The DVD burner (which will obviously also read and write CDs) and the floppy drives should cover most of the media from DOS through Windows 98. Media DrivesĭVD Burner, 5.25″ Floppy Drive, and 3.25″ Floppy Drive Storageġ28GB is the maximum hard drive space that Windows 98 natively supports, and the SSD will be so fast that the SATA connection will likely bottleneck it. I choose this card because it’s a quality sound card with a game port and Sound Blaster 16 emulation for DOS games. This card will blast through any of the games of the period at the native resolution of my monitor. Having a motherboard with an AGP slot would open up a few more options.
Windows 98 emulator for games drivers#
This may not be the most powerful graphics card that supports Windows 98, but it is the most powerful PCI graphics card with Windows 98 drivers I could find. RAMĥ12MB is the maximum amount of RAM that Windows 98 natively supports. Some would argue that this breaks compatibility with speed sensitive DOS games, but most high-end, period correct Windows 98 builds I see use Pentium 3, which is beyond speed sensitive DOS games anyway. This is extreme overkill for a Windows 98 PC seeing as the 1GHz barrier was just broken at the end of Windows 98’s life. The motherboard also has onboard Ethernet with Windows 98 drivers, so I won’t be needing a network card.
This provides a lot of options for connecting period hardware with all the convenience of USB 2.0.
Windows 98 emulator for games serial#
While Windows 98 doesn’t support PCI-Express, it could come in handy in the future.Įxternally, it has four USB 2.0 ports, PS/2 ports, and serial and parallel ports. Internally, it has four SATA 2 connectors, IDE and floppy controllers, two PCI slots, and one PCI-Express slot.
I chose this motherboard because, obviously, it has Windows 98 drivers, and it has a lot of options for both internal and external expansion. I am instead using the most powerful components I could find that still support Windows 98. Let it be known that I am not going for a period accurate build. I want to relive that experience through building my ultimate Windows 98 gaming PC. My first experience playing video games was on a Windows 98 PC, playing games including Star Wars: Dark Forces, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and Doom.