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Big-Brand Computers and Windows 9x


nostaglic98

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I suppose I'll keep hunting. So you recommend an nVidia nForce 2 Chipset for AMD? Looks like I might *just* go and look at Intel, though the current machine we have has i865/ICH5 and was flaky with 98 (Asus P4P-800MX)

What is point in buying nForce2 chipset for AMD processor when you are having nForce3 which fully support Windows 98, Me, XP and Vista (and with Vista drivers 7 and 8 I suspect) with CPU support until Phenom II X4 (3.5 GHz) ?

You can buy this refurbished or maybe even if you are really lucky with your quest "new" MBO ?

If you want Intel then you will buy new AsRock 775i65G R3.0.

In the end if you want to be funny you will buy VIA processor and MBO with CN896 chipset

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Yes, I did glance through this, which brings me to realise it isn't natively supporting Windows 9x/Me - you can download drivers, though it seems there may be some glitches, considering it isn't native support

But, there are always other motherboards around! I'm sure I can find something decent. Though I'm slightly concerned about CPU speed - I though that Windows 98/Me had issues when going above around 2.1GHz. I know Windows 98 had it for sure - which might explain why the present computer I've used with 98 has been soooo terrible (2.8GHz Celeron, Socket 478 from 2004).

I suppose I'll keep hunting. So you recommend an nVidia nForce 2 Chipset for AMD? Looks like I might *just* go and look at Intel, though the current machine we have has i865/ICH5 and was flaky with 98 (Asus P4P-800MX)

If you can download drivers for Windows 9x for a board, that's really all you need. If you want something that is natively supported by Windows 9x without having to download drivers, youre going to have to go waaayy back... :ph34r:

CPU speed is not an issue. Windows 95 and Windows 98FE were affected by a processor clock speed bug at 2.1GHz, but both of these issues have long been solved. Microsoft issued a HotFix for 98FE that fixes the problem, and 95 is solved by FIX95CPU. Windows 98SE and ME are not affected.

The computer you refer to is/was terrible for two reasons - Celeron is garbage. Get rid of it and use a P4 chip. Also 512MB of RAM is just not enough for modern machines, especially if you use them for everyday computing tasks.

I use Intel 845/865/875 boards + P4 processors for all of my 9x machines and have never had any issues.

Also - last ATI AGP graphics cards supported under 9x are the x800/x850 series. Not sure about nVidia, but others here can help with that.

I think I confused you there about "Native" support. What I actually meant was the board being "designed" for 9x/Me OSes - the Asus manual that would be included stated compatibility was 2000/XP. Besides, the other board I found was $10 cheaper, and seemed to suit what I want for this machine.

Regarding the Intel Chipsets, I can understand that my "problems" were likely the Celeron processor. Even though this is probably the case, it made me apprehensive of getting another Intel based board... Though I will consider the one linked from the Aussie seller for my other PC now: I wasn't initially planning to even bother using it again.

As for graphics cards, I found a nVidia GeForce FX5500 256mb graphics car (AGP 8x) that should work nicely. I think its actually "better" than the 8500GT (128mb) that I have - we'll see I suppose.

I suppose I'll keep hunting. So you recommend an nVidia nForce 2 Chipset for AMD? Looks like I might *just* go and look at Intel, though the current machine we have has i865/ICH5 and was flaky with 98 (Asus P4P-800MX)

What is point in buying nForce2 chipset for AMD processor when you are having nForce3 which fully support Windows 98, Me, XP and Vista (and with Vista drivers 7 and 8 I suspect) with CPU support until Phenom II X4 (3.5 GHz) ?

You can buy this refurbished or maybe even if you are really lucky with your quest "new" MBO ?

If you want Intel then you will buy new AsRock 775i65G R3.0.

In the end if you want to be funny you will buy VIA processor and MBO with CN896 chipset

I was told by a post above nForce 2 was the highest supported. To be honest, I'm not interested in additional cost for this - and Dual-Core processor support in 9x/Me is non-existent - so there is not much point getting "too modern" - especially when drivers might be flaky for the older Windows releases. I won't be using XP on the machine originally being upgraded either - the other machine will Dual-Boot XP/98 (or Me, I'll see). Thanks for your input though.

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I was told by a post above nForce 2 was the highest supported.

I'm not familiar at all with nForce motherboards, but for the record here's the nvidia download page for what is probably the last version of nForce 3 drivers for win-9x:

Version: 4.27 / Release Date: July 19, 2004

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_win9x_4.27.html

I can't tell if this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce applies to nForce 2 or 3 or higher. Performance problems are mentioned.

nForce3 seems to have been made only for AMD CPU's, whereas intel and AMD versions exist for nForce4. The nForce3 chipset was introduced between Sept. 2003 and June 2004 - so Win-98 support is not unexpected given those dates. In comparison, Via PT880 Pro and Ultra and PT894 were released in January 2005 and are probably superior to nForce3 in terms of speed and features. Does anyone know of a board based on PT894 ?

