I picked up so many P4 machines at my local flea market years ago for almost nothing. At the time I didn't think too much of them, but I'm glad I held onto them.
Yea and most Windows 98 games run just fine under XP. Sometimes things work even better under XP, for example enabling anti-aliasing, under 98 in many games it doesn't work.
Watching Duke Nukem almost brought tears to my eyes. I loved this game! I lost so many hours of sleep trying to get to the next level. It was sooooo much fun!
Only down side to these later generation boards is that you have to be careful about the AGP slots. Some of them do not support AGP 1x at all and others have higher voltages that can fry popular retro cards like Voodoo 3/5. If you do go with a P4 build make sure you get a later generation video card. Something like Geforce 4 ti - 6 series or the ATI equivalent. Plus once you start getting past the 1ghz range 99% of all games that would benefit from that will run perfect on Windows XP and have nothing to do with DOS or any real benefit of running on 98.
I have had P4s for this purpose since the last 20 years and I also have true Slot1 P3 etc I still use today. I have tons of vintage computer hardware from 486 and up. but I always prefer the Soundblaster FM music over regular Midi
3:30 WOW thanks for that information USB2 only works with certain CPU's. I did not know. I was going to try USB2 and old CPUS, so you saved me lots of time and trouble.
Really liked this and I dont know why but I never considered Win98 on a P4 until RMC sold those NetVistas. My P4 is running XP, and I now have an IBM Aptiva AMD K6-2 450 that is the Windows 98 rig, but this video has really made me think I could maybe duel boot the P4 for longevity. Very very interesting.
Reminds me of my Pentium 3 - 450mhz back in the day. Came with a whopping 64mb of ram, 32mb TNT2 Ultra/Vivo, 9Gb HDD and a gigantic 17" Adi Viewpoint. $3100 lol.
That sounds a lot like what I had. :) Minus the price... got mine for free, I think... it was a Frankenstein build of various bits and pieces I found chucked away or bought from other computers. (I was a little late to the party, but I got there just in time to experience the older tech)
@@warrax111 You drove Mendocino too? I drove her till 2010 on WinME. Nothing problem with them, even i had my first facebook account with this machine.
+The Examined Life (of Gaming) Windows 98 has no PCI-E support, and Intel chipsets from i910 has no win98 drivers. But ASUS P5PE-VM is the best choice - i865G AGP chipset with win98 support and cpu from any s775 P4 or Pentium D to Conroe based Core 2 Duos (E6xxx in overclock mode because of 1066 MHz FSB), Pentiums and Celerons.
+Jure L most P965 boards do that, golden middle of 775)). From top end some 3rd and 4th series boards supports (unofficial) P4 (ASUS P5E3 for example). From low end, latest i945GC boards supports Wolfdale core. So it is not a problem, at all.
+The Examined Life (of Gaming) Celeron D of Single core does be a "Better High-end". But I am sure that's "Best Motherboard of 98SE High-End" is Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775 or AsRock 775VM800Pro-DDR2/775i65G R3.0 (All of boths are be Included Drivers for Windows 98 but Newest Revision does be Support All Celeron D's CPU's) But if you want playing that's 7300GT (82.69) or 6200 LE (81.93) [256MB or 512MB|AGP] would be better workouts than a ATi's olders Graphics cards (Last is a: 9800,Seriously - That's is from 2003.) Maximum RAM for 98SE workout it's a 1156MB without Modificate or 2048MB/3072MB with Modificate. (DDR2 would be fastest than DDR,when Can be work both. - Because that's is RAM not HDD Connect.) PATA 133 it's does depend for HDD. (SATA doesn't works.) DVD Burner can be works on Windows 98. Now some motherboards can be works with "Stock AC'97 Codec"
so much nostalgia... the old games.. the frustration of setting up audio on dos game, etc etc i have my p4 machine somewhere in my storage, maybe i should dig it out some day and boot it up
Found a complete system dumped on the side of the road, so still pretty cheap even 5 years after this video. 😂 ASUS socket 478 DDR333 motherboard, 1.8GHz CPU. Nice and retro - and free! Case was missing the front plastic bits and sides. No problem, pulled everything out and just running it on a bench. Still got the I/O plate for later, which is nice. Should see the prices on eBay for the earlier stuff now - it's pretty rough. Having Intel when I was a kid was just a dream too. My first three systems were Cyrix P150+ then MII-333 with 8mb SIS on the motherboard then Duron 700 with 32mb TNT2 M64. I have really happy memories tinkering with this stuff.
This makes total sense and I think Pentium 4 will be the last platform to truly have any retro status. It's like the last legacy platform but with just enough modern convenience, basically the ultimate retro gaming PC. Literally couldn't resist ordering an old Pentium 4 desktop with AGP graphics after watching this. Thanks for the brilliant advice.
@Paya Chinglish this. If you get decent Pentium 4, it will handle Dosbox, so you don't have to have ISA card and slow enough machine for some DOS games. As you can go with Windows XP or 7 on that build, and use Dosbox. Dosbox emulate ISA slot, and will handle old DOS games, that wasnt optimalized on faster CPU very easily. For more demanding games, that are later DOS games, you can go to real DOS, with PCI sound card. Those game usually support it. Pentium 4 2+ Ghz would handle those later DOS games very good. Maybe 1024x768 in software render is still not enough, but noone played it in that era on those resolutions. Usually maximum 640x480... all beyond was slide show even on fastest CPU's of last DOS era (Pentium II 300-450). So yes, Pentium 4 can be best and fastest windows98 supported platform, and you can use real DOS in it, with combination of DOSBOX for ISA soundcard issue.
Been messing with this project off and on for some time since the first motherboard I received did not function properly, and I've only had so much time and space to work with. I have built a similar machine, but currently am trying to get a gameport joystick to detect in win98 not sure if I need other drivers or what. Have an "Advanced Gavis Joystick" 3 button two axis joystick, and the interesting Nintendo PC Flight stick. Trying to use the gameport on the "AOpen Cobra Soundcard". Wasn't finding much help elsewhere
the boot disk for installing win98 also serves to install windows 95 and has support for a USB keyboard and mouse different from the DOS 622c boot disk ... I have the original DOS 622C floppy disks that install on HD and windows 95 on diskettes if you want to pass you and an english version that i found in the old the pirate by ... i also have norton ghost 2002 if you need to and just talk.
Hi Phil, I've been following your channel for a while now and this video inspired me to look up a P4 machine. I have an HP XW4200 workstation on its way. It is socket 478, around 3.2ghz I believe. It comes with Opl3 and soundblaster compatibility, so hopefully I can throw in some MS-Dos gaming. It also has a Radeon HD6670 so games of the early 2000s should look reasonably decent too :) keep up the good work! Daz.
You are right about all 10 reasons yes, i did build a P4 retro pc. But after couple of days, one thing was missing.... The love for the system. My love and passion for Pentium III is off the ruffffff😂😂 Start collecting parts/building a PIII system now
Im looking at doing this with an old P4 system, only issue is capacitor plague. 2 old p4 systems ive found have bulging caps that im going to have to try and replace and its not really my forte. maybe better off finding a new motherboard.
This weekend I got my 533FSB P4 2.66Ghz running on a Portwell industrial motherboard with 3 ISA slots, PCI and an AGP slot. It's running WinXP at the moment but I'll dual boot Win98SE soon. In the meantime, I have a P3 933(@700) running with a Creative Labs AWE32. It was a pain getting the autoexec.bat and config.sys setup to load the Sound Blaster drivers and load everything in upper memory, but I made it happen (thanks NOEMS). It has a Geforce FX 5200 which is fine for light Win98SE 3D and DOS tasks. Thanks to +PhilsComputerLab and this great video for showing me the possibilities!
+Barack Smith the 6000 series lost support for fog table and 8-bit palletized textures. I actually bought a Quadro FX 3000 for it which rocks. I also have a 6800GT in the Portwell P4 now too so the best of both worlds.
I have an old IBM ThinkCentre desktop, the kind that sits under a monitor. It's a P4 machine into which I put a Prescott 3.8 GHz P4 I had laying around. As far as I know, this is the fastest P4 Intel ever made, but I'm sure that it's the fastest one this machine can accept. It also has Hyper Threading, the original version that nobody seemed to care much for until it was re-introduced with the Nehalem processors. This machine utilizes a riser card with two expansion slots. One of the slots is a PCI slot, but the other is a PCI-Express slot. It looks like an x16 slot, it's the same physical size, but it's electrically an x1 slot, so if you put an x16 card into it, it won't POST. That is, unless you are smart enough to trick the machine. I did this by putting electrical tape on all of the pins past the 7th pin. Just cover up all of the pins past the 7th with a piece of electrical tape and gently plug the card in, and it works perfectly as an x1 graphics card. I had a 6600GT laying around, so that's what I used. I installed Windows 98 on the thing and my goodness does it freaking fly. I wish modern computers were instantly responsive the way that this thing is. I still love 98 and while this hardware is obviously overkill and never meant to be be used with it, it works so much better than I expected.
