Windows 98 PC

[CatPix]

But 2K doesn't have the same compatibility with DOS games if I recall right

Yet I think that indeed for transferring files, maybe to format floppies in odd formats, I could do a dual boot with a Win2K on it.

[jdgabbard]

I'd keep 98SE. I had 2k, along with all the other windows systems. After 98SE the next stable OS in my opinion was XP. You want something that will be stable. And there are drivers for USB mass storage, which makes file transfer easy. On my machine I have a couple of ISA cards as well as PCI, they work fine. Of course I have 384MB of memory. Also, I highly suggest getting a Voodoo card for OpenGL games (read Quake). A standard VGA card will work fine, but the graphics are not as good.

 

Also, 98SE will recognize very large HDDs. I have an 80GB drive in mine, which comes in handy for putting many games from the mid to late 90s on. Many of them, once decompressed, would be in the area of 1GB a piece.

[jdgabbard]

Another thing, there are some unofficial updates available. Many people suggest downloading and installing them. But now that I'm thinking about it, I always had problems after installing the. And I would have to revert back to a standard install, and simply use the latest official updates which can be found online. That my suggestion.

[Osgeld]

I disagree about XP, course I lived though the XP launch where nothing seemed to work and your machine was pawned in exactly 8 seconds after connecting it to the internet. I continued using windows 2K pro for several years and to this day still dont like the piggy, fisher price threw up, often pants on head retarded XP.

 

But that's neither here or there at this point, windows 2K onward is all NT core stuff, so if it ran on it then, it will most likely run now on 7-8-10, where as the older 32 windos stuff from 95-98-ME may or may not like the NT environment, and stuff written for 16 bit windos is really hit and miss (I brag that battle chess for windows 3 runs on windows 7 for instance)

 

DOS stuff on the other hand was already having trouble with the 32 bit environments, and 2K's support of it is pretty much file,keyboard, and text screen I/O (with exceptions in both ways of course).

[CatPix]

I'd keep 98SE. I had 2k, along with all the other windows systems. After 98SE the next stable OS in my opinion was XP.

Maybe you're thinking of Windows ME when we say 2K? lots of people seems to do that.

I have one machine I kept under Win2K, for a little more than 10 years now, I still have to see a BSOD on it or to even have to reboot it from a frozen software.

And between Win2K and XP, for the meager performances on the hardware I have, Win2K sounds like a much better option... even if XP is pretty good in that regard (both stability and ressources saving... once you put it in Windows Classic apperance), don't get me wrong.

 

And anyway, I'm gonna do a dual boot. Win 98SE is set up and run, I'm not gonna blow that work right on.

 

For the video, I'll check what I can get. The MoBO feature a 2X AGP port, but currently there is "only" a Trident 3D card on it with 4 Mo of RAM. I have a Matrox MGA with 8 Mo of RAM on it, but in PCI. Not sure then if I'll gain something from swapping; but honestly I wasn't into PC gaming around 1998, I came back to PC gaming around 2003, so I do'nt have much idea of what a decent video card for a K6 computer with 286Mo of RAM (at max) and an AGP2 port can be.

Edited May 11, 2016 by CatPix

[Osgeld]

a voodoo 3 would be a good option, not quite as elegant as as a nvidia TNT -TNT2 but what you will find is a large number of games of the late 90's only support 3d acceleration though glide, the 3dFX API. On more powerful machines its possible to get a glide wrapper, but I have never really gotten it to work 100%

 

with a 3dfx card you get glide, openGL and directX, everyone else just gets openGL and directX

 

there's voodoo 4's and 5's but by then NVIDIA and ATI were kicking 3dFx's ass and glide wasnt as neccacary by then, and they were not as popular... quick glance on ebay there's a pile of 3's for ~40 bucks vs a couple voodo 4's for 2x the price.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Osgeld