My Windows 98 (Slot 1, Pentium III) Build

[Ziggy]

Just a couple of minor updates...





I got a couple of Noctua 80mm fans. I didn't know that Noctua had non brown fans. These grey ones actually looks pretty nice in a beige/metal case. They also don't come with the slew of accessories that Noctua fans normally come with, but they were also pretty cheap.

I was briefly thinking about getting a different CPU cooler, something more traditional with a fan. But since this weird tall heatsink seems to be working OK (I can hold my finger on it without getting burned) I'm thinking I'll just leave it. It's definitely a conversation piece, I've never seen one quite like it. I wish I could remember what this came out of, or where I got this CPU from.

Anyway, this motherboard has two fan headers. One CPU and one case. But since I'm not using a CPU fan, I can use both headers to power the two 80mm exhaust fans. That's great because I wont have to use any messy looking adapters. I can more neatly route the wires this way. I still haven't done any proper cable management, I'm waiting until everything is finalized before I bother with that.



I also decided to finally install a USB 2.0 card. The motherboard has two USB ports at the rear, no headers inside, and the rear ports are only 1.1 (so very slow if transferring data). Since I'll be using the PS/2 ports for now, I'll deactivate the on board USB in the BIOS.





This is the USB 2.0 card I'm using. Model # PCIUSB7 (very cryptic). I got a couple of them new when they were still being sold new by NewEgg. You can still easily find them new else where though. I wanted this card for a few reason. Aside from getting USB 2.0 on a few PCs I own that only have USB 1.1, they have a couple of nice features. There's an internal USB port, which I always found to be fairly useless, but it's nice that it's there if I ever need it. But it also has a standard internal header that you can use for front USB ports, and this is mainly why I got it. Also, this VIA chip seems to be pretty stable and well supported.



It also comes with a printed manual and driver CD, which includes drivers for Win98 and up! I know I could locate drivers online, and transfer them to this PC in a number of ways. But it's really nice being able to buy a new product that comes with a manual and driver CD to use with a computer that I don't want to take online. The printed manual also came in handy because it's an actual manual (instead of an Engrish piece of paper that only gives you a URL and warnings) that has the pinout for the USB header. A few posts back, I mentioned this case has front USB ports with separated pins instead of the standard 9-pin connector. So you need to know the pinout to be able to hook it up. Again, I could pull it up online, but it's so much nicer having it instantly in front of you.

This reminds me of my first custom PC that I built for myself, that motherboard only had USB 1.1 as well. I got a USB 2.0 card from a friend, and it took me forever to locate the drivers for it online. It didn't have a header for front ports, only an internal USB A port. So I used a USB cable and spliced it to one of my front ports so I could make use of it. It was perfectly functional, but I wanted something cleaner looking.

I also put a second optical drive in it, the beige CD-RW drive that came out of the case I got for the Socket 7 build. But I forgot to take a picture of it. I'm still not sure what optical drives I'll keep in it though.

[Ziggy]

So I thought I found a good CD drive for this build. It came in the case I got for my Socket 7 build, you can see the drive in this picture. It looks pretty good in the case for this Slot 1 build.

The drive seems to work well, BUT, it has the most annoying high pitch squeal most of the time when a disc is spinning. It is so very annoying, way past the point of being usable. I'm afraid I will have to replace it if I can't figure out how to make the noise go away. And I'm not really looking forward to taking it apart to try and fix the squeal.

In other news, I royally fucked up the Windows 98 installation that I had for this Slot 1 build. I wanted to see if the VIA "4-in-1" chipset drivers would improve the system at all, and I was curious to see if maybe it would fix the problem I have with the RAM being misreported (the BIOS and OS only show 256 MB when I have 512 MB installed). But the system failed to boot after the installation. So I booted into safe mode so I could go into Device Manager and remove that hardware, so that my next normal boot would result in the Found New Hardware Wizard thing. But there's so many things under Device Manager for stuff that's integrated on the board, someone of them slightly cryptic sounding. So after having to boot into safe mode a few times to remove more hardware, I was finally able to get the Windows to boot to the desktop... Only it wouldn't load explorer.exe LOL. I got an error message saying that explorer.exe was missing and I have to reinstall the operating system. Never saw that before. Oh well. So I tried to install Win98 again on top of the existing installation, but that ultimately didn't work. So I decided to just wipe the drive and start fresh.