I just built a P4 system with 865G motherboard, 512MB RAM and 20GB hdd with Win98 installed. But when I try playing DOS games I get errors like “too big to fit into memory” or “Not enough memory”. Any reason for that? Thanks! Love your channel!
Fuckin dope dawg. Love that Midi sound. Wish more games nowadays would imitate Midi sounds over the almost cliche 8 bit sounds man. Sounds so gooooooddddd!!!!
It’s 2023 and I’m back here after my old Pentium 2 and 3 machine broke down so finding either one of them is harder and need some time. Meanwhile, I saw an Asus SOCKET 478 board with SIS chipset for very cheap so I decided to try it out.
Eventually it turns out well despite a non Intel board. The specs here are: Asus P4S-333VM SIS Chipset Socket 478 Motherboard Intel Pentium 4 Willamette 1.7Ghz Processor 512MB DDR RAM Inno3D Nvidia FX5500 128MB Graphics Card Sound Blaster Audigy PCI Intel Pro 100 PCI Ethernet Card Windows 98 SE.
Hopefully picking up p4 dell dimension or a hp 5100 today $20 and $30 respectively hoping the HP has a AGP slot.Great videos man.I had a IBM aptiva back in the day.Fav game definitely Dark Reign.
+Michael Kreitzer The Aureal Vortex 2 is a fantastic sound chip. It was so good that Creative bought the company and killed it all. To this day, if you play A3D surround games with headphones, it competes well with modern CMSS-3D and SBX from Creative.
+PhilsComputerLab indeed, I boycotted creative for a long time over killing A3D. That to this day we remain stuck with simulating 5.1 or 7.1 speakers instead of true positional audio can be tied to that event. It is my hope that VR will pick up where A3D left off. The oculus audio sdk is promising, and Ossic is developing headphones to promise to calculate personal HRTF's! What really impressed me in this video was the wavetable synth. Can this audio setup handle creative soundfont files? If I recall quite a few win98 era games came with those. One standout for me is the PC port of Final Fantasy 7. If you wanted a true to the original music experience you had to be able to use soundfonts.
And Windows Vista when they killed it for Creative EAX. At least that technology worked quite well, but now we have to use ALchemy for old games and newer games, like you say, simulate speakers, rather than render the audio in 3D. For loading Creative SoundFonts you're better off with a Live! or Audigy. I actually don't know if the Vortex 2 can load any SoundFonts at all, I just use a wavetable board for that purpose. It's one of the few cards that has a wavetable header that works under DOS.
This brought me back memories. When I was younger, I had multiple PCs: one with an intel 440BX-2 (Pentium II) another one with intel VC820 (Pentium III and 512MB RIMM memory) and an Intel D850EMV2 (Pentium 4, 2GB RIMM IIRC) motherboards. All ran great, however I sold/gave away all of them.
found a Pentium IV Windows ME machine in the rubbish, took it back home and it booted right up, albeit the hard disk being broken, i just threw in an 800mb HDD and installed DOS. Afterwards i did a case swap, so now it looks like a $1500 gaming pc, just because i thought it funny, and i had the case to spare.
Pentium 4 for the Win for a budget Windows 98 retro pc perfect single core I can't wait to refurbish the free Pentium 4 i got for free complete system with hdd ram cpu etc I got everything to upgrade it MS Dos will run blitzing fast especially a SSD too I got a spare 120GbWD Green only a few months old thanks for another cool video phil
Why Deus EX is lagging so much... it doesn't matter if i use WIndows 98/ 2000ME and if I use TNT 2 or Geforce 2 MX/ GTS it runs bad.... its strange.... and hitman COdename 47 runs bader too than normal with Textur ebugs....
I have some of these AsRock mobos, 2 P4i65G and 2 P4i65GV (the variant with the propietary AGI slot), i'm not currently using any of them except for some planned build since i already have P4 builds made with better/higher end mobos (ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe, Abit AI7, Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G...), i have many (actually kinda too many) P4s, just like 120 of them i think from a 1.5 Willamette up to a 3.8 GHz P4 670
as i am watching this , i find it rather interesting that people my age and younger want to run their old games again, but when i had my old machine , thea pressure was to upgrade , always up grade . i got a 386 and that was up graded to a 486 untill the 10 meg hard drive gave up the ghost . good show there .
Ha, I remember the need to upgrade as well. At least we got a decent upgrade, I mean going from a 486 to a Pentium 166 for example was a huge upgrade. But do you remember how many DOS games didn't work properly with Windows and PCI sound cards? That was an issue for me back in the day. I dual booted for a while and hung on to my ISA Sound Blaster for that reason.
diddn use it for games but did have many problems with apps , however that was the old open seagte frame hd crashing whenever the weather changed or i deleted or installed things . the rig was used to control a old school printing press. hem the amber monitor had screen burnin as the prior owners couldnt turn off the monitor whilst the printing press , oops along came wordstar and obsoleted that machine , thus i got my first computer .:)
Here in Czech Republic it's same, you can find Pentium I, II and III in dust bins or people have that in attic or in cellar or you can "buy" Pentium 4 PC for bottle of alcohol. :-D But it's probably changing in these days, but there is too much Pentium I-III CPUs so it can't have some magical price.
@@xyzzy-dv6te I checked Ali and Ebay and I am shocked from prices of old HW, it looks like I wasted thousands of dollars by shooting to that. :-D It's ridiculous how people think it has price only because it's 20 years old. For example motherboard with socket 370 is like 2000 CZK on ali or ebay, but you can buy it from Czech bazaar for something like 300 CZK. :-D I know they have almost new HW on Ali or completely new, but HW from early 2000s was used only short time, if someone bought PC in 2001 then probably it was trash 2 years later and another 2 years later it was good only for playing solitaire so it ended somewhere in storage room and nobody touched that another 15 years so I am sometimes very surprised how good is condition of old HW. Not always, if you buy PC from gypsy then you can find dead mouse inside, I am speaking about PCs from normal people. :-D
I got a asus p5p800 (i865pe supports LGA775 pentium4s) with a pentium 4 540 (prescott@3.2GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB) for free. Now I am thinking of building a windows98 beast machine around it, with a geforce 5900 ultra, 2 voodoo 2 in SLI and a soundblaster audigy. Pentium 4 are horrible in terms of efficiency but the performance is solid for windows 98 era stuff. The value is really good
Hey Phil, I recently stumbled across my old blood PC game and got interested in making a retro dos machine. I've got it MSI Ms 7294 board, p4 3 gigahertz processor, and a Geforce 9500 PCI Express graphics card. And anything but the lowest screen setting resolution, I experience major stuttering, especially when scrolling horizontally. Can you tell me what my bottleneck is?
There are guides, how to run windows 98 on socket 775 dual cores, of course it will use only one core, but you can have also windows 7 on it, that take advantage of second core. Those CPUs were more power efficient, particulary when using only one core. And ISA slot missing can be emulate through Dosbox. That socket 775 platform have power to run every DOS game. You just need AGP card, for that last supported by windows 98 was 6600. It's still powerful enough, to run Windows XP era games, up to year 2007. Oblivion (2006) can be played, while 2007 games like Crysis or Bioshock not. You can get this way Real DOS/win98/winXP/Win7 retro computer, and windows 7 use even for particulary safe internet browsing, till it will be supported by browsers. (but even after that, I believe, as win7 has lots of fans, they will make some new browser that continue to support it)
LOL after watching this video I thought to myself, hmmmm I remember seeing a p4 system that came out of one of the data centers for my job. Looked in the back and found it, dusty as all hell with bunnies that were larger then I have ever seen. But its a P4 Dell Optiplex gx240 and there are windows 98 drivers on the dell web page for it! Also found a Rage 128 card inside as well. Gonna get this guy going.
@@warrax111 Wow never saw this comment but i guess late better then never. Yes the system is still working and I compleatly refubished it. Its actually my main win98 box now.
I have a Dell demension 8300. It has a pentium 4 2.8 ghz. It has a geforce fx 5200. I have a problem though, when I install Windows 98 se, it says that the graphics adapter is conflicting with another device. It's the system Board extension for acpi bios. I don't know how to fix this.
