts, or is even designed to. I have systems from 1993 with their original hard drives, still humming away. Today, manufacturers build junk that ensures you have to keep filling their coffers (and their shareholders coffers) on a regular basis. Well that's a very good point. That's an interesting way to see it. In my experience, nothing that is made today lasts, or is even designed to. I have systems from 1993 with their original hard drives, still humming away. Today, manufacturers build junk that ensures you have to keep filling their coffers (and their shareholders coffers) on a regular basis. You made a good point here; newer is not always better. I can think of one reason to prefer a newer board in this case however. Many of the last 9x compatible Pentium 4 boards were made during the height of the "Great Capacitor Plague" and develop problems as such. I have a stockpile of SOYO P4-I875P Dragon 2 Platinum's for building 9x gaming machines, and ALL of them develop bad capacitors sooner or later. This seems to have been corrected in later systems. And that's also a very good point. And as the capacitors leaked badly on my old 98 motherboard, it's something I am worried about. Has anyone else on here used a similar AMD board with 98? Maybe I should just keep looking for an unused Intel board, which meets all the requirements. That's good to know. So far I've seen a 512mb 7950GT for about £40 and a 256mb nVidia Quadro FX1500 for about £10. Do you think the extra memory and newer model is worth the extra £30, or will it be hard to notice any difference? Thank you, the X-Gamer series looks very nice. I'm glad I'm not the only one!

I've spoken to my friend, who after thinking it over for a while thinks he would like to go for the newest possible, in the hope that it'll last longer. He also wants to wait until Summer before he starts his build because he's at university and feels he hasn't got enough time to think about PC building till the holidays. We were hoping to use the same model of motherboard as each other, and we were planing on building them together, but I'm not sure I want to wait that long! So, what we agreed is that I'm going to keep a look out for the Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 hoping to see it selling for a bit cheaper, or a similar board selling for less, and if Summer comes along and I haven't found a cheaper one we'll pay the £130 each. Or if the GA-790FXTA-UD5 isn't available then we'll go for the GA-965P-DQ6 (which I personally prefer the look of, but I get my friends point about wanting to buy a new board). Or if I get impatient (or see a really good deal) I might end up ordering one before then! Can anyone think of any reason we shouldn't get the GA-790FXTA-UD5? While I'm waiting I'm going to start buying the other components I'll need. My friend already has a PCI-e graphics card that he wants to use, but I'll need to buy one. I'm looking at the nVidia 7950GT (because LoneCrusader mentioned it). Would you recommend it LoneCrusader? Do you think that all cards based on the nVidia 7950GT will work (for example the "MSI MS-V066" or "BFG NVIDIA GeFORCE 7950 GT OC")? I'm also looking at the nVidia Quadro FX1500 as Tommy mentioned it. Would you recommend it Tommy? I've found a few very good deals for it. We'll also both need sound cards. We're looking for as much DOS compatibility as you can get with a PCI card. Are there any you'd recommend? I know I keep saying it, but all this help means a lot to me. Whenever I've asked a question about Windows 98 on other forums in the past people either laugh or tell me to use a virtual machine! It's amazing to find a forum where the people are so knowledgeable, helpful and nice. Thank you. Thank you. That's an interesting idea, but the motherboard you mention uses the AMI BIOS, so it isn't quite what I'm looking for.

Thank you again everyone! I'm going to talk over the options with my friend tomorrow or the next day, and hopefully make a decision.

That is good news! Thank you LoneCrusader. I was speaking with my friend today, and he asked me a question. He liked booting into MS-DOS 7.1 a lot of the time on his old 98SE, and he's wondering if having 4GB of ram (using rloew's RAM patch) will have any impact on MS-DOS. Will it still work fully, or does it not like having that much RAM? I've found a few good deals on some older Gigabyte motherboards. All of them are used, which isn't ideal in my mind, but they say they work fully, and they are cheap, and all of them apart from the last one has more than one available, so I could order two. And they have all the ports I need. The main problem I can see is that they all use the 945 chipset, and I see that LoneCrusader said that "there's no reason to choose something below the 965 chipset". Are there any issues with using the 945? GA-945GCM-S2L Rev 1.0 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2669#sp GA-945GZM-S2 Rev 3.9 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2467#sp GA-8I945GMF Rev 1.0 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=1910#sp GA-945GCMX-S2 Rev 6.6 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2521#sp I can get these used 945 boards for between £18 and £33 each. Or I could go older to the 915 chipset and get a unused GA-8I915G-MF for £35. I also found some used 965 boards for about £65 each. GA-965P-DQ6 REV:1.0 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2295#sp GA-965P-DQ6 REV:3.3 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2453#sp GA-965P-S3 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2457#sp GA-965GM-S2 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2617#sp So if the 965 chipset is better I could go for those. Or there's the much newer and unused GA-790FXTA-UD5, which would set me back about £130 each. If I went for the GA-790FXTA-UD5 (or one similar), they have USB 3 ports. Can I get USB 3 ports to work using a generic USB driver, or do they only work for USB 1, 1.1 and 2? I don't care about getting full USB 3 speed, but if the board had USB 3 ports, it'd be nice if they worked. So, just to remind myself, I'm looking for a motherboard that: Uses the AWARD BIOS Has PCI ExpressHas at least two PCI slotsHas a Floppy disk drive connectorDoesn't have NForce chipsets Am I forgetting anything important? Thank you for helping.

