Fastest feasible system for Windows 98se?

[sedrosken]

There are people who torture Windows 98se by <a=href"http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/386vers.htm">forcing it to run on a 386SX</a>.

I would like to do exactly the opposite. Let 98se live out it's golden years on a PC that, while far more than enough for it, would be just enough for 98se to use effectively.

I was thinking something along the lines of an Athlon 64 4000+ single core, with 1 GB RAM. Obviously, 98se would be patched out the wazoo to handle all this RAM. Drop a SATA SSD in there using SATA drivers for Windows 98se, and a nVidia GeForce 6800 AGP. This is more trouble than it would probably be worth just to let 98se do pretty much nothing when it runs like greased lightning on far lesser specs, but I want to pay tribute to the best of the Win9x.

This is more hypothetical than anything, seeing as I have no money and have no income.

 

[CougTek]

Windows 98, SE or not, cannot be put on a system with internet access. It is too vulnerable. Well, you could, but unless you want to end up with a zombie system controlled by a botnet, you won't do it.Also, an SSD operates best in native SATA mode. Using it on a compatible-IDE-mode SATA channel, the only way Windows 98 will be able to use it, if it can stomach the chipset, is unpleasant.

 

[jtr1962]

I had Windows '98 SE running on an old Pentium II motherboard upgraded with a 1.4 GHz slotkit and 1 GB of RAM. 1 GB is about the limit of what '98 can handle without issues. If I recall, I didn't need to patch anything to get it to use all that RAM but I may have needed to change some registry entries.

 

[ddrueding]

The best place for 98 to live is in a Virtual Machine. There was no proper GPU acceleration anyway, and this resolves many of the device driver issues.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a Windows 98 machine running on an LGA775 Pentium 4 with an Intel 915 chipset and a Radeon 9700 graphics card. I built it to be a retro-gaming machine and yes it can talk to the internet, albeit not very well. Just to gainsay Coug, Windows 98 is ironically not as insecure as using 2000 or XP, simply because it's too damned stupid to be easily attacked. It's kind of a ridiculous computer to have. I keep thinking I'm going to swap in an SSD just to see it run, but I haven't done that yet.

I suspect a better or safer way to do things would be to install Windows 98 through DOSbox on a high end Android device, though I doubt that would set any speed records if you're wanting to play games.