Nice machine! I hopped on the PC bandwagon post-StarCraft, so my retro goals are for XP-era/late Win9x instead of DOS. I put together an i7-2600, 16GB RAM, and an HD6870 on an Intel H board, from old parts of mine excepting the i7 at $25. Sure, XP can only use ~3.5GB of that, but dual-booting with Pop OS makes this an all around general purpose machine when not retro gaming. Star Trek Armada never ran so well for me as it does now, and other titles like X-Wing Alliance and anything Quake III-adjacent is amazing. Serious Sam is a similar delight. GOG is great for reassembling your retro collection, but watch out for custom ddraw.dll and other support files in your game’s base folder that break games on XP. Rename them to .bak and they should run with occasional exceptions. CPU Grab is a useful utility if you are running a game that runs too fast. Streets of SimCity is a perfect example, as without running this tool, cars constantly hop and the physics are wrecked.
Now you can run Final Fantasy VII 98se just be sure to find the proper graphics card that support 8bit palette textures, but I'd like to see that without any xp patches running on the proper hardware it would do it some justice.
I used to game in MS-DOS with a PII 233MHz (later to 266MHz) and eventually on a PIII at 500MHz and honestly didn't have any issues with performance... maybe a bit with the PII and games like Quake but the PIII was more than enough, I found. Back then, a really high resolution was probably about 1600 by 1200. I was often using (and often saw) 1280 x 1024 though.
Agree, the P4 CPU is too much for DOS gamming. I have used a P54C (Pentium 200) for that purpose. Maybe a PII cpu is the top for DOS, old games cannot benefit of SIMD instructions like SSE, 3DNow (maybe some) or SSE. Games like Doom1, DoomLegacy, Duke Nuken play well on a P54C.
I have an Asus P5GC-MX 1333, and a Pentium 4 531 3.0hgz, 2gb RAM, a Sound Blaster live, It will work with win98 and a couple of DOS games like Screamer 2, Screamer Rally, etc ?
Phil, are there any secrets in getting USB 2.0 to work in Windows 98SE? On my socket 775 platform (ASRock 775i65g/3.0), the Win98 chipset driver fully supports USB 2.0, but I often run into resource conflicts and blue screens once I install graphics/sound cards and their associated 98SE drivers. I know there are possibly infinite reasons why getting USB 2 to work is tough in Win 98 (drivers, limited IRQs/resources, etc). At the moment, I have to disable the USB 2.0/Enhanced Host Controller Interface in 98SE. I turn off all of the legacy stuff except for the IDE interfaces. I dual boot my machines with Windows 98SE and Windows XP, and generally use Windows XP for any USB 2.0 data transfers, since it works so well. Oddly enough, I have been successful at getting USB 2.0 to work with older Windows 98 laptops (i.e., Gateway Solo 2150) using CardBus adapters. By the way, your channel is awesome.
How about an old desktop that I have enough has a celeron 2.0 ghz with an AGP slot. If I could find a good AGP card, I was thinking of making it a retro windows 98 pc. The BIOS date says like 1-24-2003
Picked up a P4 the other day off Freecycle. Puzzled me as it has some older parts. Think it may have been someones old upgrade machine. Not sure what I will do with it. Case is horrid so can either part up older bits into my P2 / P3 or could source an old case and install '98.
Hello! I was considering a P4 Win98/DOS build when I found your awesome video. My board is a GIGABYTE GA-8VM800M-775 which uses a VIA P4M800 chipset. Your video was pretty clear about your preference for INTEL 865 but didn't delve into how problematic other chipsets might be with Win98. Can you let me know your thoughts on my board's suitability for a P4 Win98/DOS build? Always love your content, thanks so much.
hello as much as im a purist, you are absolutely right, i remember back in the day my first p4 2400 was by far my most reliable and stable pc i had to date, the non lga are pre xp so win9x compatible!!!
I do have a very flaky ASUS P4B266 rev 2.0 which only turns on if you touch the ground of the battery so I dunno, I'll try soldering it to ground manually. But my main question is - do you think a Socket A board would fill in this place too? I have a Gigabyte 7NF-RZ board with a Sempron XP I think. Pentium 4 is still a nice low end alternative since it has SSE2 extensions so you can run all your modern stuff on it as well.
+xan1242 Socket A should be just as suitable, but there are a few platform specific little issues. I've got a project on my list, so I'll talk about it one day.
I know I have commented a bit on this video but have been trying to get a Dell Dimension 4600 to run 98. I have been unable to find chipset drivers that don't brick the OS and make it unbootable including safemode. Thinking later and some OEM Pentium 4s are just not meant to run anything but XP/2000. It has 865G chipset not sure if there is a prayer but if you can help please I am open to suggestions.
My windows 98 box is a socket A machine, with USB 2.0. Its blazing fast in win98se and has sata should I ever want to use that, and I have several video cards for it from gf4 Ti-4600 to FX-5950 Ultra, and Radeon 9600 pro as well as 9800 XT/256, also have both a diamond monster sound for A3D but rarely use it, mostly run a SB Live! SB-0060 which works great also for dos stuff. I do have a P4 but as an XP machine with Radeon x1950 pro AGP 512mb.
i use a Compaq Presario from 2002 designed for winXP but i downgraded it to 98SE AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2Ghz) 256MB RAM Geforce 3 Ti200 Win98SE stable for the most part i guess, has problems shutting down and i forget what else. i dont use it anymore i just get old games working on win7.
+rorym1980 That is a nice Windows 98 PC! You're right about playing old games on new PCs, it's easier than mucking around with old computers. But I love it :)
I would also recommend doing this with an AMD Socket 754 CPU + VIA K8M800 chipset motherboard. They are even cheaper than Socket 478 Pentium 4 boards and you can use AM3+ coolers on them (provided of course that they use the stock retention brackets).
Evert Coetzee I do have a 754 board, but when looking around, I wouldn't say they are easy to find / readily available. The Pentium 4 was in so many machines, they are like sand on the beach :) Good comment on the VIA Sata controller, I remember having massive issues on a Socket A build. It would boot from SATA DVD-DW and only SATA I drives would get detected.
+philscomputerlab : You have a PCI-Express Socket 754 board with an nForce 4 Chipset. They are quite rare, but you can find plenty of VIA K8M800 boards on eBay for very little money. If you want to go this route, I would say they are a viable alternative to a Socket 478 P4. However, when comparing them to Athlon XP setups, I would rather get a Socket 478 for Windows XP gaming. The 4-pin 12V connector makes a world of difference. VIA also made okayish Socket 775 boards that have Windows 9x drivers, but you'll definitely have trouble with the SATA connectors again, since they use the same crappy out of SATA spec controller. If you really must have a SATA connector you can always buy one of those cheap Silicon Image SIL3114 cards on eBay.
That's very handy information, good to know! There is a board on Newegg which might interest you: - Asrock - Intel 865 chipset - AGP - Socket 775 - Supports CPUs from P4 to Core 2 But because it's new stock, it isn't that cheap. Agreed on Athlon XP and the issue of power supplies. This is one of my next projects, documenting Socket A vs Socket 478 and comparing the differences to help people make a choice.
Well, I look forward to seeing the video, but we've had this same discussion before. In terms of modern-day compatibility and ease of finding parts, I would say that the Socket 478 wins hands down. The AXP might be a little faster, but really, the trouble you have to go through to find a good enough power supply and cooler just doesn't make it worth it. The only thing I don't like about Socket 478 CPUs is their heat output and their noisy coolers.
Would a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI version be ok in a Pentium 4 system regardless of voktage?voltage? Wasn't sure if voltage warning of voodoo cards would apply to the the few pci versions
Hi Phil! First of all thanks for all these excellent reviews, tests and recommendations. I have a question which perhaps interests other viewers on this Video. The Voodoo 4 4500 are very rare to find and the prices have launched into figures that are inconceivable! What alternative you could suggest that is good performance and compatibility wise with win98 ?
If you want cheap and high quality you can choose between a GeForce 4 ti 4200 4600 or a FX 5500 5700 5900 the ATI 6600 6800 can be good but I don't know about their dos compatibility. For WIn 98 games they will do the job for high res.
Just a follow-up here, got the computer built with the same specs, got windows 98 se installed but would freeze up at the splash screen. I could boot up in safe mode but shortly after attempting to restart, my computer stopped being able to POST. I far I trashed the stock PSU. I'd like to know what watt rating the PSU is that you used in this video. Mine was 300w.
in addition to my PIII system, I also have a Dell dimension 8200 (2002). It has a Pentium 4 running at 2.8 Ghz, 256 MB RDRAM, Nvidia GeForce MX 440 PCI video card from EVGA, and a 2005 Western Digital 80 GB IDE hard drive with only 250 hours on it. The sound cards that I have are the Sound Blaster CT 5780, which is OEM for the PC, and a Sound Blaster SB0090. Both won't work for windows 98 since the drivers only support Windows 2000 or XP. Is there anyway I can combat the situation?