The PT890 (released April 2006) does indeed seem to have Win-9x drivers. The MSI PT890 Neo versions F and V have win-98 drivers available for download.

I downloaded a couple different nForce4 driver packages to look for "chicago" inf files, and found some only in LAN and audio driver section.

Edited by Nomen
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If nForce3 is supported then that is news to me, but it certainly may be true. I would research this first though and make sure people have it running with Win9x and that the chipset drivers are available.

About the 775 boards using i865, I never came across one yet, but it is very good news! There are a gazillion 775 chips you can choose from ( naturally only one core will be usable ) but you gain on the dramatically improved Core and Core2 architectures ( I imagine this would work right? ). Since only one core can be used you would seek out the highest frequency dual-core you can find with the biggest L2 cache around. I would love to see benchmarks under Win9x.

And yeah, that 2 GHz limit was in Win95 I believe. I have one 478 still in use for Win9x that allows every 478 ever made and I have changed the CPU a dozen times, with no concern for the frequency even over 3 GHz. I think you might want to read the threads about RAM though, because this is a problem. Just install Win9x using 512 MB DDR and then later install more RAM and edit SYSTEM.INI using the guidelines in the thread Dencorso has posted in his signature ( Day-to-day running Win 9x/ME with > 1 GiB RAM ). You will need Rudy Loew's patch I believe to go above 1024 RAM ( is this correct? ).

The key to getting fast performance on Intel chips is to get away from Celeron to their non-neutered big brothers. Along with this comes much much larger L2 cache which give immediate gains in performance. It also helps to be able to use the various BIOS settings for timings of RAM, FSB, PCI and CPU clock in a favorable combination. I neglected to mention this above but it is typically a limitation of "big box" boards that they saddle you with almost no BIOS freedom. In some cases there are 3rd party BIOS mods that unlock some things but it is very much hit and miss. So if there is a choice between a couple of possible boards, some further research should be done to see which has the more favorable BIOS for "over-clockers". Such a board will make your life easier when tweaking RAM-CPU-FSB for best performance.

EDIT: just wanted to add that what I meant by "seek out the highest frequency dual-core you can find with the biggest L2 cache" is that getting a Quad-Core means three unused cores all expending some wasted energy versus the one unused core if you buy a dual. So it's more economical to buy the fastest dual-core in the case of Win9x.

Edited by CharlotteTheHarlot
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I was told by a post above nForce 2 was the highest supported.

I'm not familiar at all with nForce motherboards, but for the record here's the nvidia download page for what is probably the last version of nForce 3 drivers for win-9x:

Version: 4.27 / Release Date: July 19, 2004

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_win9x_4.27.html

I can't tell if this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce applies to nForce 2 or 3 or higher. Performance problems are mentioned.

nForce3 seems to have been made only for AMD CPU's, whereas intel and AMD versions exist for nForce4. The nForce3 chipset was introduced between Sept. 2003 and June 2004 - so Win-98 support is not unexpected given those dates. In comparison, Via PT880 Pro and Ultra and PT894 were released in January 2005 and are probably superior to nForce3 in terms of speed and features. Does anyone know of a board based on PT894 ?

The PT890 (released April 2006) does indeed seem to have Win-9x drivers. The MSI PT890 Neo versions F and V have win-98 drivers available for download.

I downloaded a couple different nForce4 driver packages to look for "chicago" inf files, and found some only in LAN and audio driver section.

This appears to be what you were looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce2

It seems the main performance issues were related to the original nForce, though that ATA driver problem was persistent. That isn't enough to sway me out of it. If it has SATA, I'll just use that instead!

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It seems the main performance issues were related to the original nForce, though that ATA driver problem was persistent. That isn't enough to sway me out of it. If it has SATA, I'll just use that instead!

I haven't kept up with the ins-and-outs regarding Win9x and SATA but you should read all the pertinent posts by Dencorso and RLoew ( and others I am forgetting, sorry! ). I am pretty sure that there are strange issues there as well as with RAM. Hopefully they are reading this and will correct me if I am wrong.

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Update: I had purchased some parts, namely the ASRock Motherboard from the Australian seller, but discovered it uses the stupid "AGI" graphics interface, instead of AGP. There are only about two dozen different brands of graphics cards that support this standard, and I couldn't find ANY.

