Windows 98 Gaming PC: The Beige Build

almoststew1990 · 23 Feb 2017 at 23:27

I've been tempted for a while (since I watched Clint from Lazy Game Reviews built a 1994 era DOS PC) to build a Windows 98 PC for some "big box" gaming and, well, just for the fun/challenge! I was aiming for the following spec:

Socket 1 Motherboard
Pentium II or III
128MB or so of SDRAM
??? AGP Graphics card

This was kickstarted by an alcohol-enhanced purchase of a Slot 1 motherboard, an ASUS P2B for £20 from ebay. It seems I got lucky as boards seem to vary in price, even for what appear to be OEM boards, and the ASUS seems this to be quite a good spec (especially with supporting ATX power supplies) and reviewed very well (http://www.anandtech.com/show/113).

Whilst I've got lots of spares for building modern PCs, I really didn't have any old school kit such as:

PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse
IDE Drives or cables
Floppy Drive
Soundcard
Sufficiently beige PC case

I had a look on ebay and saw these drives and cables etc would quickly add up in cost. I thought I could pillage an old PC from Gumtree for the parts, after a quick search I found an 'ancient office clearout' style PC for £7.50! This is what I came home with:

What a beaut! It even included a PS/2 keyboard and mouse! The blue text on top says "P4 2.4GHz 512MB", and it had a sticker saying built in 2003. Around the back was a GPU with VGA and DVI as well as some kind of sound card- this PC might well have everything I need and I get 'free' Pentium 4 bits and bobs!

Naturally the whole lot was covered in dust and rust so I took everything out. The soundcard turned out to be a "CMI8738", which doesn't really mean anything to me. The graphics card was a bit of a mystery with no model numbers stickers. Looked nice though:

When I treated it to what was probably its first clear out in 15 years it turned out it was a 128mb 4200ti Not bad! better than what usually turns out to be a 5200FX!!

Tomorrow the empty case is going straight in the shower to give it a good scrub (when my partner is out of the house) and hopefully the motherboard which should arrive tomorrow can get mounted up. I still need to source a CPU...

orbitalwalsh · 24 Feb 2017 at 08:34

love to see an old skool pc brought up to some modern standards on the inside, like braided cables etc but still plain jane on the outside

think an AIO could be retro fitted?

Rannoch · 24 Feb 2017 at 08:39

IDE cables lol. Brings back some building nightmares.

Duo · 24 Feb 2017 at 11:53

The GPU must be the FTW of its day... It can't possible be bad with the words "win" and "fast" printed on it. All it needs is an "extreme" and it's gotta be a top tier card.

SC0TTRS · 24 Feb 2017 at 11:59

OP, If you were local could have popped around mine and taken all that crap for free! lol

Emlyn_Dewar · 24 Feb 2017 at 12:42

I used to have a Leadtek Winfast FX5950 many years ago. Whatever happened to that company?

Edit: They still exist! Can't remember last time I heard of them!

almoststew1990 · 24 Feb 2017 at 13:06

I bought 3 sticks of 64mb SDRAM on wednesday, they've arrived today

orbitalwalsh said:
love to see an old skool pc brought up to some modern standards on the inside, like braided cables etc but still plain jane on the outside

think an AIO could be retro fitted?

Unfortunately I am filling this old school PC with even older components

I don't think the pentium even has a fan, just a heatsink!

snakefood · 24 Feb 2017 at 13:59

If you really wanted to kick it ol' skool...you need a separate video card & 3d accelerator

voodoo ftw

Rroff · 24 Feb 2017 at 14:03

Duo said:
The GPU must be the FTW of its day... It can't possible be bad with the words "win" and "fast" printed on it. All it needs is an "extreme" and it's gotta be a top tier card.

Elsa Gladiac and Gainward's special editions like the PowerPack!/Ultras were the cards to have of the day.

Jediben · 24 Feb 2017 at 16:25

Hey I used to own a Leadtek 4400. Don't know why an office PC would ever have been kitted out with a 4200 :/

something daft already!! · 24 Feb 2017 at 16:31

I just binned a load of carp like that. I kept my old Voodoo cards though. I have 1, 2 and 3000. The 3000 is still in it's box.

Dandaman · 24 Feb 2017 at 16:50

Loving it!