Late to this party but I just got what I could find locally. ABIT sis 645, p4 2ghz, 256 meg ram and a ATI Radeon 9800 with omega community drivers. Seems to work well with dos, 98 and XP up to around 2005. Only 2 on board usb but combined keyboard and mouse to one dongle. Also opted for use to sata SSD for main drive. Just waiting on parts for a mccake
I recently rehashed an old Pentium 4 computer for DOS and Win9x gaming. Just a question: Is there any PCI sound card that has good SoundBlaster support (SFX) and good FM synthesis audio that works with the i845/865 chipsets?
I've been having a go at doing this myself, bought a cheap P4I65G, a sound blaster live, an AGP Radeon 5500 and some other stuff i had lying about. Having a lot of problems with BSOD though. At one point I had everything setup and working then tried to install drivers to get the USB ports usable, but as soon as I did this windows would bluescreen and i'd have to reboot and got stuck in this cycle. Actually wondering whether the ASrock motherboard drivers are the problem www.asrock.com/mb/intel/p4i65g/#Download , as windows identifies the processor correctly until I install these drivers. Forget how hard it can be getting this stuff to work!
+lazibayer Agreed. This machine has a lot of other things going for it. There are build videos about 386, 486 and Pentium III on my channel, which all use ISA slots.
Hallo Phil, I totally want this, and I have a pentium 4, but I have big problems installing win 98 from usb on the C: sata drive. When I use the boot disk, the sata drive with 500 mb only has 8 mb total disk space.. and has disk letter D, where the USB has disk letter C. what is wrong..
+Pumpkinhead77 Google the name of the game and abandonware. You will find pretty much all DOS games that way. If they are sold on GOG, please buy them, you support a good cause :)
I'm rewatching this video in 2019, I am wondering is this gonna work with Prescott Pentium 4's? The machine in question is a Dell OptiPlex GX520 with Pentium 4 650. I am gonna use PCI cards like a Radeon 9250 that I have lying around as that computer does not have PCIe slots. I have an ESS Solo-1 for audio, and it has all the standard IDE and SATA ports. Provided I stick in a 80GB SATA HDD and a 512mb DDR2 RAM, is this gonna work?
P4 systems like this one, is actually for those that are into this whole thing for games only. For those that are not really attached to that old hardware, wich were in use between late 80's to 2000.
WHERE WAS THIS VIDEO A MONTH AGO?! I was going to start looking for P3 boards, didn't think the two ASUS 478 socket boards with 3GHz P4s would do me any good so I recycled them a month ago and 2x512MB sticks. Shoot... How would older 775 sockets do? I do still have the older model single cores, a 2.8GHz and a 3.2GHz.
I think you're right on the PCIe. There were a few 775 boards that had an AGP but there still might be some comparability issues. I got rid of those boards because I thought I needed to go P3 for Win98. At least I can build a nice WinXP system for games that only work in XP but I can't think of any. Steam and GOG has helped get most of the old games more compatible but I'd really love to get back the Voodoo 3 I had.
My Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE serves in my WinXP box. I used to use an old 800Mhz Duron for my Win95/98 box, but I really didn't use that machine as much as I thought I would, so I got rid of it.
Wait, so If I have a PC that runs Win98, it's still 100% comatible with old DOS games? I thought that only Win95 did that, and the 98 is build without nativ DOS support.
Oh, really?! Can you read? :/ I downloaded drivers for W98 but I always got after installation and restart pop-up window with some error (don't remember now exact description - sth like "your card does not support this mode").
Any easy to find and reliable P4 boards with one or more ISA card slots? I remember these being existent during that era, but no idea if they're reliable or are currently affordable. Also, this is about when small formfactor machines started to take off, any recommendations looking for compact systems to serve as retro-gaming machines?
Be aware that the era surrounding the P4 is when there was a massive rash of bad capacitors that blew up sometime between a few weeks and 18ish months from when it was purchased. I would be wary of anything that's new in box because of this.
Hay Phil have you ever considered using a ASUS P5P800-VM? it is a 775 socket that uses the agp 865 chipset. i am thinking about dual booting windows 98 and win 10 on it.
I might have a board like that, not sure if it's Asus. There are some that even take Core 2 Duo CPUs. Quite niche, but very interesting that's for sure.
Why do you use such modern hardware with Windows 98? Windows XP might be better suited to be honest. FX series is the last one with decent Windows 98 support, but IMO way too fast and modern.
PhilsComputerLab its easier to find modern hardware, also i had planed to dual boot it with windows XP. I would of liked to install final fantasy 11 on windows 98 and play it. I have AGP 6800 GT/XT that has 98 drivers but isn't installing correctly sadly. I had to remove the ram from 2 GB to 1GB to install windows.
I'm curious to find out, philscomputerlab if your into retro gaming, wouldn't it be easier to use really old laptops (the cheap ones that nobody uses anymore) on second hand sites like ebay etc? Surely you can grab something like an IBM thinkpad T41? apparently this supports windows 98...
+Alex Elliot Yes they would work fine. But you can't change the graphics card or sound card. And I like doing that. But if you want to play a certain game and you're not as crazy, and as much into retro gaming, as I am, then a notebook should work really well. Much simpler to get going too.
This video was the start of a hobby for me.
I picked up so many P4 machines at my local flea market years ago for almost nothing. At the time I didn't think too much of them, but I'm glad I held onto them.
They are very versatile 🙂
Believe it or not... a stock Dell Dimension 3000 XP machine, in addition to adding an ATI 9250 PCI card, plays WIN98 games surprisingly well.
Yea and most Windows 98 games run just fine under XP. Sometimes things work even better under XP, for example enabling anti-aliasing, under 98 in many games it doesn't work.
Watching Duke Nukem almost brought tears to my eyes. I loved this game! I lost so many hours of sleep trying to get to the next level. It was sooooo much fun!
Gregg Hernandez hehehe,lol.i have that game and duke nukem project manhattan.
You wonna DANCE? 👭❤🎶🎵💰💰💰
Only down side to these later generation boards is that you have to be careful about the AGP slots. Some of them do not support AGP 1x at all and others have higher voltages that can fry popular retro cards like Voodoo 3/5. If you do go with a P4 build make sure you get a later generation video card. Something like Geforce 4 ti - 6 series or the ATI equivalent. Plus once you start getting past the 1ghz range 99% of all games that would benefit from that will run perfect on Windows XP and have nothing to do with DOS or any real benefit of running on 98.
Well you can use it for a mix from DOS to XP/early XP. And another computer for 7 to 10+.
how about fx5500?
Excelente video Phils!!! Muchas gracias!!! (From Argentina)
I have had P4s for this purpose since the last 20 years and I also have true Slot1 P3 etc I still use today. I have tons of vintage computer hardware from 486 and up. but I always prefer the Soundblaster FM music over regular Midi
3:30 WOW thanks for that information USB2 only works with certain CPU's. I did not know. I was going to try USB2 and old CPUS, so you saved me lots of time and trouble.
Really liked this and I dont know why but I never considered Win98 on a P4 until RMC sold those NetVistas. My P4 is running XP, and I now have an IBM Aptiva AMD K6-2 450 that is the Windows 98 rig, but this video has really made me think I could maybe duel boot the P4 for longevity. Very very interesting.
Reminds me of my Pentium 3 - 450mhz back in the day. Came with a whopping 64mb of ram, 32mb TNT2 Ultra/Vivo, 9Gb HDD and a gigantic 17" Adi Viewpoint. $3100 lol.
That sounds a lot like what I had. :) Minus the price... got mine for free, I think... it was a Frankenstein build of various bits and pieces I found chucked away or bought from other computers. (I was a little late to the party, but I got there just in time to experience the older tech)
you clearly didnt know about Celeron 300A to 450 mhz trick right? Would spare you like 400-500$.
@@warrax111 You drove Mendocino too? I drove her till 2010 on WinME. Nothing problem with them, even i had my first facebook account with this machine.
@@jigyjigy9182 No, I had AMD K6-2 500 in that time. Didn't know about mendochino trick. Got rid of it in 2002.
I love the LGA775 socket, you can spec out one of those from P4 to Core2Quad.
+The Examined Life (of Gaming) Windows 98 has no PCI-E support, and Intel chipsets from i910 has no win98 drivers. But ASUS P5PE-VM is the best choice - i865G AGP chipset with win98 support and cpu from any s775 P4 or Pentium D to Conroe based Core 2 Duos (E6xxx in overclock mode because of 1066 MHz FSB), Pentiums and Celerons.
+Jure L most P965 boards do that, golden middle of 775)). From top end some 3rd and 4th series boards supports (unofficial) P4 (ASUS P5E3 for example). From low end, latest i945GC boards supports Wolfdale core. So it is not a problem, at all.
+The Examined Life (of Gaming)
Celeron D of Single core does be a "Better High-end".