Right now I'm using an 80 GB HDD, which is excessive for 98, but I currently don't have a spare HDD with a smaller capacity. So I decided to try and be fancy and create two 40 GB partitions. I thought maybe it would be fun to dual boot the PC with two different OSes. So I installed Win98 on the first partition, and it works fine. And then I went to install Windows ME on the second partition. But the installer for ME defaulted to try and install on my 98 partition. I'll have to look into how to work around this. Perhaps I have to format the other partition first.

Which, by the way, I used Super Fdisk for the first time. I made a bootable CD for it (you could also make a bootable floppy). It's definitely a tool worth having in your kit. It's loads easier to use than regular old Fdisk, and much faster to format as well. It does a lot more. You can read all that it does on this page: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/detail ... fdisk.html

I also tried out a new sound card for the first time. Previously, I had a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 in there. The Audigy 2 was a little difficult to get the drivers installed in 98. I think this card is meant more for XP. After getting the drivers set up for it, it works fine for Windows games. But I couldn't get it to work at all for DOS games. Although I'm planning on having a dedicated DOS computer (the Socket 7 build) but it would be nice to have the option on this PC as well.

Some years back, when I first started collecting parts for this project, I scored a NOS Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects. This card doesn't seem to be too highly regarded. But I can't find any actual reviews or sound samples for it. So I wanted to see how it was, especially since I know it'll work in DOS.



I absolutely love NOS stuff! Anyways, drivers were installed for it during the OS installation. And it shows up as a SB16 in Device Manager. So the first thing I did was install The Ultimate DOOM (naturally). But, the game hangs soon after starting. I can hear the brief music on the title screen, but it freezes a few seconds after starting a new game. But from the few seconds I can hear before it freezes, it sounds alright to me. I'm no OPL expert or anything, so maybe I'm not the best judge of how it compares. Since I got this card NOS, I have the driver CD that came with it. When I have time to mess around with it more, I'll see if I can install better drivers. Maybe that's why the game was freezing?

3715

[opa]

made any progress on either project build?

[marurun]

I'm a hold-up. I have a sound card for him and I'm struggling to get it out to him.

[Ziggy]

made any progress on either project build?

I'm a hold-up. I have a sound card for him and I'm struggling to get it out to him.

No worries, marurun. You're really not holding me up at all! No rush whatsoever!

My last updates to these threads was early-mid December. I just kinda slowed down and then stopped during the holidays. But no worries, I'll resume soon! I've actually been working in the background on a few things. I have a few more builds planned. I'm just not sure how to post about them without you guys thinking I went totally overboard with this stuff. Which is probably too late, you all already think that LOL, and you're not wrong! But I thought I would put some space in between posting about more builds so it isn't any kind of topic overload on the forums.

I can't decide how popular these threads have been (without a like system). My last post in this thread, the view count was 3715. Now as of this post, the view count is 6392. So that's quite a lot of views without any bumps. So something like 2,500 views in a single month, which is historically a slow month for the forums here, sounds like people might actually be interested in this stuff despite the lack of many replies. It's just hard to tell.

[Anapan]

I as well haven't sent over the box of PC components. Last week a friend dumped another huge bin full of older computers and PVRs and I just finished stripping them down and recycling the shells. More hard drives to sort through. I'll finish packing the confirmed "want" pc parts in the next couple of days. Probably ship out Monday or Tuesday.

[Ziggy]

I picked up a few things for this build in 2023, I just haven't had a chance to install them or update this thread.






