If it was me I'd try to get the 'best' (as in widest specs) motherboard that I could find for a reasonable price that included ISA slots with DMA support.
The reason I say ISA with DMA support is that there are some motherboards in that era that have ISA slots that didn't support Direct Memory Access.
- This can slow things down and also stop DOS game sound from working.
- I would never use a non-DMA sound card with Windows regardless, so it's pretty much mandatory in my book.
- I wouldn't get a board with less than 2 x full length ISA-16 slots, both with DMA support.
If you're using really old games then you may want to get a slo mo CPU app, as some games freak out if the clock speed is above 200 MHz (give or take).
I'd look for 3 PCI slots (33MHz x 32-bit is fine) with 3 or 4 ISA/ISA-16 slots with DMA support; just in case one of two of the ISA slots are bung.
Then look at getting a Sound Blaster AWE32 and/or Sound Blaster 16 with a GameBlaster daughter board.
Maybe a Roland and Gravis Ultrasound.
Depends how old-school you're talking.
I wouldn't go pre Pentium Pro to be honest, as back in those days you had to load FASTVID and UniVBE (depending on video card) to get accelerated 2D; and it wasn't always 100% stable.
The Pentium II era fixed all the quirky bugs and errata, the Celeron 466 (non SSE) and Duron 600 were my two favourite processors from that era.
In all honesty AGP 2x with working Side Band Addressing is enough, and AGP 4x Pro (extra power to slot) was hardly worth it; and you wouldn't notice the difference, let alone be able to benchmark it, for most old school titles.
If you want a Voodoo and TNT2/GeForce2 then it can get a bit trickier.
If I'm not around just check out the DOSBox VOGONS Forums, they cover some really old school platforms there.
Once you are in Windows 95 with the OSR2 pack I would put down AGP 2x and the above as a must, since it's a more modern type of 'old school'.
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