Jump to content

Thanks for letting me join, I want to build a 98se machine


GamexFr34k

Recommended Posts

Hello

I am looking to get into gaming on a 98se machine, I remember playing games like, Diablo/Diablo II, Morrowind, Black and White, Commander Keen, Sim Tower, Doom/Doom2, Wolfenstien 3D, American Magee's Alice, Vampire Last Masquerade: Bloodlines, Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX, 7th Guest, 11th hour, Myst, duke Nukem, ReVolt, Beavis and Butthead Virtual Stupidity, i could go on. I have a stack of games from the hay day of PC gaming, before everything got released on everything, and i played all these games on a windows 98se Machine my parents had, but i have no memory of how powerful the system was. I know we had a 128mb graphics diamond card, and a soundblaster audio card, but that is as far as i remember. I took it among my self to research, and came up with a build, i know some people will say  emulate,  or just buy a p3 or p4 computer off  ebay, but i want to have the enjoyment of building systems, and considering i was too young to build a 98 machine, i figured any time but now would be the best time. I just  would like to know what people think of this build, and how well  it would work, i believe the oldest game ill be playing is commander keen,  which was a 91 title, i remember having to  go  into Dos Prompt to run it, and vampire the last masquerade bloodlines,  which was released in 2004, i know some of these can be played with in windows 10 with mods, and steam and what not, but non the less id like  to play these games on a 98 machine. I didn't get a XP machine til 2005 (that i built i was 17),  so i just have a lot of memories with  gaming on a 98  machine. i had XP  till 7 came out, but that is the time i was mostly doing console gaming, and really didn't pc game again till i got win 7, just to realize all my old games except morrowind, didn't work, so  i don' t have a whole lot of Windows XP  memories besides my space  youtube, maybe some Console Emulation, but i have all those consoles and games back from my childhood, the only thing missing is a 98 machine. and here is what i came up with, and would like some opinions please. my PC knowledge besides playing games from this era is slim to non.

ASRock P4I65GV , Socket 478

2.0 GHz P4 Socket 478 CPU. 400 MHz Bus

Crucial (2x256MB) PC-3200 512 MB DIMM 400 MHz DDR Memory

EVGA GeForce 6200 256MB DDR2 AGP Graphics Card

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAAEE3ZZ6288 Hard Drive

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703034 PSU

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821121001 Floppy Drive

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9PV3Y37398 CD/DVD Drive (dvd is not really needed)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811144296 Case (maybe ugly but will be  easy to stash behind monitor)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6J35NX0371 CPU Cooler

I just hope this isn't too powerful to run some of the older games, but it is pretty much max of what windows 98se can handle, i know the diamond 128 graphics card was a PCI card, and not AGP, and  if i remeber right we had only a 40gb hard drive, Ram  i am really unsure how much ram we had, and i know  we didn't have a p4,  we had i believe what ever AMD around P3 or P4 Equivalent, i believe it was p3 thought, because if i remember right after building my XP machine in 2005, i had  cheaper end parts, it only cost me some where around 500-600 dollars at microcenter to build it,  and after my dad seeing  what XP was like on my system, he went out and got a copy, and it wouldn't on his system (the system i grew up playing on), he had to build a whole new machine because of something to do with the cpu and ram or  something along  the lines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


thank you :). yes very much so, mainly with sony  and nintendo, :) NES and PS1 to current,also have genesis, xbox  and xbox 360, the xbone lacks a lot of exclusives, i can just play it on my current PC, ps4 has some nice exclusives though specially in RPGS. PC gaming has  been apart of my life too since i was 3, on dos and windows 3.1, but, my dad was, and still is a big computer guy, we had a 386, and he taught me how to do dos commands at a very young age, but my fondest memories in  when we had a windows 98 Machine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just wanted to say that for the older games, alot of them pefer a Pentium 3 machine (nothing more), and a 3DFX graphics card (so a Voodoo).

Also I totally still want to get a classic PC, as I have alot of older games that I cannot run currently. :(

I also want to say that personally I love Windows 9x, and if it could run modern games i'd be on it in a shot. As I grew up with Windows 95 and Windows ME and they blow the water out of the newer ones.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On Monday, May 22, 2017 at 5:12 PM, GamexFr34k said:

...pretty much max of what windows 98se can handle...

1 hour ago, James Pond said:

Just wanted to say that for the older games, alot of them pefer a Pentium 3 machine (nothing more), and a 3DFX graphics card (so a Voodoo).

I've never seen any reason to artificially limit system performance for 9x. I've used 3+GHz P4 processors with it for years. Why hold yourself back? Games from the later 9x-era can certainly benefit from increased performance (WarCraft III comes to mind).

What specific older games run better on a less-powerful system (besides true DOS games such as WarCraft/WarCraft 2... DOSBox could be a good solution for this)?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, LoneCrusader said:

I've never seen any reason to artificially limit system performance for 9x. I've used 3+GHz P4 processors with it for years. Why hold yourself back? Games from the later 9x-era can certainly benefit from increased performance (WarCraft III comes to mind).

