Computer Hope

Hello,

If you have kept up with my posts, I have built a system using some hardware from a few generations back. (Pentium 4)1.5Ghz 400MhZ 128Mb Ram Win98SE There are a few things I am not happy with, the first being the floppy drive is not reading anything. I don't think it worked from the start, since I attempted to make a boot disk when first installing windows, and it couldn't read the disk in the drive. Second, it does not play music CD's. The motherboard came as an opened box item, and I haven't heard too many good things about its brand. I suppose it may have been a prior builder's reject and have some kind of defect on it, or maybe it was damaged in shipping. Since it is difficult to obtain that same exact MOBO, I think I will resume with a new model, and I step up to 478 socket, since they are more readily available.

So, the problem is to install a new motherboard with drivers, without having to wipe the hard-drive. The question is, can I boot up the system after installing the MOBO and select a new hardware profile, for which Windows will search for all new drivers. By default it doesn't ask for anything, but I made a 2nd hardware profile for the sake of experimenting with the drivers, so that I would have one to rollback to, incase a driver would not work after reboot, and so at boot up windows asks which profile to use and there is an option to use a new profile as well.

I have read an article on this same subject in a PC magazine, a few years ago, but don't seem to have that article on-hand. It didn't have anything to do with profiles, it was even more rudimentary than that.

if you build what is, in effect, a new computer using a different motherboard, you will need to do a complete new install of Windows, and if you are using an OEM edition of Windows you will find that it cannot be legally activated.

Curious why your thinking of going with a socket 478 board/build?

For the money spent you could get something way better. Maybe this is mainly to stay legacy and that's why you want to stick with early Pentium 4.

For socket 478 the strongest CPU you will find is a Pentium 4 with HT but that's only in the board supports the heavier CPU. For example I have a motherboard I got for free on a earth day recycle back in 2008 that was going on where I went to bring some junk to the local computer shop for free disposal and I saw some Pentium 4 systems stacked and I asked if I could have some. They said sure and so I grabbed 3 of the best Pentium 4 computers from the pile and out of the 3 which had issues I mixed all the good components between an ( eMachine, HP, and a Dell ) to take the good motherboard from the eMachine a Trigem Imperial 2002.xxxx swapped out its Celeron 2.0Ghz socket 478 for a 2.4Ghz socket 478 P4 that came out of a Dell Dimension 4600 and it wouldn't post with the 2.4Ghz Pentium 4. Tested the P4 in a better build I had and it wasn't a problem with the CPU, the motherboard wouldn't run on a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4. So I then saw in the HP that I grabbed that it had a 2.0Ghz Pentium 4, and so I put the 2.0Ghz Pentium 4 in and now the emachine motherboard worked properly and with the extra Cache that the Pentium 4 had vs the Celeron at the same clock. Looked online for a flash for the BIOS and none to be found to give better CPU support. Pretty much this board maxes out on a 2.0Ghz Pentium 4 with 266Mhz DDR RAM. In the end I had a eMachine motherboard with a Dell Power Supply an extra 256MB DDR266 RAM stick from the HP to bring the RAM to 512MB DDR266, hard drive from Dell, and the Pentium 4 2.0Ghz CPU from the HP to have a working computer. I installed all this into a extra tower case I had.

*** Maybe you can find a computer shop that will give away old computers that they get as junk and you can build from this for free or inexpensively.

Otherwise I would suggest if spending money to get something better for your money. For about the same price as you would be spending for a Pentium 4 build you could get a motherboard with RAM and CPU with a Dual-Core CPU and way better performance, however curious if your going to move away from Windows 98 or not as for the OS will be a performance bottleneck not able to tap into CPU features.

Additionally a complete computer with Windows 7 or Windows 10 with a warranty could be picked up as a refurb these days for under $100 and give you far more powerful performance than the system you shared specs on. However if your running a legacy build with legacy cards and drivers all having to work around Windows 98 then you may want to stick with older hardware for compatibility reasons. However you could make a dual boot system with 98 and another more modern OS and have the best of both worlds. I haven't run Windows 98 in ages but back in the day I had a system with 98SE / Windows XP Pro dual boot. My last use of Windows 98 was in Virtual PC 2007 but games didn't work there so I tombstoned that idea of playing older games in a virtual environment on a modern OS/Hardware because the virtual GPU just isn't there to support old games that really need an old video card to drive them. So I ended up building an old legacy build out of the eMachine that I mentioned above and used that for a while. However sadly the motherboard doesn't have a AGP slot and so its limited to performance of a GeForce 4 MX440 64MB PCI card which isn't the greatest but its better than the Intel Integrated 845GL

There's also XP compatibility mode as a MS download install for Win7...

XP Mode will run many legacy apps...

The goal is to have a system fast enough so that it can run CAD/CAM programs without sacrificing performance. I also want to run MSDOS in real mode, so I am going with WIN98 for now. I may set up a dual boot system, and install XP. Of course I will have to buy a copy first. I think the P4 will be fast enough for that. I don't think my board supports hyper-threading, because the supported processors list doesn't include any HT models. But, it is a genuine intel and the best for a work pc. I had quad core system that would not take a parallel port card, which is why I started the whole affair. The MOBO was a cheapie, less than $100. So, you settle for something less and that's what happens. It seems like nowadays computers are all "bloatware" stuff you don't really need.
I read the system requirements for a cad program that recommends a 500Mhz. Processor. This board has a 533Mhz system bus, so I think the program will run well. I think if it can run the graphics demanding cad, it will handle all of my other computing needs.