Win 98 Motherboard Recommendation Needed

[minneapolis55]

I now use an old Tyan Trinity S 1950S Socket 7 K6-III motherboard, VIA
MPV chip set, Win 98 SE, 80 GB Maxtor IDE hard drive, and ATI Radeon
9000. It's virus and malware free as far as I know.

It works fine, as it has for years.

I said I will replace it when it breaks. However, it looks like it's
going the way of some of my 1950s transistor radios. They still work.

I have so much software that taking two or three weeks to reinstall,
test, and possibly have to upgrade just isn't worth it. That rules out
a fresh install or an upgrade to XP.

Does anyone have a recommendation for current motherboard with which I
could use my existing Win 98 system as a starter operating system?

 

[John Doe]

I have so much software that taking two or three weeks to
reinstall, test, and possibly have to upgrade just isn't worth it.
That rules out a fresh install or an upgrade to XP.

Does anyone have a recommendation for current motherboard with
which I could use my existing Win 98 system as a starter operating
system?

Sorry, but this is one of those "no matter what you say, someone
will play the adversary" type posts.

If you're going to buy a new mainboard, CPU, and memory, you should
upgrade to Windows XP IMO. Eventually you might have to anyway, may
as well do it now.

Try these online stores, and whatever anyone else suggests.
NewEgg.com
ZipZoomFly.com

Good luck.

 

[Paul]

I now use an old Tyan Trinity S 1950S Socket 7 K6-III motherboard, VIA
MPV chip set, Win 98 SE, 80 GB Maxtor IDE hard drive, and ATI Radeon
9000. It's virus and malware free as far as I know.

It works fine, as it has for years.

I said I will replace it when it breaks. However, it looks like it's
going the way of some of my 1950s transistor radios. They still work.

I have so much software that taking two or three weeks to reinstall,
test, and possibly have to upgrade just isn't worth it. That rules out
a fresh install or an upgrade to XP.

Does anyone have a recommendation for current motherboard with which I
could use my existing Win 98 system as a starter operating system?

At a certain point, Win98SE and motherboards parted ways. I would
expect the presence of a PCI Express video card slot would be a
killer for Win98SE.

Note that motherboard makers do not make this issue a slamdunk.
They won't say, "this product is completely compatible with
Windows OS xxx", leaving that to the customer to figure out.

On the Intel side, the 875/865/848 AGP chipsets might be the
last ones to have what appears to be support for Win98SE.
On the Asus download page, for example, you can see that Win98SE
is mentioned for some of the drivers. For any motherboard, you
have to look at the assembled mass of drivers, then check the
hardware listed as present on the motherboard, to see if you
have decent coverage. Make sure each major chip on the motherboard,
has a Win9x driver. On this page, for example, there is even a
USB2 driver for Win98SE:

(click "Drivers" at the top of the frame)
http://support.asus.com.tw/download...product=1&f_name=&type=Latest&SLanguage=en-us

The P5P800 SE motherboard is an LGA775 (Intel's latest socket)
motherboard, but with legacy hardware interfaces. It has an
AGP video card slot, and uses DDR memory. The very latest
motherboards for Intel, are LGA775, but use PCI Express video
cards and DDR2 memory. But the P5P800 SE and similar boards
from other motherboard makers, help to bridge the gap between
new processors, and other older bits and pieces of technology.

What I cannot tell you, is how Win98SE behaves with a dual core
processor. Ignoring it would be too simple, and you may want
to do more research about that, before buying an 8xx or 9xx
dual core processor. Some of those processors are priced to
move:

http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusuppo...type=1&name=P5P800 SE&SLanguage=en-us&cache=1

On the Athlon64 side of things, AFAIK the Nforce3 chipset was
the last one to have Win98SE support. You should check the
Nvidia download page and prove that to yourself, or use a
motherboard manufacturer's web page for evidence.

Click "Platform", "Nforce3", and then look in the right hand
column, to see Win9x listed:

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

I think Gigabyte makes some S939 motherboards with an Nforce3
chipset. Nforce3 supports AGP video cards. The S939 processors
(soon to be discontinued) use DDR RAM, and S939 supports up to
four RAM slots in a dual channel running mode. (S754 gives you
up to three slots in single channel mode, but is a cheaper
platform.)

There are possibly other chipset, like from VIA, that offer
AGP video card slots. An Asus A8V for example, should be AGP.
Checking here, I see the A8V has some Win9x drivers.

http://support.asus.com.tw/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Another thing to consider, is virtualization. If at some point
your hardware advances past the capabilities of your OS/software,
virtualizing and running the old environment in a "container",
is another valid option. Microsoft has VirtualPC, there is
VMware etc. Is setting up stuff like that tricky ? You betcha.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

When setting up your new Win98SE machine, remember that
Win98SE has a memory / memory address space limitation. Using
512MB of RAM will be completely trouble free. With between
512MB and 1GB of RAM, some .ini file trickery is required.
There is also an option to make a portion of RAM invisible
to Win98SE, so it won't cause problems. So, you could have a
2GB WinXP environment, and with the right entry in the .ini
file for Win98SE, it might only "see" 512MB of the total 2GB
of memory when you boot into Win98SE, which would prevent
any problems. (Google on MaxFileCache and MaxPhysPage for
more details.)