Thank you again everyone. I'm leaning a lot I didn't know about all of this. You're right Tommy, the GA-M68MT-S2P onlt has one PCI, which isn't enough, but really the GA-790FXTA-UD5 is too expensive for me at the moment. I'm planning on buying rloew's SATA patch anyway. Oh, and as far as cases go, I was given 15 different PC cases a few months ago by a friend who had for some reason got them from second hand shops and places like that, and then didn't have the space to keep them. So I'm hoping that some of them will be big enough! But if they aren't I'll make sure I get a full ATX one. Thanks LoneCrusader for the advice about NForce chipsets. I'll keep that in mind. I see that a lot of motherboards still have a Parallel port. I was wondering, although I'm unlikely to need to use the Parallel port, in case I do need it, is there a universal driver for 98SE that would make it work? None of the boards I've seen for sale so far are 100% what I want, so I'm going to keep looking for a few days and get back to you when I've found another one. If I can find the GA-790FXTA-UD5 cheaper, I think I'll go for that, although I do like Intel!

Thank you everyone for all the advice. I'm making notes of what patches/software I'll need and which hardware to look out for. This forum is amazing, as are the people on it! I've spent the last few hours looking at motherboards available. While doing so I realized that I, and especially my friend, will want a floppy disk drive connector on the motherboard, which means we have to go a little older, and look a little harder. I’ve found a few possibilities, but I could only find one motherboard that uses an Intel CPU (and has a floppy disk drive connector and PCI-e). All the others are AMD. Will that be an issue? I've seen them all for sale unused. Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2P http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3726#sp This motherboard is pretty new (2011), it has a Floppy disk drive connector (using the iTE IT8720 chip, will this work?), PCI-e and uses the AWARD BISO. But it’s AMD not Intel. Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3258#sp This motherboard seems to be very similar, but costs a lot more. Again it’s pretty new (2011), it has a Floppy disk drive connector (also using the iTE IT8720 chip), PCI-e and uses the AWARD BISO. Again it’s AMD. Both the above motherboards have support for DualBIOS. Will this be ok? There's only one of both the below boards for sale, so if I got one of them, I'd need to find another for my friends PC. Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP-940 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=1698#sp This motherboard is older (2003), but cheaper. It has a Floppy disk drive connector, no PCI-e (so my friend won’t be interested), but it does have AGP. It uses the AWARD BISO, and yet again, it’s AMD. Because it’s older there’s some drivers on the site for Windows 98SE, but it also says “This product does not support Win9X/ME”. Gigabyte GA-8I915G-MF http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=1796#sp This motherboard is also older (2004). It costs less than the newer ones, but more than the than the one above. It has a Floppy disk drive connector, it has PCI-e, and it’s Intel! I’m guessing it uses the AWARD BISO, but the Gigabyte site doesn’t say (all it says under BIOS is "1 x 2 Mbit Flash ROM". But I did find an online manual saying it does use the AWARD BISO). It also has DualBIOS. It uses the Realtek 8110S Gigabit Ethernet controller, and has two PCIs. What do you all think of these motherboards? Will one of them be good, or should I carry on looking?

I'm going to keep looking into getting guest additions to work under Windows 98se, but for now I'm just going to build a real 98se, and just use VirtualBox once in a while for trying out software, and maybe for the games that do work on it.

I was thinking I was looking for all hardware working out of the box, but I didn't really know about rloew's patches until now. I want these builds to last a long while, so using newer hardware sounds good, as long as I end up with a PC that runs Windows 98SE more or less flawlessly. Are you saying that, with the patches installed, the motherboard doesn't need to have 98SE chipset drivers? Does everything still work fully? Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick? I'm planning on having a add-on sound card anyway, and wouldn't mind having a add-on network card too if that made finding a motherboard easier. When you say newer, how much newer do you mean? How can I tell if a motherboard would work with 98SE and the rloew's patches? That's good to know about NVIDIA, as I will be using widescreen, at least to begin with.

Hi, Over the next few months I'm going to be building two computer which are going to be running Windows 98SE, mostly for gaming. One for myself, and one for a friend. I'm sure that along the way I'll have to ask a few questions, so I've started this thread to ask them all in one place. My first question is about picking out a motherboard. I'm finding it hard to find one that's right for my needs. I want it to be a pretty good one, and my friend wants PCIe (I'm happy with PCIe or AGP). And of course I need to have 98SE drivers for it. I found this motherboard, which has the Intel P965 chipset (which is compatible with 98SE, right?), but I can't see drivers for it anywhere. Would it work with 98SE, or have I made a mistake? And where do you think I could get drivers? http://www.ascendtech.us/intel-dg965lvg1-d36275-502-motherboard_i_mbinlvdg965lvg1.aspx

Yep, I've upgraded to DirectX 9.0c, so I'm guessing it must be to do with the hardware accelerated 3D graphics, but it's odd that not even the menus will work. I couldn't agree more. There's nothing like running the real hardware. I had a working PC running Windows 98SE until about six months ago, when the capacitors got so bad that it wouldn't boot. It was in a shop for over 5 months being 'fixed', but I don't think he did a great job because after about a week the graphics started to go crazy (which is what happened just before the capacitors went last time). My plan is to build a 'supercharged' Windows 98SE, but I'm finding it hard finding the right parts. The forum posts on here about compatible hardware look like they are going to be very helpful. I was hoping to set-up a nice virtual machine to tide me over, and as a back-up. At least with VirtualBox I'm able to use most software and some games, but I need to build that PC!

Hi all, I've installed Windows 98SE on VirtualBox following this how-to: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170785-virtualbox-windows-98se-step-by-step/ It seems to be running very nicely. I tired four games and two of them ("Cluedo: Murder at Blackwell Grange" and "Tomb Raider 2") seem to play well, but the other two ("Plane Crazy" and "Lego Racers 2") installed, but won't even load the opening videos or go to the menu. All that happens is that a black window opens for less than a second, and then closes. Is there anyway to fix this? Let me know if you need any more info.