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Win 98se compatible AM3 motherboard?


inimbrium

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Hi

I'm new here, just regsitered to ask a few questions, but judging by the looks of this place, I'll be coming back for more.

My question is: Is there such a thing as a Win 98se compatible AM3 motherboard? Basically I have an AMD 955 on an Asus m4a88td-v evo/usb3,  and looking to upgrade to a Ryzen in a few months, and want to have FULL backwards compatibility with some old games I love.

I also have a Core2Duo on an LGA775 ASUS P5Q PRO. Both motherboards are NOT 98 compatible.

Also, what's the most powerful graphics card that is windows 98SE compatible?

I want to build a powerful retro PC that will have dual boot, XP and 98SE.

Thanks

Regards

Inimbrium

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I have 2 AM3+ Motherboards running Windows 98SE. There are no drivers for the built-in Audio or Video. There is an Ethernet Driver but it only works at 10/100Mb and puts up an error message on every boot. A number of my Patches are needed to support Windows 9x.

So far I have only seen a couple of Laptops that are truly incompatable with Windows 9x.

The 7950GT is the most powerful GPU I know of. The 7950 GX2 is technically more powerful but Windows 9x will only use one GPU so it will act the same. The GX2 may be of some value in a dual boot system with XP or later.

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The most easy to handle boards are with the 970A chipset - i have two of those running.
But it's not only the chipset, the layout is as important also - you need two PS/2-ports for ease of use, a PCI-slot for audio add-in, a PCIe-1x for LAN, and a compatible PCIe-GPU.
I use an SSD on port 5, and a DVD on port 6, in compatibility-mode (which works very well).
It works with any other modern OS on port 1-4 in SATA-mode (tried with XP, W7, W10, Ubuntu 64-bit LTS, and SteamOS (! only with a second, modern GPU !).
If you want to use the SATA-ports in W98SE in true SATA-mode, you'll need RLoews SATA-patch - can't say if this is better, as i don't own that patch, but many say it is great.
For GPU i recommend an ATI Radeon x800 PCIe 256MB.
If you want to use an NVidia-GPU, you absolutely need corresponding RLoew NVidia-GPU-driver-patch ($20,--) - then, i recommend the 7600GT PCIe 256MB, or the 7900 GTX PCIe 512MB.
For Audio i recommend the SB Audigy PCI or SB Audigy 2 PCI - used via ebay for about $5 to $8. Only the original old ones, actually, not any "XE"-variant or whatsoever.
For LAN i recommend any PCIe-1x Gigabit card with the RTL 8111B chipset. Should be available brand-new.

Edited by ragnargd
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On 17/01/2017 at 6:17 PM, ragnargd said:

The most easy to handle boards are with the 970A chipset - i have two of those running.
But it's not only the chipset, the layout is as important also - you need two PS/2-ports for ease of use, a PCI-slot for audio add-in, a PCIe-1x for LAN, and a compatible PCIe-GPU.
I use an SSD on port 5, and a DVD on port 6, in compatibility-mode (which works very well).
It works with any other modern OS on port 1-4 in SATA-mode (tried with XP, W7, W10, Ubuntu 64-bit LTS, and SteamOS (! only with a second, modern GPU !).
If you want to use the SATA-ports in W98SE in true SATA-mode, you'll need RLoews SATA-patch - can't say if this is better, as i don't own that patch, but many say it is great.
For GPU i recommend an ATI Radeon x800 PCIe 256MB.
If you want to use an NVidia-GPU, you absolutely need corresponding RLoew NVidia-GPU-driver-patch ($20,--) - then, i recommend the 7600GT PCIe 256MB, or the 7900 GTX PCIe 512MB.
For Audio i recommend the SB Audigy PCI or SB Audigy 2 PCI - used via ebay for about $5 to $8. Only the original old ones, actually, not any "XE"-variant or whatsoever.
For LAN i recommend any PCIe-1x Gigabit card with the RTL 8111B chipset. Should be available brand-new.

Actually I think I have an ATI X800XL and an Audigy 2 lying around somewhere.

Thanks for the info guys!

Edited by inimbrium
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7 hours ago, inimbrium said:

Actually I think I have an ATI X800XL and an Audigy 2 lying around somewhere.

Thanks for the info guys!

I don't know what exactly you have in mind for your 98SE system, but be aware that the ATI X800 cards may have issues with some DOS programs (old DOS games WarCraft and WarCraft 2 for example; as of now these are the only ones I know). Most seem to work fine but it's something to keep in mind. Also I believe Dave-H here had some small annoying issue with X800 and X700 cards specific to his setup but he would have to elaborate further on it.

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> I want to build a powerful retro PC that will have dual boot, XP and 98SE.

Look into the Asrock 4core DUAL-VSTA and DUAL-SATA2 motherboards.  Based on VIA chipset, there are win-98 drivers for everything except HD-audio.  Win-98 drivers for SATA controller means you can set large hard drives to native/sata mode and you won't see the 137gb drive-size limit.  Those boards have PCIe *and* AGP card slots so it will take either type of video card, and will take DDR or DDR2 ram.  These are socket-775 boards.  You'll probably have to look on ebay for them.  These boards were sold new about 9 or 10 years ago.
 

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  • 1 month later...

The 4coreDual with a patched BIOS (4GB Ram) runs W10 64bit, besides XP, i use it with a Q9550S.

P.S.: I did not try for a long time, but i somehow remember to have used a PCIe-card and an AGP card in parallel (or was that with the AM2NF3-VSTA? Or both? Worth trying, perhaps...)

I was not aware of the DOS-problems of the X800, but normally i'd use DosBox anyway, as most DOS-games work just better with it, given your PC ist fast enough. Actually, i use DosBox on the 4coreDual... :-D

The only exceptions can be found on vogons.org, its about a couple of games that absolutely NEED i.e. a VooDoo2 or such (i don't find the thread).

But to be honest, the AM3+ boards work better for me, and just have that much more value with multi-booting. But that's just IMHO.

Edited by ragnargd
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