Dell Precision 360 build

[frankr2994]

Ok I think I got a line on a Precision 360 tower for cheap. I'd like to make a dual boot 98se/xp system like I just did with a 4500s. Had some questions if someone can answer. I do know that the chipset for this should be supported for 98. But for the plug and play bios I have read 2 different things. When setting up I see to run the setup with the /pi switch and others say to use the /pj switch. when exploring 98 setup switches it says /pj can only be ran after /pi and plug and play bios was already configured. Maybe someone could shed some more light on this topic?? I would also like to have no ide cables in this build. The mother board has 2 sata ports. I would like to have a sata ssd and a sata cd/dvd drive. Should I just be able to set sata operation in ide compatibility mode and load 98 then apply r.lowes patches for sata and ahci reboot change bios settings and be good to go or am I going to have to modify a 98 iso and have these patches extracted and slipstreamed into it? also this should have a P4 HT processor. Do I have to disable hyperthreading in the bios or can I just leave it there so XP can use it and 98 will just see one core?  I know theres going to be alot to figure out seeing that my fastest full 98 install to date with the whole computer working took me about 15 hours lol just trying to answer some of the things rolling in my head right now before I buy it. 

[pangoomis]

1. Just use "/p i". There's no need to use "/p j" on Windows 98SE ever.
2. Yep, IDE Compatibility Mode should work fine, it it doesn't then you need the SATA patch. (not the AHCI driver)
3. You can leave the HyperThreading on, it won't do any harm for 98SE and will make XP much faster

Make sure that the hard drive is less than 137GB, otherwise you need the High Capacity Disk Patch.

Edited December 28, 2019 by MrMateczko

[frankr2994]

ya I know about the gb limit. I plan to use a 120gb ssd and I can't imagine I'd use more than a 40gb partition for 98 because well 40gb is already insane for that OS. about the ahci driver. I don't have this system yet so I don't know if there even is an ahci option in the bios but if there is and I want to use it.....I'm not asking if anything is practical or if I do it one way or another it wont matter I'm really doing this because I've been finding it fun to p*** around with this old OS and getting it to work right. If and when I do buy this I will post all the progress and how I did everything. I do plan on making this very powerful and reliable. I will be replacing the power supply , the hdd for a ssd, a cd/dvd combo drive and I may get one of those floppy emulator drives. I would also like to do some research on the best gpu I can get that will support xp and 98. I'll also be going over the mother board to see if any caps will need replaced (thats as far as I can go in motherboard diag and repair) 

[frankr2994]

oh total side note here and most likely its something that won't work but on the dell 4500s I have running win98 on right now it has a pci nic that is attached via a pci sidecar cage. this sidecar slot is something new to me but i do see that there are isa sidecar cards available for not much money on ebay. These were originally made for early dell optiplex computers like a gx110. Does anyone think its possible for one of these newer systems to pick up? I'm assuming that this 360 will have a similar slot on it. I do have access to a ISA card that ran an old snap on alignment camera system to test if I think I made it work. 

Edited December 29, 2019 by frankr2994
spelling