Perhaps a custom build using an ABIT BP6 motherboard.
Dual Celeron!
1 Like
Wouldn’t you need NT to support the dual. CPUs? I don’t think 98 ever supported multiple CPUs did it?
1 Like
There is a thread on Vogons about this very thing:
2 Likes
Yeah JackTL, you’re right about that.
It’s funny how SMP is universally common now… even in a raspberry pi or esp32… but that was high-technology back then.
2 Likes
Yeah, about the time I last saw people just chucking them. Foolishly thinking to myself I don’t want that either!
As far as the C64 goes, I’m halfway tempted to just replace the VIC-II chip with one of the emerging homebrew solutions (thankfully people still work on stuff like this) and just going digital with it. For the intended use-case of playing it on my modern TV like I currently do, I don’t mind moving to a digital output. The same is true of my NES.
But for this build, I’d like to go back to CRT if I can.
You know, I do happen to have an original copy of NT Workstation meant for 1-2 CPUs!
I do like NT, and would entertain the idea of a an NT rig with two CPUs over a 95/98SE/2000 Pro rig.
If I had the time and space, I’d jump down the rabbithole like Clint (LGR) and build one of each.
I’ve pretty much decided that after I build whatever I’m going to build to fill this niche, the Compaq that has the 98SE install on it right now with the slower K6-2 is going to go back to being a Windows 95 machine. I have the previous install on a hard drive that I’ll clone over to a larger one when that time comes.
Ah, something dawned on me, I recall NT not really playing nicely with gaming in general, unless something has changed.
I also have a copy of 2000 Professional, which should also support dual CPUs…
Man, y’all have got me thinking now…
I still have my original Windows 98se machine in storage. But the 30GB HDD ceased up and I can no longer access the OS. It just makes a grinding noise. Such a shame. But I did manage to extract a lot of data from the drive when it was still operational.
This machine is powered by a Intel Celeron 533MHz CPU, which is the weakest component in the machine. Back in the day it had a GeForce 256 32MB AGP card, but currently now has a GeForce 2 64MB AGP card in it. The system has 256 MB of SDRAM, I forget the clock speed. The motherboard is by SOYO. It also has a creative soundblaster 128, or something like that.
It was a custom built system. I used this machine all the way up to 2001. When I replaced it with an AMD Athalon XP system with 512MB of RAM and Windows XP.
1 Like
Ahh, a shame about the hard drive. I’ve resurrected and done a few drive head swaps in the past, but definitely not for the faint of heart.
A friend of mine in high school was a huge AMD fanboy because of his dad, so all of their systems were Athalons in Shuttle cases.
1 Like
yeah, I thought about taking the drive apart myself. But it seems like I might make it worse. The last time I booted up the machine, it did function, but I could hear the platters start to make soft grinding noises. I think the machine sat in storage for so long that the ‘rust’ drive actually started to rust. This is the original harddrive from 1999. It’s a Quantum Fireball 30GB IDE Drive. I have two of these drives. One still works and has Windows ME on it.
Oh man, another friend of mine and I were talking about our overall awful experiences with Windows ME. I have the fancy holographic disc, but it’s really more of a collectible to me than something I’d ever run again. I used to have it running on my old IBM ThinkPad 770 with the Pentium MMX @ 233 MHz… now that machine is running Windows 2000, but I need to look into potentially expanding the storage from the factory 4 GB IBM drive.
2000 probably is better for Windows games than NT 4, but I’m not sure either is ideal for DOS games.
I was much more of a Mac user in the 90s, but I do remember sneaking installs of Quake II on network shares so we could play on the LAN in the Windows 2000 labs at high school.
1 Like
The few DOS games I do have will work just fine on the Compaq when it goes back to 95. Most of them are compatible with Windows anyway, like the early Command & Conquer games.
Windows ME was interesting, because it was the last of the Windows9X kernel OSes. It was an attempt to backport some of the features from Windows 2000 (NT Kernel) to the 9X kernel, and also removes DOS compatibility from the equation. It’s not as bad as people say it is. But Windows Millennium Edition really is still just a gimped Windows 98se in a lot of ways. But It does have a few minor updates as well. I think the USB support is overall better.
NT Kernel does not have DOS shell integration like the 9X kernel was built around. So Running DOS applications on it is a mess. Instead it has a DOS emulation mode that was not very good at all. Worse than DOSBOX’s implementation of emulation.
Windows 95, 98 and 98se generally still have the best support through the DOS shell. Even though, some games ran notoriously fast and were unplayable due to the faster CPU’s.
Windows 98se is a better Windows 98 due to the updates it has with USB support… though arguably, it has early USB2 support and is still not great in the modern age.
1 Like
Yeah, I think trying to make it more of a hybrid while stripping features from both sides is what really made ME a bit of a pain for a lot of people. Bringing in NT features while removing some DOS components while also at the same time trying to keep some level of DOS compatibility really had them missing the mark. I do agree that USB support was better, as my USB peripherals of the time would be recognized and work better overall on the IBM in question.
Yup, no DOS in the NT kernel. It made using certain legacy apps a pain back in school when they began switching all of the machines from 98 to NT 4.0, which was a chronological step back, but having gone to DoDDEA schools most of my life we were at the whim of whatever the feds wanted.
1 Like
I have a ThinkPad 600X Pentium III which can be clocked down, paired with a Selectabase with a Voodoo III and a Turtle Beach sound card… now I just need more space to have it all on permanent display 
2 Likes
My 770 was one of the first off the line, so when I spent some time last night looking into meaningful upgrades, I’m capped at a P II with about 400 MHz. The later ones that shipped with the P II by default could manage a Pentium III with a little bit of work.
I was toying with the idea of doing some upgrades, but since it’s the first gen, and also the very first laptop I actually owned (a gift from my grandparents in the summer of 1998). Looking back at how much it cost, it kinda blows my mind that my grandad gave me, a then 7 year-old, such an expensive machine.
Wow! Those are really nice grandparents!!
Back in the day I was running a desktop 486 well throughout the 2000s… to the point that I could see a Command Prompt cursor when swapping from a game to the desktop, Windows had to swap back all the desktop from the cache as I only had 192 MB of RAM (or something like that)… upgraded to an Athlon64 X2 with a GeForce 7800, and I could run Vista comfortably!!
1 Like
You’re telling me! I used that laptop for a long, long time. First thing I remember my dad and I doing was tossing in a 256 MB RAM kit.
1 Like
For 95, my p2 266, matrox millenium II + voodoo 2, 64mb ram. Would like to upgrade to 96 or 128mb but the board is a very early 440FX series with EDO simms… will have to see if I have any extra laying around. 
SB AWE 64 value or SB 128 pci.
For 98(SE), p3 933, geforce 2 gts, 256 or 512mb ram. SB Live!
1 Like