Windows 98 Compatible MB

[jduck00]

Got a question for you fellows. I have a Legacy production machine that I need to upgrade the failing hardware on. Its to expensive to upgrade the software so I'm just looking at replacing the hardware and imaging the system over.

What would be a good modern MB that will still works with Windows 98? Its been so long since I've thought about Win98, I don't know what is backwards compatible anymore.

Thanks-

 

[o1die]

No modern motherboards support windows 98. Use the ram and cpu specs you have to find a replacement board. You may be able to find one that is newer, but not the latest. I would check computer geeks and 3b tech. Use their links to go to the manufacturer's webpage to check for windows 98 drivers for the board.

 

[prgmhorse]

i'd look on ebay for a motherboard with a late pentium 3 or early pentium 4 chip... here in the Missouri we have an used compy store called EPC, and they usually are pretty good about having or knowing what is compatable with older stuff..

 

[dtemple]

Windows 98 does not work with any sort of multi-processor setup, including hyperthreading. It does not support PCI-Express bus either, and SATA support is nonexistant. It will not install properly with more than 512MB of RAM during installation, but it supports up to 2GB after installation is complete (with some tweaking to the startup files).
This means the fastest system you could build for Windows 98 support would be a single-core Athlon64 with 512MB of RAM and an IDE hard drive. Second-fastest would be a Pentium 4 of some sort, and turn off hyperthreading if it has it. An Athlon XP system would also be a solid choice. You would absolutely have to have AGP or PCI for the videocard, because it just doesn't work with PCIe.
Good luck!

 

[curtis_87]

why not create a virtual machine an see if it runs through that instead?, you should still be able to access folders across frm the vm to ur desktop then it wont matter what MB you have.and you will get a performance increase from newer interfaces and cpu's....i kid you not i have run win98 this way an a complete restart is so fast if you blink you miss it.

 

[christiangordon]

I run a legacy software that requires 95-98. My solution was to build a decent system and use a VM with 98 on it to run the software in DOS. I just regulated the RAM to 1012kb and a single CPU with a 10.2 GB disk space. My system is running Win7 pro 64-bit but this also works perfectly in ubuntu. I use a ubuntu machine with a VM of 98 for the softwares network printer(LPT1)

 

[Guest]

I am running Windows 98 on an Asus A7n8 Deluxe Motherboard with separate sound and usb 2 cards. The latest printer which will work on this system is an Epson R300. Hope this helps someone.

 

[tha_vice]

Your best bet is this. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx or something similar. It's like the above posters have said - there is no hardware being made today that will support Win 98 however, you can easily drop that iso or cd into a virtual machine, set the memmory/ hd space so it's happy and have it running like that, which is a good example of why virtualization is so powerful.