I have also purchased a Pentium 4 630 (Socket 775 Prescott, 3GHz, 2mb of L2 cache). At this time, I've had to abandon Windows 9x for the "other computer," but I will pursue it for my own machine - so now I'm looking for a motherboard that will support this processor. Most need a BIOS update, the ASUS P5KPL I found needs at least BIOS version 0126 to run the processor, but that also happens to be the lowest BIOS revision on the page. I'm assuming this means the processor is natively compatible - but I thought I'd ask here first. If I need to upgrade the BIOS (Flash it), am I able to install the new processor, or will this risk frying it, the motherboard or something else? Thankfully, the spare Core2Duo E6300 also needs the same BIOS version, so I might try that in there first (quickly, without heatsink), to see where I'll have to go.

P5KPL CPU Support Page: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5KPL/#support_CPU

The good thing about this upgrade is that I'll be able to salvage 2GB of DDR2-677 memory from the Core2Duo PC I had from 2007. A little side note here, but after 6 years, the Inno3D 8500GT graphics card has suffered 3 blown capacitors on its board, which I think has caused the instability in any and EVERY OS (Hard lock ups). Printed all over the board: "SAMSUNG, MADE IN CHINA") - so it may be wise to avoid this brand of motherboard...

The machine I am going to use 9x with is the machine with the ASUS P4P800-MX motherboard in it - the one that is "flaky" with 98SE. I now believe this was due to the crappy socket 478 Celeron and its pathetic 128kb of L2 cache (The P4's from this area had at least 512kb, and up to 1mb for the speed-demon Prescott).

What I've decided to do here, is install a second hand Socket 478 processor (P4) and an AGP graphics card (GeForce FX5500). Much cheaper than the new motherboards that I had originally planned, and most processor are supported on this board (Though I'll have to check BIOS Revision to see where its at exactly).

Thanks for everyone's input here, it has been greatly appreciated.

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I have also purchased a Pentium 4 630 (Socket 775 Prescott, 3GHz, 2mb of L2 cache). At this time, I've had to abandon Windows 9x for the "other computer," but I will pursue it for my own machine - so now I'm looking for a motherboard that will support this processor. Most need a BIOS update, the ASUS P5KPL I found needs at least BIOS version 0126 to run the processor, but that also happens to be the lowest BIOS revision on the page. I'm assuming this means the processor is natively compatible - but I thought I'd ask here first. If I need to upgrade the BIOS (Flash it), am I able to install the new processor, or will this risk frying it, the motherboard or something else? Thankfully, the spare Core2Duo E6300 also needs the same BIOS version, so I might try that in there first (quickly, without heatsink), to see where I'll have to go.

P5KPL CPU Support Page: http://www.asus.com/...PL/#support_CPU

The good thing about this upgrade is that I'll be able to salvage 2GB of DDR2-677 memory from the Core2Duo PC I had from 2007.

Hallo nostaglic98,

probably you can install Win98SE or ME on this ASUS P5KPL, but there is no warranty. You have the possibility to set the "ATA/IDE Configuration" in the BIOS to Compatible ( 98 and ME support only four devices) and perhaps you have to disable HT to boot. Install this chipset driver. But there are no drivers for onboard sound and AFAIK onboard Lan (Atheros). You need supported PCI cards. And you need a PCI-E graphics card ATI up to X800 or X850 (driver 6.2) or a NVIDIA PCI-E up to NV7900 (driver 82.69 mdgx or ZacMcKracken or 82.16 with your card added to the inf file). Note the shutdown issue, if you use a NVIDIA card. To avoid the issue with a NVIDIA card use a NV6xxx with the older driver 77.72. I already installed ME and for testing 98SE successfully on the P5KPL EPU with a NV7800GT (and 7600GT), a Creative SB PCI 128 card and a Realtek 8169 PCI card. I shutdown via the "first screen" of Express Gate. Maybe 3-4 sec. longer than a normal shutdown. There is no Express Gate for the P5KPL. The Plop boot manager has the possibility to shutdown.

I'm assuming this means the processor is natively compatible - but I thought I'd ask here first. If I need to upgrade the BIOS (Flash it), am I able to install the new processor, or will this risk frying it, the motherboard or something else?

Fortunately it never happened to me destroying a board or a graphics card by an BIOS update. Read the instructions accurate and prepare everything carefully. Nevertheless remains a small risk, e.g. power failure.

Edited by schwups
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What I've decided to do here, is install a second hand Socket 478 processor (P4) and an AGP graphics card (GeForce FX5500). Much cheaper than the new motherboards that I had originally planned, and most processor are supported on this board (Though I'll have to check BIOS Revision to see where its at exactly).

That is a good idea. And dirt cheap! Not like it was 10 years ago :no:

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What I've decided to do here, is install a second hand Socket 478 processor (P4) and an AGP graphics card (GeForce FX5500). Much cheaper than the new motherboards that I had originally planned, and most processor are supported on this board (Though I'll have to check BIOS Revision to see where its at exactly).

:thumbup

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