AmitA · 24 Feb 2017 at 16:52

howiepoohs said:
I just binned a load of carp like that. I kept my old Voodoo cards though. I have 1, 2 and 3000. The 3000 is still in it's box.

Same here, kept my 3DFx cards (Voodoo 5 5500 AGP and 5500 PCI - boxed ... my own little piece of tech history

)

KiiYzOo · 24 Feb 2017 at 19:43

Been wanting to do one of these for a while now after watching LGR as well, I'm thinking something from either around '95/pentium 3 era stuff, will be watching to see what you end up getting

agw_01 · 24 Feb 2017 at 21:42

Leadtek WinFast... those were the days!

CMI8738 is a C-Media 8738... quite a popular chipset for on-board sound back in the day.

I love the thought of having a couple of old PCs for reliving old games, but could just run most things in a virtual machine tbh. My Dad hasn't thrown a machine away since his AMD K6-2 with a Voodoo 5 graphics card.

almoststew1990 · 24 Feb 2017 at 23:07

I bought a Pentium 3 700MHz today. It seems to come with what looks like a daughter board- is this some kind of voltage regulator?

The motherboard arrived today too. For some reason I didn't take any pictures of it loose, so here is one of it in the PC. I put the RAM in, it was incredibly stiff! I put in all the drives and tested them out on the Pentium 4- they were all detected.

I also put the case in the bath to give it a proper clean off whilst my other half is out with her work mates. That says it all really- she is out having a meal and drinking and I'm washing my computer in the bath :/ !

Before and After...

(the big scratch on the side panel was on the other side last time

)

The GPU cleaned up nicely too but I'm half tempted to get something older. I'll stick with it for now, 4200ti should be compatible and I know it works...

Finally I got the keyboard ready by removing ten years worth of... I don't wanna know.

Now all I need now is Windows 98SE. Also games!

almoststew1990 · 24 Feb 2017 at 23:12

howiepoohs said:
I just binned a load of carp like that. I kept my old Voodoo cards though. I have 1, 2 and 3000. The 3000 is still in it's box.

AmitA said:
Same here, kept my 3DFx cards (Voodoo 5 5500 AGP and 5500 PCI - boxed ... my own little piece of tech history )

I originally wanted to go for separate 2D and 3D cards, but the prices of Voodoo 2 / 3 on ebay (£80+!) and the faff with video cables "passing through" (and their relative lack of performance compared to something like the Geforce 256) meant I decided to try to keep this bit simple!

KiiYzOo said:
Been wanting to do one of these for a while now after watching LGR as well, I'm thinking something from either around '95/pentium 3 era stuff, will be watching to see what you end up getting

Pentium 3 is 98/99 really, from my research 95 was more the original Pentium. I went for a P3 as the games I play will probably stray into year 2000 or so, and it should be quite happy playing mid 90s games too.

agw_01 said:
Leadtek WinFast... those were the days!
CMI8738 is a C-Media 8738... quite a popular chipset for on-board sound back in the day.
I love the thought of having a couple of old PCs for reliving old games, but could just run most things in a virtual machine tbh. My Dad hasn't thrown a machine away since his AMD K6-2 with a Voodoo 5 graphics card.

That's good to know, although this is a fairly modern looking PCI sound card (probably the on-board sound jacks broke, so they bought the cheapest sound card available), but it should be good enough for me if it plays nice with Windows 98!

KiiYzOo · 24 Feb 2017 at 23:20

almoststew1990 said:
Pentium 3 is 98/99 really, from my research 95 was more the original Pentium. I went for a P3 as the games I play will probably stray into year 2000 or so, and it should be quite happy playing mid 90s games too.

Yeah I was thinking that I'm not sure if I want to go for a build that'd be the same age as me (from 95) or if I want to go for a P3 build as I really find them quite interesting

agw_01 · 24 Feb 2017 at 23:26

Yeah, you could buy cards with the 8738 chipset. They were, as you say, the cheapest available. Been a long time now but I'm sure you could get them for £12 inc VAT.

Rroff · 24 Feb 2017 at 23:52

Never seen that daughter board before - I've had or installed multiple P3-500, 800 and 1GHz models which didn't wonder if it is something propitiatory to compaq.

EDIT: According to google the VRM module board is related to the Pentium Pro or some Xeons.