1st ever PC case found - Pentium 166 MMX win98 build/rebuild - Ram issues

So last night i tried to install windows again but it kept coming up about cluster problems on the SSD. I tried a few things with the bios and moving the clusters but there were just so many errors coming up i think it only got 7% of the way through the surface scan.
I decided to swap the ssd and the 2.6gb fireball over and load back into windows 98. I used the FDISK utiliy to delete the partition that was on the SSD and start again. After this i rebooted and the SSD apeared as D drive. I formated the drive in win98.

20251104_190130 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I also put the SSD back in my main pc and checked it with mini tool partition wizard to run the surface scan as it was much quicker and there were no errors. I thought i would try cloning the 2.6gb drive onto the ssd as i was sick of trying to get through the windows installation. I found norton ghost 6.03 i think it was, which would run on win98 just the trial version. That cloned my 2.6gb drive onto the SSD but left the ssd with the SSD 111GB available rather than the same size as the original drive, agreat piece of old software which i will keep handy for anything in the future.

20251104_204852 by Bean Beano, on Flickr
The extra drive was a USB stick.

Norton Ghost doing its thing.

20251104_205056 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Then disconnected the Quantum fireball, connected the CD drive back up, swaped the drives back over in the Bios. Then Win98 booted up super quick. I cant beleive how quick this pc runs.

20251104_210620 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I then went through the setup of the few games ive got on, Doom 1 & 2, Duke 3d, Outlaws which i found the patches to update it. They all ran great. Shadow Warrior still doesnt work but I remember that always been fussy.

I also had been looking for a Pentium MMX sticker for the case as it didnt have one which i thought was strange. I searched for a good while before i found the site geekenspiel they do all the old gel stickers and many others. so i ordered few, they took a bit to arived as tehy came from America but they werent expensive and look exactly as i remember them.

20251101_095858 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I ordered a few to make it worth while.

I decided on this one rather than the brushed looking one.

20251101_105826 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Now time to get it loaded with games!!

I still might do a couple more upgrades as the graphics card can take a ram expansion module, and maybe replace the 166 cpu with a 233mhz. Also i would like a better sound card than the Vibra 16.

Thanks for all the help guys i got there in the end. It wasnt that hard to sort it all out it just took a bit of searching and reading up.
 
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I suspect your issues were because Win95/98 had to reside entirely within the first 4096 cylinders at install time. After that you could more or less move it to wherever you wanted using something like Partition Magic.
 
Just a little update. I put the jumpers back to 233mhz. No issues so far with that.

My extra ram turned up for the ATi rage card. I bought 2 variations as i wasnt sure but this is the one that the card detected on its own "1024200400".

20251115_113616 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

20251115_113537 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I bought it from Ram co shop.de

So i now have it detecting 8mb
20251115_113523 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Im not sure what extra performance i will get or if it just enables higher resolutions at 32bit colour. I have ran Aliens Vs predator and it now seems to run smoother when the aliens are attacking and while shooting but maybe the overclock is helping too.

I also realised the floppy drive light was on constantly so i checked the ribbon cable and it was backwards on the drive end so i swapped that over and i now have a working floppy drive.

Heres what ive got running so far, has anyone any other suggestions?

20251115_121200 by Bean Beano, on Flickr
 
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ATI AIW - that brings back memories. I melted half a dozen decoupling capacitors off the back of one of those during the heatwave in 2003. Still worked fine :D

Cause - Eve Online and the "in-station" graphics which ran in a tight loop and killed quite a few cards (NVidia and ATI) before they finally implemented a frame rate limiter. I lost an Nvidia card to the same thing a few years later.

Quake series would seem to be an obvious omission to your installed games?
 
The obvious one is Heretic as a continuation of the Doom, Hexen series. And then Quake, Quake 2, 3 Arena etc. I forget the exact specs required and the era to be honest but some possibilities:

Medal of Honour series
Counter Strike - servers probably down by now
Tribes 2
Mech Warrior 4
Battlefield 1942 & 2
Ultimate Race Pro
Diablo I & II
Need for Speed series
Star Wars: Dark Forces, Dark Forces 2, Jedi Knight 1, 2 & Academy (most of these are on Steam)
 
Vestas said:
ATI AIW - that brings back memories. I melted half a dozen decoupling capacitors off the back of one of those during the heatwave in 2003. Still worked fine :D

Cause - Eve Online and the "in-station" graphics which ran in a tight loop and killed quite a few cards (NVidia and ATI) before they finally implemented a frame rate limiter. I lost an Nvidia card to the same thing a few years later.

Quake series would seem to be an obvious omission to your installed games?
Click to expand...

I remember those All in Wonder ATI cards hanging around the computer fairs well past their time.
 
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Cenedd said:
The obvious one is Heretic as a continuation of the Doom, Hexen series. And then Quake, Quake 2, 3 Arena etc. I forget the exact specs required and the era to be honest but some possibilities:

Medal of Honour series
Counter Strike - servers probably down by now
Tribes 2
Mech Warrior 4
Battlefield 1942 & 2
Ultimate Race Pro
Diablo I & II
Need for Speed series
Star Wars: Dark Forces, Dark Forces 2, Jedi Knight 1, 2 & Academy (most of these are on Steam)
Click to expand...
I think Quake is the next one to add, not sure why i havent already. I wonder if Quake 2 will run, not sure about the 3rd one, maybe asking a bit much but i will try some of those others too. I have already put Dark forces on but i havent added the shortcut for some reason.
 
Beankp60 said:
I think Quake is the next one to add, not sure why i havent already. I wonder if Quake 2 will run, not sure about the 3rd one, maybe asking a bit much but i will try some of those others too. I have already put Dark forces on but i havent added the shortcut for some reason.
Click to expand...
All of the Quake series would run on Win95/98/Me.
 
You should probably have a browse through www.gog.com to remind yourself what was around - whether you get the games from there or not.

There's a lot of good joystick-based games - X-Wing/TIE Fighter/WC3-Heart of the Tiger/etc. Might have problems with modern joysticks though.
 
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Vestas said:
You should probably have a browse through www.gog.com to remind yourself what was around - whether you get the games from there or not.

There's a lot of good joystick-based games - X-Wing/TIE Fighter/WC3-Heart of the Tiger/etc. Might have problems with modern joysticks though.
Click to expand...
Thats a good shout cheers. I will have to get a joystick for it.
 
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