What specific older games run better on a less-powerful system (besides true DOS games such as WarCraft/WarCraft 2... DOSBox could be a good solution for this)?

i would agree on this, if you are worried about some games preferring no more than pentium iii speeds, not running well or problematic, there is some programs that can limit cpu speed, something down to like 200mhz or lower which may help with compatibility with some dos games or possibly disabling of cache with the cpu to also help with compatibility or functionality with a specific program or game. 

some of the newer games that work on windows 98SE require fairly high specs to run smoothly on high settings such as fable the lost chapters, far cry 1,  etc. i would love to give you build options / suggestions to parts, pm me if you want with price / budget range, etc. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From what I remember the computer i played on from back in the day, played all these games with no issues, and i kinda want something that will run these games still but  was considered BEST of the BEST yknow :P at the time, just because i can :P not that its required or needed, I called my dad and asked him if he could remember. ( sorry this might be a lengthy reply)

mobo: unknown (i know it was a biostar)

CPU: Amd Slot A Socket 800mhz

Ram 128mb-256mb SD ram he couldn't remember exact

GPU 128mb Nvidia Diamond brand PCI graphics card (upgraded in 2001 when asherons call dark majesty expansion was released) (originally came with a nvidia geforce 2 64mb pci card )

The games i remember playing or seen my dad playing on this machine with no issues with speed long after the  graphics card upgrade

Sim tower, Commander Keen Goodbye Galaxy, 7th Guest, 11th Hour, Myst, Riven, Myst III, Diablo, Diablo II, Chasm the Rift, Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstien 3D, Return to Castle Wolfenstien, American Mcgee's Alice, The Elder scrolls III morrowind, Beavis and butthead virtual stupidity, Revolt, Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, Tomb Raider, 1,2,3,4,5, Final fantasy VII,VIII, IX, Anarchy Online, City of Hereos, Asherons Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Ever Quest, The Sims,  C&C Renegade, tiberian sun, red alert and red alert 2, war craft I,II,III, star craft, Quake, Quake 2 quake 3, duke nukem 3D, Need for Speed, Star, Need for Speed Porsche unleashed, Need for speed Hot pursuit, need for speed High Stakes, Seige: Tribes, Tribes 2, Star wars Jedi Outcast, Jedi Outcast II, The Sims. 

and not to dog on voodoo or anything, but we never had a voodoo card, and i was able to play all those games with out issues, and we had what you could consider a budget PC back in 99, 2000, andd from what i understand 3dfx around that time i had this computer  was already in nvidia's hands,

Games that worked but, ran either slow or fast. also games i'm not to worried about playing on this machine

The first Command and Conquer ran fast, Sims 2 had  to do some sort of trickery to run, but very long load times but once done played just fine, Fable the lost Chapters ran only in lowest Setting, Halo ran in medium settings, Halo II ran in lowest settings, long load times, considered playable crashed a lot  , Need for Speed underground, ran in lowest settings, some times hiccuped or once and a while crashed.

and going by your' guy's info, and the info i got from my dad, in order to have a similar experience, but have something that would have been considered top notch of that time,  this is what i should prob go with.

CPU: Pentium 3  1.0Ghz

MOBO Socket 370 Motherboard with AGP

Ram 1 stick of 512mb of 133 sd ram

Geforce 5700 128mb

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A voodoo card isn't required, it is just a favorite. On AGP you can go up to 250MB VRAM so there are a lot more options. The only real reason to use a Voodoo card now is if you want to run Glide and that could be specific enough to warrant another computer to run those games.

Here are my computer's specs for reference:

Mainboard: Intel D850MV
CPU: Intel Pentium IV 2.0GHz
RAM: 768MB RDRAM PC800
Video: Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT 256MB

Note that the P4 on an Intel board require a 400W PSU. It can run just about anything but it has Windows 98FE, so no actual DOS is present.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

RDRAM stands for RAMBUS. It was created with the idea of being different and better. Unfortunately it really wasn't better than the current standards and was VERY expensive at the time and also each RIMM required a heatsink to be mounted on them along with needing to have a special CRIMM terminator installed if you didn't occupy all RAM slots, so RDRAM only really lasted a short time and just sort of faded away into oblivion. Now this I'm not sure of, but I think RIMMs also needed to be installed in pairs, you couldn't use just 1 piece. I might be wrong on that so don't quote me on that one. RAMBUS is still very much alive and developing other computing solutions. A little tidbit, the Nintendo 64 actually uses a very early form of RAMBUS RAM. So when you hear that you need the 8MB expansion pack for games like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, that's RAMBUS RAM you're upgrading! Although the standard 4MB was also RDRAM as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/3/2017 at 0:19 PM, Tommy said:

Unfortunately it really wasn't better than the current standards

In my own experience, 512MB RDRAM was faster (better/whatever in XP) than 1GB DDR. It wasn't until I was able to get a board/cpu with DDR2 did I abandon Rambus on my main XP PC. And by that time, 1GB wouldn't cut it anymore anyways. This is why it is now in my Win98. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...