SpaceSimCentral

I never been much into building PC, but I have recently falling down this rabbit hole when my old XP machine up and died and having got that back up and running again, I found an old motherboard and thought, lets use it for a 98 build.
After making a couple rookie mistakes I have manage to get it to post and I'm now wondering about a card drive but have read this might not be the best way to go with 98 and would I be better off using a normal hard drive, has anyone use a card/cf drive with windows 98 machine.

Is that Win98 SE? I suspect what you've read is probably correct, and it would prove problematic.

Yes it will be Win98 SE, been looking at some youtuber videos where they use card drives but read on some forums that they are better suited to DOS machines. 

Going to go with my old IDE hard drive, just got to find the cables for it now, had a bit of a run around with finding a boot disk as the one's I download did not write anything to the disk. In the end I just made one from my 98 install on my old laptop, should have thought of doing that in the first place.

Sounds like you're having fun, amigo!

On the subject of building machines, my new one is plumbed-in and running sweet. Having not built one for eight years, the first surprise was finding that the fans on the graphics card (EVGA GTX 1070Ti SC 8GB) only spool-up at boot-up, and thence only under load. It's kinda strange, watching the hardware monitor and seeing those fans at 0rpm.
The second surprise was finding that Windows is not detecting the soundcard (Soundblaster Z-Series with gold-plated RCA outputs). Because of this, the SB support disc won't install - no hardware, no support. Thing is though, it's working fine, and pushing out high quality stereo sound. I can only presume that the mobo, lacking any direct connections for sound, is pushing audio out through this soundcard which, according to Windows, doesn't exist. <scratches head>

Did not realise that you could still get soundblaster card, thought it was just on board sound now days.

Posted by: @pinback
thought it was just on board sound now days

For a long while, onboard sound was adequate, but the cheap mobo back-plate sockets let it down. Now though, quite a few soundcards have nice chunky gold-plated RCA sockets, which improve the sound quality when fed into a decent hi-fi system.

So I added a hard drive at the weekend and was surprised to see it still had my old install of win98se on it, although it all in 16 colour mode as I have not added the graphics card yet.
Bought a PC case, new old stock but the new PSU has a down ward facing fan and as the PSU fits in a sort of tray at the top in the case so theirs no ventilation. The PSU needs to have the fan at the back. could use an older PSU that I have but will need to change the power connector to the small type to fit the motherboard or I could just drill some holes in the bottom of the tray.
Anyone know if you can get a new quieter fan for 462 socket as the one on it make a hell of racket.

Posted by: @pinback
Anyone know if you can get a new quieter fan for 462 socket

Looks like there are plenty on ebay, but whether there's a new one, I know not.

I have looked at the ones on eBay but they all seem to be the same as the one I have, what I need to do is try to find out what size the fan is as I can remove it and hopefully put some thing quieter on the heat sink. 

Been trying to add a 5.25 floppy dive got the icon for it but sofar all I have got is "A is not recognised" when I click on it.
Have set it up in the bios and it does seek when the computer boots, have the correct cable with the twist in it and the 3.5 floppy work fine, any one have any ideas as I'm completely out.

Oooh I haven't used a 5.25in floppy drive in so long.... heck even 3.5in been around 30+ years... wouldn't you need to connect it to the com port or if you have one a rs232 port? You may have a hard time with this with any newer hardware, you may need to get a hold of a MB from the 90s ... I would think someone have created some sort of converter or enclosure that could emulate a connection then connect via usb. I would have to do some digging.
Most of the time dealing with old software / hardware i look into emulators... I transferred any old programs I thought about keeping long ago to spare HDD or USB because every year that goes by it will get harder and harder to use this old hardware. I know a lot of people love this for a hobby and I do miss playing with all the older stuff, but it was getting to expensive they charge a lot for these older parts sometimes

No the internal floppy drive uses an a cable which I know is working as the 3.5 drive works fine, it maybe something to do with the read/write heads but I have not idea if they can be adjusted.
Old hardware is getting expensive and it's why I decided to use what I had in my parts box, although it may have been cheaper to just buy one. Have been sort of following this video,
 
Took me a while to figure out that the Sempron on my mother board was dead, replaced it with a Duron 900 which did not work until I realised I need to change FSB jumper.

Anyone know where you can buy a mini PC psu, looking for one about 100mm in length with the normal height and width.
Looked on eBay and amazon without finding anything.

Go to NewEgg, you can search PSUs by 'Max PSU Length' select 100mm and your should get a lot of results, when you select a psu and see the details checkout the 'SPECS' tab that most pages have to get actual dimensions to make sure your getting what you want
If they don't ship to you, you can at least write down the models you like and search for those specifically in your area.

I will check that out as I thought NewEgg was a US only store but it appears we have it here as well.

Bought a copy of Stalker and clear sky's and went to install them on my best XP computer only to find that the motherboard had died as two very small surface components seem to have burned out. No idea what happened although it might have been component failure or somthing to do with the PSU at a guess.
On the bright side I now have a big enough case to fit all the bits in for my 98 build.

So I just finished installing some games on my original XP machine and was just going to start a game of Company of Heroes, when their was a bang, flash and smell of burning electronics.
Bollocks not again, fortunately it turned out to be the graphic card which had blown up and that's the second time in about a month that a late noughties components has failed.
So I was thinking about emulation again when this video from Philscomputinglab popped up and all the links are in the video description, nice and if I ever get the time I'm going to give this a go.
 

Posted by: @pinback
... when their was a bang, flash and smell of burning electronics.

<chortles> Never had a computer blow up, but I had a hi-fi amp blow a capacitor once. Helluva a bang, flames and smoke!