But I am sure that's "Best Motherboard of 98SE High-End" is Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775 or AsRock 775VM800Pro-DDR2/775i65G R3.0 (All of boths are be Included Drivers for Windows 98 but Newest Revision does be Support All Celeron D's CPU's)
But if you want playing that's 7300GT (82.69) or 6200 LE (81.93) [256MB or 512MB|AGP] would be better workouts than a ATi's olders Graphics cards (Last is a: 9800,Seriously - That's is from 2003.)
Maximum RAM for 98SE workout it's a 1156MB without Modificate or 2048MB/3072MB with Modificate. (DDR2 would be fastest than DDR,when Can be work both. - Because that's is RAM not HDD Connect.)
PATA 133 it's does depend for HDD. (SATA doesn't works.)
DVD Burner can be works on Windows 98.
Now some motherboards can be works with "Stock AC'97 Codec"
+4nuk8r Celeron D is single core. No need to read your speech after that. Another fairy tale.
"D" is for rookie users, like you. Just to make you buy cheap "Pentium D".
so much nostalgia... the old games.. the frustration of setting up audio on dos game, etc etc
i have my p4 machine somewhere in my storage, maybe i should dig it out some day and boot it up
Found a complete system dumped on the side of the road, so still pretty cheap even 5 years after this video. 😂 ASUS socket 478 DDR333 motherboard, 1.8GHz CPU. Nice and retro - and free! Case was missing the front plastic bits and sides. No problem, pulled everything out and just running it on a bench. Still got the I/O plate for later, which is nice. Should see the prices on eBay for the earlier stuff now - it's pretty rough.
Having Intel when I was a kid was just a dream too. My first three systems were Cyrix P150+ then MII-333 with 8mb SIS on the motherboard then Duron 700 with 32mb TNT2 M64. I have really happy memories tinkering with this stuff.
This makes total sense and I think Pentium 4 will be the last platform to truly have any retro status. It's like the last legacy platform but with just enough modern convenience, basically the ultimate retro gaming PC. Literally couldn't resist ordering an old Pentium 4 desktop with AGP graphics after watching this. Thanks for the brilliant advice.
We're nearly at the point where DOSbox will take up the slack, I think.
@Paya Chinglish this. If you get decent Pentium 4, it will handle Dosbox, so you don't have to have ISA card and slow enough machine for some DOS games. As you can go with Windows XP or 7 on that build, and use Dosbox. Dosbox emulate ISA slot, and will handle old DOS games, that wasnt optimalized on faster CPU very easily. For more demanding games, that are later DOS games, you can go to real DOS, with PCI sound card. Those game usually support it. Pentium 4 2+ Ghz would handle those later DOS games very good. Maybe 1024x768 in software render is still not enough, but noone played it in that era on those resolutions. Usually maximum 640x480... all beyond was slide show even on fastest CPU's of last DOS era (Pentium II 300-450). So yes, Pentium 4 can be best and fastest windows98 supported platform, and you can use real DOS in it, with combination of DOSBOX for ISA soundcard issue.
same here, got a Pentium 4 3.0ghz (hp compaq) and a 6600GT with 128mb vram (additionally)
Been messing with this project off and on for some time since the first motherboard I received did not function properly, and I've only had so much time and space to work with. I have built a similar machine, but currently am trying to get a gameport joystick to detect in win98 not sure if I need other drivers or what. Have an "Advanced Gavis Joystick" 3 button two axis joystick, and the interesting Nintendo PC Flight stick. Trying to use the gameport on the "AOpen Cobra Soundcard". Wasn't finding much help elsewhere
Pentium 4 Cpu is a legend that will be unforgettable
I miss the old PC games can't wait to give you an update ! on after win 98 SE install
the boot disk for installing win98 also serves to install windows 95 and has support for a USB keyboard and mouse different from the DOS 622c boot disk ... I have the original DOS 622C floppy disks that install on HD and windows 95 on diskettes if you want to pass you and an english version that i found in the old the pirate by ... i also have norton ghost 2002 if you need to and just talk.
Hi Phil!
I am building a pc from this video now, but i use a Medion GeForce3 Ti200 instead.
Thx for the video it was inspiring!
Good to hear from you! You will like the video coming out this week, it's about your video card :D
look forward to :-)
Hi Phil, I've been following your channel for a while now and this video inspired me to look up a P4 machine. I have an HP XW4200 workstation on its way. It is socket 478, around 3.2ghz I believe. It comes with Opl3 and soundblaster compatibility, so hopefully I can throw in some MS-Dos gaming. It also has a Radeon HD6670 so games of the early 2000s should look reasonably decent too :) keep up the good work! Daz.
You are right about all 10 reasons yes, i did build a P4 retro pc. But after couple of days, one thing was missing.... The love for the system.
My love and passion for Pentium III is off the ruffffff😂😂
Start collecting parts/building a PIII system now
Fair enough :D
PhilsComputerLab Another great video, thank you for this one Phil😁
Im looking at doing this with an old P4 system, only issue is capacitor plague. 2 old p4 systems ive found have bulging caps that im going to have to try and replace and its not really my forte. maybe better off finding a new motherboard.
This weekend I got my 533FSB P4 2.66Ghz running on a Portwell industrial motherboard with 3 ISA slots, PCI and an AGP slot. It's running WinXP at the moment but I'll dual boot Win98SE soon. In the meantime, I have a P3 933(@700) running with a Creative Labs AWE32. It was a pain getting the autoexec.bat and config.sys setup to load the Sound Blaster drivers and load everything in upper memory, but I made it happen (thanks NOEMS). It has a Geforce FX 5200 which is fine for light Win98SE 3D and DOS tasks. Thanks to +PhilsComputerLab and this great video for showing me the possibilities!
+AshtonColeman Nicely done and thank you for the kind words :) That sounds like a pretty cool motherboard with ISA slots and all.
+AshtonColeman 6600gt has win98se official drivers.
+Barack Smith the 6000 series lost support for fog table and 8-bit palletized textures. I actually bought a Quadro FX 3000 for it which rocks. I also have a 6800GT in the Portwell P4 now too so the best of both worlds.
I have an old IBM ThinkCentre desktop, the kind that sits under a monitor. It's a P4 machine into which I put a Prescott 3.8 GHz P4 I had laying around. As far as I know, this is the fastest P4 Intel ever made, but I'm sure that it's the fastest one this machine can accept. It also has Hyper Threading, the original version that nobody seemed to care much for until it was re-introduced with the Nehalem processors.
This machine utilizes a riser card with two expansion slots. One of the slots is a PCI slot, but the other is a PCI-Express slot. It looks like an x16 slot, it's the same physical size, but it's electrically an x1 slot, so if you put an x16 card into it, it won't POST. That is, unless you are smart enough to trick the machine.
I did this by putting electrical tape on all of the pins past the 7th pin. Just cover up all of the pins past the 7th with a piece of electrical tape and gently plug the card in, and it works perfectly as an x1 graphics card. I had a 6600GT laying around, so that's what I used.
I installed Windows 98 on the thing and my goodness does it freaking fly. I wish modern computers were instantly responsive the way that this thing is. I still love 98 and while this hardware is obviously overkill and never meant to be be used with it, it works so much better than I expected.
I once tried Win3.11 on Cel466 with Ati RageII and it was also very fast.
Why didn't you put any Thermo Paste on the CPU before you added the heat sink?? 1:23/14:11
I don't remember all the details 😅 I guess it didn't make a difference for this CPU and for what I did in the project. I use thermal pads now also...
I just built a P4 system with 865G motherboard, 512MB RAM and 20GB hdd with Win98 installed. But when I try playing DOS games I get errors like “too big to fit into memory” or “Not enough memory”. Any reason for that? Thanks! Love your channel!
Iam using p4 net vista m42 board nvidia fx5200 win98 se but cant get my sound blaster live ct4780 working
Very good arguments. Socket 478 celerons are also a good choice.
which PSU are you using with that Asrock P4i65G board? im getting the same board but having troubles figuring out PSUs, cheers.
Nothing special, just a standard ATX PSU will do the trick :)
Fuckin dope dawg. Love that Midi sound. Wish more games nowadays would imitate Midi sounds over the almost cliche 8 bit sounds man. Sounds so gooooooddddd!!!!
It’s 2023 and I’m back here after my old Pentium 2 and 3 machine broke down so finding either one of them is harder and need some time. Meanwhile, I saw an Asus SOCKET 478 board with SIS chipset for very cheap so I decided to try it out.
Eventually it turns out well despite a non Intel board.
The specs here are:
Asus P4S-333VM SIS Chipset Socket 478 Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 Willamette 1.7Ghz Processor
512MB DDR RAM
Inno3D Nvidia FX5500 128MB Graphics Card
Sound Blaster Audigy PCI
Intel Pro 100 PCI Ethernet Card
Windows 98 SE.
