Windows 98/XP Gaming Rig Advice! (newbie alert)

[Mikey_tech_noob]

Hi all! looking for some advice on a Windows 98/XP gaming rig I'm planning to build, being a newbie any advice would be helpful, recently been getting into computers and watching all sorts of content on youtube about old gaming rigs and retro games. I have a raspberry pi for some really old games and a MacBook Pro for general use. Would love to build something I could use to play some old games from 2000's when I was younger but love the idea of using old hardware for that nostalgia buzz (bare in mind the old games were played on a standard dell unit)

 

From what I've looked into so far I'm planning to use an LGA775 motherboard and cpu for running windows XP mainly, but wanted to also incorporate windows 98, toyed with the idea of building two systems but just don't really want two pc's taking up space. So thinking a dual boot system would be ideal?

 

One of the main things I'm stuck on at the moment is the compatibility of graphics and sound cards, I'm not sure if there is a GPU and sound card that would work with both OS's, or if I could use a PCIE graphics card and a PCI graphics card on the same motherboard for each OS? Hopefully I will be able to download drivers on my Mac and transfer them onto the system as I'm not planning to connect the PC to the internet, not sure if there will be an issue there too between windows and Mac?

 

Any advice or pointers would be much appreciated! and go easy on me as I'm new to all this and have limited knowledge  Thank You in advance!

 

 

[Egg-Roll]

Dual booting 98/xp will work, make sure you either install 98 first or create a fat32 partition for 98 to work off of (i forget if ntfs is initial supported or not but I don't think so).

 

as for graphics cards I think your biggest issue will be the actual drivers more than the card, simply put find the newest driver that supports 98 and go based on the listed GPUs for the driver.

 

For component drivers they should be still available on manufactures websites.

 

For Apple to windows, make sure the usb device is formatted to something both can read (like fat32), if you have 64gb or higher cards no worries as long as you don't transfer larger than 2/4gb files the theoretical format for fat32 is 2TiB. For files that are larger than 2/4gb zip them (don't rar them) with no compression.

 

I would also like to point out XP plays most 98 (even 95) games w/o much issues, most issues can be solved via google. So you might just need XP and skin it to look like 98 (that green button is still ugly imo)

[Mikey_tech_noob]

Thank you for the tips, I didn't think of finding comparable drivers and working it with a card like that  and the XP theme is a little 'love it or hate it' I personally think its rather nice 

[brotherswing]

I got my A+ certification building gaming machines during that era, consider me a fount of knowledge at your disposal! That being said, your sound card should be PCI and your graphics card should be AGP. A GeForce 3 would be ideal, if you can find one, backed up by a Sound Blaster 64 or Live.

Edit: Forgot to mention, 98 has absolutely zero support for NTFS, so make sure you use fat32.

[Mikey_tech_noob]

9 hours ago, brotherswing said:

I got my A+ certification building gaming machines during that era, consider me a fount of knowledge at your disposal! That being said, your sound card should be PCI and your graphics card should be AGP. A GeForce 3 would be ideal, if you can find one, backed up by a Sound Blaster 64 or Live.

Edit: Forgot to mention, 98 has absolutely zero support for NTFS, so make sure you use fat32.

Thank you I shall bare that in mind, my first port of call will be getting a case, motherboard and cpu then seeing what I can track down in regards to sound and graphics cards.