Setting challenges for yourself is half the fun

Good luck,
Paul

 

[Paul]

Some other things to remember for your new build:

1) Clone the hard drive - make an exact copy. Save the old
drive to boot your old computer - the "rescue" computer.

2) Place the new motherboard in a new case with new power
supply. Don't share hardware between computers. If you run
into problems trying to boot, then it is easy to move the
test boot drive back to the original computer for repairs.

3) Before you move the drive for the final time, from the
old working machine into the new untested machine - change
the IDE driver from whatever is there, to the standard
Microsoft driver. (Do a driver update, then see if there
is a Microsoft option for a driver.) The Microsoft driver
can be used to bridge between old hardware and new, and the
disk may boot on the new computer, using that driver. I did
that for one of my "transplants". There will be a mess to
clean up in terms of installing new drivers etc., which will
take you a few hours.

4) If using an 875/865/848 based motherboard, set the IDE mode
to "Compatible". That makes the chipset look like the old
style I/O space control/data blocks. That is how you can even
get an old OS to work with newer hard drives like SATA. But
it also limits you to four storage devices max on the
Southbridge. The motherboard will ship set to "Enhanced",
but you want it set to "Compatible", before you boot for
the first time.

You might also want to research "repair install" for Win98SE.
I don't know if that differs significantly from the WinXP
instructions or not. If the IDE driver trick does not work,
then starting again with a fresh cloned disk, and doing a
repair install, is the next least amount of work. All your
apps and prefs are untouched, but you'll need to reinstall
any service packs, security updates and the like, and I'm
not even sure that Windows Update can be used to do that
for you any more.

Like I said, a challenge... Like climbing Mount Everest
using only a fork and spoon

Paul

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I have so much software that taking two or three weeks to reinstall,
test, and possibly have to upgrade just isn't worth it. That rules out
a fresh install or an upgrade to XP.

Does anyone have a recommendation for current motherboard with which I
could use my existing Win 98 system as a starter operating system?

The newer SiS chipsets don't support Win98/98SE/ME for the built-in USB
2.0 ports. The nVidia nForce chipsets do (at least nForce 3 does) for
98SE/ME, even though they claim that there's no USB 2.0 support for
them. I'm not sure about Intel chipsets, but at least one of the
Pentium4 ones lacks RAID support for anything earlier than Win 2000.
BTW, lots of stuff lacks USB 2.0 support for Win 98, even many plug-in
USB 2.0 cards. Fortunately they're the lousier ones, like ALi and SiS.
Both NEC (the best) and VIA USB 2.0 cards (the VIA VT6212 is better
than the VT6202) support not only 98SE but also 98.

If you have to buy the 98SE upgrade, you may want to just buy XP Home
instead because Office Depot has it, thorugh Saturday, for $40, after
rebate, $20 if you use a widely available coupon -- see the "Hot Deals"
section of FatWallet.com

 

[Jan Alter]

The newer SiS chipsets don't support Win98/98SE/ME for the built-in USB
2.0 ports. The nVidia nForce chipsets do (at least nForce 3 does) for
98SE/ME, even though they claim that there's no USB 2.0 support for
them. I'm not sure about Intel chipsets, but at least one of the
Pentium4 ones lacks RAID support for anything earlier than Win 2000.
BTW, lots of stuff lacks USB 2.0 support for Win 98, even many plug-in
USB 2.0 cards. Fortunately they're the lousier ones, like ALi and SiS.
Both NEC (the best) and VIA USB 2.0 cards (the VIA VT6212 is better
than the VT6202) support not only 98SE but also 98.

If you have to buy the 98SE upgrade, you may want to just buy XP Home
instead because Office Depot has it, thorugh Saturday, for $40, after
rebate, $20 if you use a widely available coupon -- see the "Hot Deals"
section of FatWallet.com

You could continue to hold out for perhaps two more years before the K-3
gets so bogged down with lack of mhz power and lack of RAM starts giving you
errors and newer programs stop supporting Win98 that you realize it's time
to move on. I know and empathize with you. Fortunately prices have fallen on
up to date hardware that make it reasonable to upgrade.
For $300 you can get a new system that you build yourself and recycle
your 80 gig hdd. Get XP and you'll be able to even upgrade to Vista after 3-
5 years use. Understand that once you enter computerland it is an eventual
necessity to allow yourself the opportunity to get newer equipment to take
advantage of the technology. Think of it as teaching yourself how to do
something better and you are purchasing the resources to allow that
education to happen. Take the K-3 system and donate it to a school where the
kids will be able to learn word processing and a little Internet connection.

 

[Rod Speed]

I now use an old Tyan Trinity S 1950S Socket 7 K6-III motherboard,
VIA MPV chip set, Win 98 SE, 80 GB Maxtor IDE hard drive, and
ATI Radeon 9000. It's virus and malware free as far as I know.

It works fine, as it has for years.

I said I will replace it when it breaks. However, it looks like it's
going the way of some of my 1950s transistor radios. They still work.

I have so much software that taking two or three weeks
to reinstall, test, and possibly have to upgrade just isn't
worth it. That rules out a fresh install or an upgrade to XP.

Dunno, it seems mad to be hobbling along using Win98 now
with a new system. Makes a lot more sense to cut to the
chase and do a clean XP install, even if it does take that long.