Hopefully picking up p4 dell dimension or a hp 5100 today $20 and $30 respectively hoping the HP has a AGP slot.Great videos man.I had a IBM aptiva back in the day.Fav game definitely Dark Reign.
I wasn't expecting much out of that sound card, but damn.. those sound demos were nice!
+Michael Kreitzer The Aureal Vortex 2 is a fantastic sound chip. It was so good that Creative bought the company and killed it all. To this day, if you play A3D surround games with headphones, it competes well with modern CMSS-3D and SBX from Creative.
+PhilsComputerLab indeed, I boycotted creative for a long time over killing A3D. That to this day we remain stuck with simulating 5.1 or 7.1 speakers instead of true positional audio can be tied to that event. It is my hope that VR will pick up where A3D left off. The oculus audio sdk is promising, and Ossic is developing headphones to promise to calculate personal HRTF's!
What really impressed me in this video was the wavetable synth. Can this audio setup handle creative soundfont files? If I recall quite a few win98 era games came with those. One standout for me is the PC port of Final Fantasy 7. If you wanted a true to the original music experience you had to be able to use soundfonts.
And Windows Vista when they killed it for Creative EAX. At least that technology worked quite well, but now we have to use ALchemy for old games and newer games, like you say, simulate speakers, rather than render the audio in 3D.
For loading Creative SoundFonts you're better off with a Live! or Audigy. I actually don't know if the Vortex 2 can load any SoundFonts at all, I just use a wavetable board for that purpose.
It's one of the few cards that has a wavetable header that works under DOS.
This brought me back memories. When I was younger, I had multiple PCs: one with an intel 440BX-2 (Pentium II) another one with intel VC820 (Pentium III and 512MB RIMM memory) and an Intel D850EMV2 (Pentium 4, 2GB RIMM IIRC) motherboards. All ran great, however I sold/gave away all of them.
Well my Retro-System is Intel 440BX Board with P3 600MHz and two Voodoo 2 SLI and I am really happy with it.
No support for 3dfx voodoo 5 5500 or voodoo II with Pentium 4 system?
There are many Pentium 4 boards with universal AGP slots, so not an issue. I have a system compatible with 2.8 GHz Northwood.
found a Pentium IV Windows ME machine in the rubbish, took it back home and it booted right up, albeit the hard disk being broken, i just threw in an 800mb HDD and installed DOS. Afterwards i did a case swap, so now it looks like a $1500 gaming pc, just because i thought it funny, and i had the case to spare.
Pentium 4 for the Win for a budget Windows 98 retro pc perfect single core I can't wait to refurbish the free Pentium 4 i got for free complete system with hdd ram cpu etc I got everything to upgrade it MS Dos will run blitzing fast especially a SSD too I got a spare 120GbWD Green only a few months old thanks for another cool video phil
Why Deus EX is lagging so much... it doesn't matter if i use WIndows 98/ 2000ME
and if I use TNT 2 or Geforce 2 MX/ GTS it runs bad.... its strange....
and hitman COdename 47 runs bader too than normal with Textur ebugs....
I have some of these AsRock mobos, 2 P4i65G and 2 P4i65GV (the variant with the propietary AGI slot), i'm not currently using any of them except for some planned build since i already have P4 builds made with better/higher end mobos (ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe, Abit AI7, Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G...), i have many (actually kinda too many) P4s, just like 120 of them i think from a 1.5 Willamette up to a 3.8 GHz P4 670
A decent speed Pentium 4 is a bit overkill for playing DOS games on Windows 98 though. A Pentium 2 or 3 would suffice 😜
Enjoyed this, cheers.
Pentium 4 and athlons are awesome. I've got a p4 2.4 ghz getting ready to go into a system and athlon 64 3500. Just wish I had better AGP cards
as i am watching this , i find it rather interesting that people my age and younger want to run their old games again, but when i had my old machine , thea pressure was to upgrade , always up grade . i got a 386 and that was up graded to a 486 untill the 10 meg hard drive gave up the ghost . good show there .
Ha, I remember the need to upgrade as well. At least we got a decent upgrade, I mean going from a 486 to a Pentium 166 for example was a huge upgrade.
But do you remember how many DOS games didn't work properly with Windows and PCI sound cards? That was an issue for me back in the day. I dual booted for a while and hung on to my ISA Sound Blaster for that reason.
diddn use it for games but did have many problems with apps , however that was the old open seagte frame hd crashing whenever the weather changed or i deleted or installed things . the rig was used to control a old school printing press. hem the amber monitor had screen burnin as the prior owners couldnt turn off the monitor whilst the printing press , oops along came wordstar and obsoleted that machine , thus i got my first computer .:)
In Russia, PC's below P4 are dropped as garbage = no price at all. So ,stop bying them on Ebay )
Check out the prices on Avito lately - Russia has followed the west. From Pentium 2 downwards the prices are much higher than they used to be :(
Decent 286/386/486/P1 PCs increase a lot in value.
Here in Czech Republic it's same, you can find Pentium I, II and III in dust bins or people have that in attic or in cellar or you can "buy" Pentium 4 PC for bottle of alcohol. :-D But it's probably changing in these days, but there is too much Pentium I-III CPUs so it can't have some magical price.
@@Pidalin Here in Poland old CPUs are surprisingly cheap too, although I've never bothered searching for them in dust bins
@@xyzzy-dv6te I checked Ali and Ebay and I am shocked from prices of old HW, it looks like I wasted thousands of dollars by shooting to that. :-D It's ridiculous how people think it has price only because it's 20 years old. For example motherboard with socket 370 is like 2000 CZK on ali or ebay, but you can buy it from Czech bazaar for something like 300 CZK. :-D I know they have almost new HW on Ali or completely new, but HW from early 2000s was used only short time, if someone bought PC in 2001 then probably it was trash 2 years later and another 2 years later it was good only for playing solitaire so it ended somewhere in storage room and nobody touched that another 15 years so I am sometimes very surprised how good is condition of old HW. Not always, if you buy PC from gypsy then you can find dead mouse inside, I am speaking about PCs from normal people. :-D
I got a asus p5p800 (i865pe supports LGA775 pentium4s) with a pentium 4 540 (prescott@3.2GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB) for free. Now I am thinking of building a windows98 beast machine around it, with a geforce 5900 ultra, 2 voodoo 2 in SLI and a soundblaster audigy. Pentium 4 are horrible in terms of efficiency but the performance is solid for windows 98 era stuff. The value is really good
Just picked up an Intel D865G P4 motherboard for this purpose, going SSD sata HD and setting up with a real floppy for the back in the day experience.
my Pentium III Windows 98 machine reported to me yesterday that I had 2.94 EB ( 2,940,000 TB ) of 4.9 EB free on a 10 GB drive XD
+Chris Kalkman Ha, that's pretty impressive :D
+Chris Kalkman You can fit many Doom mods in there, mate
My Skylake Windows 10 PC does that too once in a while. Rebooting helps.
+Michi Lo The hell are you guys doing to your computer's?
charizard4410 PC gaming, Emulation, UA-cam and some SSH.
can you do 10 reasons for Amd Athlon Xp and WIn98
Hey Phil, I recently stumbled across my old blood PC game and got interested in making a retro dos machine.
I've got it MSI Ms 7294 board, p4 3 gigahertz processor, and a Geforce 9500 PCI Express graphics card.
And anything but the lowest screen setting resolution, I experience major stuttering, especially when scrolling horizontally.
Can you tell me what my bottleneck is?
There are guides, how to run windows 98 on socket 775 dual cores, of course it will use only one core, but you can have also windows 7 on it, that take advantage of second core.
Those CPUs were more power efficient, particulary when using only one core. And ISA slot missing can be emulate through Dosbox. That socket 775 platform have power to run every DOS game. You just need AGP card, for that last supported by windows 98 was 6600. It's still powerful enough, to run Windows XP era games, up to year 2007. Oblivion (2006) can be played, while 2007 games like Crysis or Bioshock not. You can get this way Real DOS/win98/winXP/Win7 retro computer, and windows 7 use even for particulary safe internet browsing, till it will be supported by browsers. (but even after that, I believe, as win7 has lots of fans, they will make some new browser that continue to support it)
LOL after watching this video I thought to myself, hmmmm I remember seeing a p4 system that came out of one of the data centers for my job. Looked in the back and found it, dusty as all hell with bunnies that were larger then I have ever seen. But its a P4 Dell Optiplex gx240 and there are windows 98 drivers on the dell web page for it! Also found a Rage 128 card inside as well. Gonna get this guy going.
how it ended? Did you re-use it at least little? Is it still working?
@@warrax111 Wow never saw this comment but i guess late better then never. Yes the system is still working and I compleatly refubished it. Its actually my main win98 box now.