The CD burner that I had in there was almost exactly what I wanted, but it had one problem. There's a high pitch squeal when the disc is spinning, and it's loud enough that I don't think I can use the drive. Some games require the disc to be in the drive, and not all games have patches to remove this need. I suppose I could install a virtual drive. That might be fine for games that I download and are already disc images, but it would be kind of stupid to rip discs that I own original copies of. I mean, the point of using vintage hardware is to get the authentic experience. If I'm ripping games I own to disc images to mount in a virtual drive, then what's the point of even owning those games?

So I was on the look out for a CD drive, but I wanted something very specific. What I consider to be the classic IDE CD drive. A headphones jack on the left with a volume wheel next to it. Then an eject button on the right, with a track skip button next to it. And I wanted it to be very plain and square looking. This is what I most often saw in run-of-the-mill computers in the 90s. The drive I had in there was almost perfect (I just realized I never posted a pic of it in this tower, but you can see the drive in this pic) but I didn't like that it was a CD burner. I knew a few people in the late 90's and early 2000's that got a new computer that came with a burner, but I knew more people that owned an older computer and added a burner to an open drive bay. And that's what I wanted to simulate with this build. The computer was built with a standard CD-ROM drive, and then a burner was added later. In fact, that second drive I have in there now is the drive I bought and added to my PC in the early 2000's that had only a standard CD-ROM drive. It's a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.

Anyways, I stumbled upon these Sony drives on eBay. They were new old stock, and the seller had a pile of them (they're all gone now). The aesthetics are perfect! After seeing them in person, and compared to my tower, they are slightly yellowed. But not bad enough for me to care. But more importantly, they function great. Well, at least one of them does, I haven't tested the second one yet.



I decided to swap sound cards and I think I found the final one that I will keep in here. I originally had an Audigy 2 in there, and it was fine, but it lacks the joystick port. These cards actually have an internal header to add one (probably a PCI bracket) but my revision card does not have that header populated. There's also some missing circuitry and I have no idea if it has to do with the joystick/midi port, so I'd rather not waste the time messing around with adding one. I could get another Audigy 2 card that has the joystick header, but I couldn't find the adapter for sale. I could probably make my own, but again, I don't feel like messing around with that. My resolve was to just get another card, and move the Audigy 2 to another build I have planned.

So I decided to go with the Sound Blaster Live! SB0100. I actually already have two Live! cards, but they're Dell OEM variants. Among other things, apparently they are notoriously hard to get working because of drivers. The SB0100 is the retail variant, and isn't at all expensive, so I decided to pick one up.

The SB0100 is awesome so far, I'm glad I got one. I got the retail CD and decided to due a full install (including all of the bloatware). I'm eventually going to do a fresh OS install when things are finalized, so I figured let me see what all the software is. With the full install, there's a splash screen before the Windows 98 login sound plays, and it plays some EAX sound that has some serious stereo panning (probably pseudo surround sound if I put headphones on). There's a bunch of tools in the system tray, and a pop-down menu that's always at the top of the screen. The pop-down menu has a bunch of settings for the card, so it's kind of useful. But I think it would drive me nuts if it was always there, so when I do a fresh OS install I'll probably opt to install the drivers only.

One neat thing I've noticed is that this card has the standard CD in, but also has an SPDIF input. And my optical drive has an SPDIF output. So I'm definitely going to take advantage of that! I've only ever used the standard analog output from CD drives for sound cards. I don't think I'm going to hear an audible difference, but just knowing there's no potential for interference is nice. Also, I got myself a Dupont crimping tool, so I can make my own SPDIF cable. Which means I can make a custom length cable, and route it nicely in the case instead of just having that cable B line from the drive to the card like you normally have to do.



edit: I almost forgot to mention... Now that I've decided on using the SB Live! card, I'm very tempted to get a Live! Drive...



This totally would have been something I would have put in my PC back in the day, if I could have afforded it. But aside from it being awesome, I have no real use for it on a Windows 98 machine. I've thought about getting one anyway, but it would drastically change the look of the tower and I'm not sure if I want to do that.