Building a Windows 98 PC

almoststew1990 · 17 Feb 2017 at 13:56

I've been thinking about building a Windows 98 PC for playing old big box PC games. A couple of questions:

1) I currently have an S775 / 2GB RAM / ATI 4850 PC running Windows XP. I'm wondering if I should just stick with this for simplicity and convenience. Windows XP can connect to WiFi and automatically runs drivers for keyboards / mice / usb sticks. I'm pretty sure backwards compatibility for Windows 95/98 games on XP is pretty good. So this option would be the most convenient. But then building a Windows 98 PC and getting the thing to work properly would be half the fun for me!

2) If I do build a W98 era PC, what spec would you recommend? From my googling, I was thinking along the lines of a Slot 1 Pentium 2 system with a TNT2, with IDE drives. Computer tech evolved a lot at this time, would I be limiting my game play ability with the above? Also, is it a pain in the ass to build a PC of this era? (were motherboards and cases using ATX? Power supply standards different back then?)

almoststew1990 · 17 Feb 2017 at 15:58

breadturbo said:
I've got two old ones i use for games, the one in my sig is very annoying, takes a lot of messing with the good old 640kb memory to get things running.
I also have an old dell xps t700r which is a p3 700mhz, 256mb ram, an old 40gb ide. 5.1 creative sound and voodoo 5500 connected to a 19" 1280x1024 samsung lcd, it's the nuts for things like Janes longbow, f19 etc.
This system uses an atx psu, the 1+2 used the old slot type psu connector I forget the name.

The only thing with win98 is you have to manually set irq/dma etc and getting sound to work properly with some old games is trial and error(no problem if you're an old fart like me that grew up with that)
Also win98 supports upto 64gb hdd's, 98se upto 137gb.

I would be going 98SE anyway, as SE includes some plug and play support I think? So it sounds like it would be worth building one (Which would be part of the fun!) over using my existing PC XP 'retro' PC. To play games like Need for Speed 3-5, No-One Lives Forever, Sim Copter what sort of hardware would I be looking at? This would be at 1024*768 or perhaps 1280*1024 on a Dell VGA LCD 5:4 display.

almoststew1990 · 19 Feb 2017 at 19:45

Right I decided to go the pain-in-the-bum authentic route and build a W98 machine! I've got my hands on an ASUS P2B (Slot 1 / Pentium 2) on ebay for £20, which I'm pretty pleased about. Couple of questions:

Recommend me a GPU? I'd be hoping to go combined 2d/3d accelerator card. What were the main chipsets o this era except for the Voodoo 3 and TNT?
Will any old (or more to the point, 'new') 80GB IDE HDD work?
I take it SDRAM is different to DDR1 SDRAM (I recall DDR is dual data rate or something?)

almoststew1990 · 19 Feb 2017 at 22:39

I've now discovered AGP was forwards compatible as well as backwards compatible and I can use any AGP card that can do 3.3v and 1.5v (i.e. two keys in the teeth). I might put in a 4 series MX as they're very common and cheap on ebay and despite being very underwhelming at the time are no doubt better than a TNT2 or GeForce 256.

Thanks for the RAM offer but the sticks I need seem to be under £2 on eBay anyway!

Yeah I'll need a soundcard- I thought I had a Soundblaster Live of somekind lying around, but I think I binned it. Again these are cheap enough on eBay! I'll probably go for something highly compatible / easy to set up...