@Alexander Ratisbona Speed is not really important since its running windows 98 and not XP. This system is a beast for 98 as it is a late gen p4.
@@treahblade thank you for leting know. :) Sometimes, youtube notification doesn't work, particulary on older comments.
I have a Dell demension 8300. It has a pentium 4 2.8 ghz. It has a geforce fx 5200. I have a problem though, when I install Windows 98 se, it says that the graphics adapter is conflicting with another device. It's the system Board extension for acpi bios. I don't know how to fix this.
I find the ASRock motherboards are very compatible with Windows 9x, I've got the ASRock 775i65g and has built in sata to ide emulation!
+Kippy Kip I like Asrock boards a lot too :)
PhilsComputerLab Had to pay $80 just to import it though, but it was totally worth it
Who knew those old P4 1.4 GHz CPUs were still useful.
Better chose an Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) which has 1.8 GHz but is rated like a P4 3.0 GHz
Hi Phils. Is a Voodoo Banshee a good option for this Pc? I am trying to configure my P4 and I have a Asus Agp-v3200. Thanks for everyting.
Nice machine! I hopped on the PC bandwagon post-StarCraft, so my retro goals are for XP-era/late Win9x instead of DOS.
I put together an i7-2600, 16GB RAM, and an HD6870 on an Intel H board, from old parts of mine excepting the i7 at $25. Sure, XP can only use ~3.5GB of that, but dual-booting with Pop OS makes this an all around general purpose machine when not retro gaming.
Star Trek Armada never ran so well for me as it does now, and other titles like X-Wing Alliance and anything Quake III-adjacent is amazing. Serious Sam is a similar delight.
GOG is great for reassembling your retro collection, but watch out for custom ddraw.dll and other support files in your game’s base folder that break games on XP. Rename them to .bak and they should run with occasional exceptions.
CPU Grab is a useful utility if you are running a game that runs too fast. Streets of SimCity is a perfect example, as without running this tool, cars constantly hop and the physics are wrecked.
Now you can run Final Fantasy VII 98se just be sure to find the proper graphics card that support 8bit palette textures, but I'd like to see that without any xp patches running on the proper hardware it would do it some justice.
I used to game in MS-DOS with a PII 233MHz (later to 266MHz) and eventually on a PIII at 500MHz and honestly didn't have any issues with performance... maybe a bit with the PII and games like Quake but the PIII was more than enough, I found. Back then, a really high resolution was probably about 1600 by 1200. I was often using (and often saw) 1280 x 1024 though.
Agree, the P4 CPU is too much for DOS gamming. I have used a P54C (Pentium 200) for that purpose. Maybe a PII cpu is the top for DOS, old games cannot benefit of SIMD instructions like SSE, 3DNow (maybe some) or SSE.
Games like Doom1, DoomLegacy, Duke Nuken play well on a P54C.
I have an Asus P5GC-MX 1333, and a Pentium 4 531 3.0hgz, 2gb RAM, a Sound Blaster live, It will work with win98 and a couple of DOS games like Screamer 2, Screamer Rally, etc ?
945GC chipset is too new for 98.
Really like your voice Phil ;)
Phil, are there any secrets in getting USB 2.0 to work in Windows 98SE? On my socket 775 platform (ASRock 775i65g/3.0), the Win98 chipset driver fully supports USB 2.0, but I often run into resource conflicts and blue screens once I install graphics/sound cards and their associated 98SE drivers. I know there are possibly infinite reasons why getting USB 2 to work is tough in Win 98 (drivers, limited IRQs/resources, etc). At the moment, I have to disable the USB 2.0/Enhanced Host Controller Interface in 98SE. I turn off all of the legacy stuff except for the IDE interfaces. I dual boot my machines with Windows 98SE and Windows XP, and generally use Windows XP for any USB 2.0 data transfers, since it works so well. Oddly enough, I have been successful at getting USB 2.0 to work with older Windows 98 laptops (i.e., Gateway Solo 2150) using CardBus adapters. By the way, your channel is awesome.
Could be an issue related to that specific board, not sure...
So with 865 chipset SATA drives are not an issue? Good to know since I have Asus p4p 800-e deluxe with 865pe chipset. Thx
How about an old desktop that I have enough has a celeron 2.0 ghz with an AGP slot. If I could find a good AGP card, I was thinking of making it a retro windows 98 pc. The BIOS date says like 1-24-2003
Picked up a P4 the other day off Freecycle. Puzzled me as it has some older parts. Think it may have been someones old upgrade machine. Not sure what I will do with it. Case is horrid so can either part up older bits into my P2 / P3 or could source an old case and install '98.
Hello! I was considering a P4 Win98/DOS build when I found your awesome video. My board is a GIGABYTE GA-8VM800M-775 which uses a VIA P4M800 chipset. Your video was pretty clear about your preference for INTEL 865 but didn't delve into how problematic other chipsets might be with Win98. Can you let me know your thoughts on my board's suitability for a P4 Win98/DOS build? Always love your content, thanks so much.
hello as much as im a purist, you are absolutely right, i remember back in the day my first p4 2400 was by far my most reliable and stable pc i had to date, the non lga are pre xp so win9x compatible!!!
I do have a very flaky ASUS P4B266 rev 2.0 which only turns on if you touch the ground of the battery so I dunno, I'll try soldering it to ground manually.
But my main question is - do you think a Socket A board would fill in this place too? I have a Gigabyte 7NF-RZ board with a Sempron XP I think.
Pentium 4 is still a nice low end alternative since it has SSE2 extensions so you can run all your modern stuff on it as well.
+xan1242 Socket A should be just as suitable, but there are a few platform specific little issues. I've got a project on my list, so I'll talk about it one day.
I know I have commented a bit on this video but have been trying to get a Dell Dimension 4600 to run 98. I have been unable to find chipset drivers that don't brick the OS and make it unbootable including safemode. Thinking later and some OEM Pentium 4s are just not meant to run anything but XP/2000.
It has 865G chipset not sure if there is a prayer but if you can help please I am open to suggestions.
My windows 98 box is a socket A machine, with USB 2.0. Its blazing fast in win98se and has sata should I ever want to use that, and I have several video cards for it from gf4 Ti-4600 to FX-5950 Ultra, and Radeon 9600 pro as well as 9800 XT/256, also have both a diamond monster sound for A3D but rarely use it, mostly run a SB Live! SB-0060 which works great also for dos stuff. I do have a P4 but as an XP machine with Radeon x1950 pro AGP 512mb.
What PICe graphic card works best with Win98se ?
none
Cheap as chips?
i use a Compaq Presario from 2002 designed for winXP but i downgraded it to 98SE
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2Ghz)
256MB RAM
Geforce 3 Ti200
Win98SE
stable for the most part i guess, has problems shutting down and i forget what else. i dont use it anymore i just get old games working on win7.
+rorym1980 That is a nice Windows 98 PC! You're right about playing old games on new PCs, it's easier than mucking around with old computers. But I love it :)
I would also recommend doing this with an AMD Socket 754 CPU + VIA K8M800 chipset motherboard. They are even cheaper than Socket 478 Pentium 4 boards and you can use AM3+ coolers on them (provided of course that they use the stock retention brackets).
+Evert Coetzee : You also have Win 9x drivers for the chipset that you can use. The only downfall is the horrible VIA SATA controller...
Evert Coetzee I do have a 754 board, but when looking around, I wouldn't say they are easy to find / readily available. The Pentium 4 was in so many machines, they are like sand on the beach :)
Good comment on the VIA Sata controller, I remember having massive issues on a Socket A build. It would boot from SATA DVD-DW and only SATA I drives would get detected.
+philscomputerlab : You have a PCI-Express Socket 754 board with an nForce 4 Chipset. They are quite rare, but you can find plenty of VIA K8M800 boards on eBay for very little money. If you want to go this route, I would say they are a viable alternative to a Socket 478 P4.
However, when comparing them to Athlon XP setups, I would rather get a Socket 478 for Windows XP gaming. The 4-pin 12V connector makes a world of difference.
VIA also made okayish Socket 775 boards that have Windows 9x drivers, but you'll definitely have trouble with the SATA connectors again, since they use the same crappy out of SATA spec controller. If you really must have a SATA connector you can always buy one of those cheap Silicon Image SIL3114 cards on eBay.
That's very handy information, good to know! There is a board on Newegg which might interest you:
- Asrock
- Intel 865 chipset
- AGP
- Socket 775
- Supports CPUs from P4 to Core 2
But because it's new stock, it isn't that cheap.
Agreed on Athlon XP and the issue of power supplies. This is one of my next projects, documenting Socket A vs Socket 478 and comparing the differences to help people make a choice.
