Before buying, if you have any games you want tested, message me and let me know - if I can track down the game, I will do my best to test it.
Of all my builds, this is my ultimate "hybrid" build. It is a BRAND-NEW, in-the-box, highly-customized retro gaming Desktop PC, upgraded and configured for full support of Windows 98SE, Windows XP, and even real DOS mode with working audio. Well over 30 hours of research, development, and testing went into creating and configuring this build.
Included:
-Tower
-Sound Card (installed)
-Video Card (installed)
-Solid State Hard Drive (installed)
-SD/Media Reader (installed)
-Power Cord
-DVI-to-VGA Adapter
*Keyboard and Mouse NOT included. PS/2 connectors strongly recommended for compatibility with Windows 98
Specs:
-Acer G41T-AM OEM Motherbaord w/G41 and ICH7 chipsets
-Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor
-128GB Lexar Solid State Hard Drive (BIOS-configured to run in IDE mode)
-2GB PC3 Ram (Windows XP sees it all, while Windows 98 is configured to see 512MB, and DOS configured to see 64MB)
-FireGL V5100 video card installed as a Radeon x800 w/128MB vram
-Aureal Vortex PCI Sound card w/AU8810 Sound Chip, Soundblaster, FM, and A3D support
-15-pin gameport (part of sound card)
-Onboard Realtek Ethernet
-CD/DVD RW drive
-7x USB 2.0 ports (4 rear, 2 front, 1 front-reader)
-Serial port
-NO Parallel port (but there is a header for one so one could be added to an unused PCI slot)
-PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse ports
-DIYPC, Rosewill or Apex case depending on what I have in stock
-350 Watt PowerMan Power Supply
Each and every upgrade component, including the case, motherboard, CPU, ram, power supply, solid state hard drive, the video card, the sound card, and the ethernet card, are all brand-new or new-old stock. Nothing in this build is used or refurbished.
Benchmarks:
3dMark99
40,334 3D Marks
83,991 CPU Marks
450 FPS - Race
365 FPS - First Person
3dMark 2000
41,092 3D Marks
776 FPS - Helicopter (low detail)
433 FPS - Helicopter (high detail)
894 FPS - Adventure (low)
274 FPS - Adventure (high)
3dMark01
Overall - 33,276
450 FPS - Car Chase (low)
213 FPS - Car Chase (high)
465 FPS - Dragothic (low)
292 FPS - Dragothic - (high)
562 FPS - Lobby (low)
291 FPS - Lobby (high)
129 FPS - Nature
3dMark03
Overall - 12,186
381 FPS - Wings of Fury
83 FPS - Battle of Proxycon
72 FPS - Troll's Lair
78 FPS - Mother Nature
The Aureal Vortex 1 sound card works in both Windows 98 and XP as well as in real DOS mode. ASP4DOS is configured to run upon booting into DOS and sets the IRQ to either 5 or 7 (for whatever reason, this varies depending on my build, despite the hardware being identical). Tested and fully working in games like Epic Pinball, Duke Nukem 3D, Realms of Chaos, and Prince of Persia. Also has support for Aureal A3D in Windows.
Video Card:
I'm a huge fan of the Radeon x800-series of cards for retro builds. They offer solid compatibility for most Windows 98 games and are fast enough to support most early to mid-XP generation games and even some late XP games. The card in this build is a FireGL v5100 which uses the same r423 chip as the Radeon x800. It is installed as an x800 card under both XP and 98 and performs and is treated as such. Performance-wise, it is roughly equal to a GeForce 6800, with better compatibility in Windows 98. Do note that the DirectX version of this card is 9.0b.
Ethernet:
This motherboard has a Realtek RTL8168 Gigabit ethernet port. Windows 98 and XP drivers are installed. Note that if you do not have an ethernet connection, Windows 98 will boot faster if you disable this in the device manager.
Hard Drive:
128 GB solid state hard drive by Lexar. Super fast start-up times for both operating systems, much faster (and quieter as they are silent) than a mechanical drive.
CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400. One of the fastest dual-core Core2Duo Processor out there. Compatibility under Windows 98 is fine, except that it only sees 1 of the 2 cores.
RAM:
The Ram in here is 2GB of PC3 ram. Windows XP sees the full 2GB of ram, while Windows 98 only sees 1GB and native DOS mode sees just 64MB of ram (the latter two done via configuration files).
Triple-boot options:
This was a bit complicated given that DOS and Windows 98 each need their own set of configurations due to the needs of the sound card and further due to Windows 98's dislike of the memory manager needed to get audio working in DOS in a system with more than 512MB ram, but I was able to create a simple boot menu by modifying config.sys, msdos.sys, boot.ini, and autoexec.bat. When you turn on the computer, you'll see a menu with 2 boot options - either XP, or 98/DOS. If you choose XP, Windows XP will then boot. If you choose 98/DOS, you'll be greeted with a second menu giving you the choice between 98 or DOS, either of which will boot with the proper configurations.
Chipset Drivers for Windows 98:
The G41/ICH7 chipset came out well after Windows 98 was obsolete, so I had to settle for a modified driver I found on the internet. The driver works great as I have managed to completely eliminate all red-X's and exclamation points in the Device Manager (once disabling the onboard audio, onboard video, and onboard ethernet in the BIOS and replacing those functions with the add-on cards). Bottom line is there appears to be 100 percent device compatibility under Windows 98 and I have yet to encounter a single blue screen or stability issue. Not bad for a computer originally made in 2009!
Windows XP:
Acer offered official Windows XP driver support for this motherboard, so there's nothing to say here except that hardware compatibility is 100 percent.
Software:
NO GAMES are included except for a few DOS demo games (Duke Nukem 3D, Epic Pinball, and a few others). On the Windows 98 side, I installed DirectX 8.1 (upgradable to 9.0c), Sea Monkey Web browser, an unzip utility, the TCP optimizer patch (for increased downlaod speed over the network card), and the universal external drive driver (for flash drives). On the XP side, the installation is fairly close to stock, with Google Chrome v49 installed. DirectX version on XP is 9.0c.
Game Compatibility:
No hybrid retro system such as this one is going to offer 100 percent compatibility in both DOS, 98, and XP - it is simply impossible due to the hardware needs of early DOS games compared to that of late XP games. My goal here was to get that percentage as high as possible. Most later DOS games should work, though not all. Some early DOS games might work, though some don't like the fast CPU.
Overall, this system should play a large percentage of games released roughly between 1994 and 2005. If you have any specific games you would like tested on this system, please message me and if I can track the game down, I'll do my best to test it.