Well, I look forward to seeing the video, but we've had this same discussion before. In terms of modern-day compatibility and ease of finding parts, I would say that the Socket 478 wins hands down. The AXP might be a little faster, but really, the trouble you have to go through to find a good enough power supply and cooler just doesn't make it worth it. The only thing I don't like about Socket 478 CPUs is their heat output and their noisy coolers.
Would a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI version be ok in a Pentium 4 system regardless of voktage?voltage? Wasn't sure if voltage warning of voodoo cards would apply to the the few pci versions
Hi Phil! First of all thanks for all these excellent reviews, tests and recommendations.
I have a question which perhaps interests other viewers on this Video. The Voodoo 4 4500 are very rare to find and the prices have launched into figures that are inconceivable! What alternative you could suggest that is good performance and compatibility wise with win98 ?
If you want cheap and high quality you can choose between a GeForce 4 ti 4200 4600 or a FX 5500 5700 5900 the ATI 6600 6800 can be good but I don't know about their dos compatibility. For WIn 98 games they will do the job for high res.
I have two old Dell PC's. One with P4 3.0ghz and one with C2D E4600. Which would be better dos gaming chip?
Just a follow-up here, got the computer built with the same specs, got windows 98 se installed but would freeze up at the splash screen. I could boot up in safe mode but shortly after attempting to restart, my computer stopped being able to POST. I far I trashed the stock PSU. I'd like to know what watt rating the PSU is that you used in this video. Mine was 300w.
+Coniferynx It's a 500W PSU from FSP.
in addition to my PIII system, I also have a Dell dimension 8200 (2002). It has a Pentium 4 running at 2.8 Ghz, 256 MB RDRAM, Nvidia GeForce MX 440 PCI video card from EVGA, and a 2005 Western Digital 80 GB IDE hard drive with only 250 hours on it. The sound cards that I have are the Sound Blaster CT 5780, which is OEM for the PC, and a Sound Blaster SB0090. Both won't work for windows 98 since the drivers only support Windows 2000 or XP. Is there anyway I can combat the situation?
Late to this party but I just got what I could find locally. ABIT sis 645, p4 2ghz, 256 meg ram and a ATI Radeon 9800 with omega community drivers. Seems to work well with dos, 98 and XP up to around 2005. Only 2 on board usb but combined keyboard and mouse to one dongle. Also opted for use to sata SSD for main drive. Just waiting on parts for a mccake
I recently rehashed an old Pentium 4 computer for DOS and Win9x gaming. Just a question: Is there any PCI sound card that has good SoundBlaster support (SFX) and good FM synthesis audio that works with the i845/865 chipsets?
+villahed94 Probably a Yamaha based PCI card.
I've been having a go at doing this myself, bought a cheap P4I65G, a sound blaster live, an AGP Radeon 5500 and some other stuff i had lying about. Having a lot of problems with BSOD though. At one point I had everything setup and working then tried to install drivers to get the USB ports usable, but as soon as I did this windows would bluescreen and i'd have to reboot and got stuck in this cycle. Actually wondering whether the ASrock motherboard drivers are the problem www.asrock.com/mb/intel/p4i65g/#Download , as windows identifies the processor correctly until I install these drivers. Forget how hard it can be getting this stuff to work!
IMHO a good retro build should have ISA slots.
+lazibayer Agreed. This machine has a lot of other things going for it. There are build videos about 386, 486 and Pentium III on my channel, which all use ISA slots.
there are p4 motherboards that have isa slots
They are pretty rare though and will end up being a lot more expensive.
I'm still more willing to pay more though for that type of motherboard. I'd call it the most powerful 98 PC if you saw my setup when finished.
Tbh isa is better for msdos only builds.
A win98 buils doesnt require such hardware usually
Hallo Phil, I totally want this, and I have a pentium 4, but I have big problems installing win 98 from usb on the C: sata drive. When I use the boot disk, the sata drive with 500 mb only has 8 mb total disk space.. and has disk letter D, where the USB has disk letter C. what is wrong..
What's the best way to get DOS games now? I wish I could find a floppy disc image of Lemmings.
+Pumpkinhead77 Google the name of the game and abandonware. You will find pretty much all DOS games that way. If they are sold on GOG, please buy them, you support a good cause :)
I'm rewatching this video in 2019, I am wondering is this gonna work with Prescott Pentium 4's? The machine in question is a Dell OptiPlex GX520 with Pentium 4 650. I am gonna use PCI cards like a Radeon 9250 that I have lying around as that computer does not have PCIe slots. I have an ESS Solo-1 for audio, and it has all the standard IDE and SATA ports. Provided I stick in a 80GB SATA HDD and a 512mb DDR2 RAM, is this gonna work?
perfect video nice works...pentium 4 this is house of win 98 gaming thanks very much....
Yea cheap as chips and a great alternative to expensive Pentium III.
P4 systems like this one, is actually for those that are into this whole thing for games only. For those that are not really attached to that old hardware, wich were in use between late 80's to 2000.
WHERE WAS THIS VIDEO A MONTH AGO?! I was going to start looking for P3 boards, didn't think the two ASUS 478 socket boards with 3GHz P4s would do me any good so I recycled them a month ago and 2x512MB sticks. Shoot...
How would older 775 sockets do? I do still have the older model single cores, a 2.8GHz and a 3.2GHz.
775 should work, but I think it needs to be AGP. I'm not sure if PCIe works in Windows 98.
I think you're right on the PCIe. There were a few 775 boards that had an AGP but there still might be some comparability issues. I got rid of those boards because I thought I needed to go P3 for Win98. At least I can build a nice WinXP system for games that only work in XP but I can't think of any. Steam and GOG has helped get most of the old games more compatible but I'd really love to get back the Voodoo 3 I had.
I did it i finally got a p4 laptop just repair and fixed it finishing updates in win xp then i will try to install win 98 SE on it?
My Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE serves in my WinXP box. I used to use an old 800Mhz Duron for my Win95/98 box, but I really didn't use that machine as much as I thought I would, so I got rid of it.
Wait, so If I have a PC that runs Win98, it's still 100% comatible with old DOS games? I thought that only Win95 did that, and the 98 is build without nativ DOS support.
Um, yea, Windows 95 and 98 are built on DOS!
I could not install FX5200 drivers under Win98. Everytime I got some error message after installation (don't remembet it now). I had to install WinXP.
Oh, really?! Can you read? :/
I downloaded drivers for W98 but I always got after installation and restart pop-up window with some error (don't remember now exact description - sth like "your card does not support this mode").
I heard you could go as far as the GeForce 6 series on Win9x.
At least I know the FX5500 (128mb) is running fine, replaced the tiny loud cooler with a block of steel though :)
Any easy to find and reliable P4 boards with one or more ISA card slots? I remember these being existent during that era, but no idea if they're reliable or are currently affordable.
Also, this is about when small formfactor machines started to take off, any recommendations looking for compact systems to serve as retro-gaming machines?
+tom611 There are a ton of uATX Pentium 4 boards. Make sure it's got an Intel chipset.
Be aware that the era surrounding the P4 is when there was a massive rash of bad capacitors that blew up sometime between a few weeks and 18ish months from when it was purchased. I would be wary of anything that's new in box because of this.
+lowfwyr Yea good point.
Hay Phil have you ever considered using a ASUS P5P800-VM? it is a 775 socket that uses the agp 865 chipset. i am thinking about dual booting windows 98 and win 10 on it.
I might have a board like that, not sure if it's Asus. There are some that even take Core 2 Duo CPUs. Quite niche, but very interesting that's for sure.
Did you ever live in Germany? You seem to have a slight German accent on top of the Australian
I'm trying to make win 98SE machine but i always have the ram and SATA hard drive issue when trying to install it.
I know RAM has to be 1 GB or less. I'm not sure how he got sata working on windows 98 though.
Why do you use such modern hardware with Windows 98? Windows XP might be better suited to be honest. FX series is the last one with decent Windows 98 support, but IMO way too fast and modern.
PhilsComputerLab
its easier to find modern hardware, also i had planed to dual boot it with windows XP. I would of liked to install final fantasy 11 on windows 98 and play it. I have AGP 6800 GT/XT that has 98 drivers but isn't installing correctly sadly. I had to remove the ram from 2 GB to 1GB to install windows.
I have Dell Optiplex 170L... And it's use Pentium 4... How can i install Windows 98 from USB? 'cause my DVD ROM is died...
Great video! 👍🏼
I'm curious to find out, philscomputerlab if your into retro gaming, wouldn't it be easier to use really old laptops (the cheap ones that nobody uses anymore) on second hand sites like ebay etc? Surely you can grab something like an IBM thinkpad T41? apparently this supports windows 98...
+Alex Elliot Yes they would work fine. But you can't change the graphics card or sound card. And I like doing that. But if you want to play a certain game and you're not as crazy, and as much into retro gaming, as I am, then a notebook should work really well. Much simpler to get going too.