On June 25, 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98 to the world.
June 25, 2018 marks the 20-year anniversary of its release.
As a way of celebrating this, I thought it would be fun to build an all-new Windows 98 gaming computer.
Now when I say I'm building a new computer, I don't just mean another one.
I'm building an all-new computer from unused, 20-year-old parts.
It took me about 2 years and a lot of patience to get all these parts,
but the case is what really made me want to do this in the first place.
This is a new in-box InWin Q500.
Since 1999, it's been waiting to realize its potential as the over 2 foot tall, full-height tower that it is.
This is my all-time favorite computer case and I was very surprised when I was able to find one new in-box.
So I knew I had to do something special with it.
Combined with the Windows 98 anniversary, it made for the perfect theme for a new build:
An all-new Windows 98 PC.
So I set out to find authentic parts for a period-correct Windows 98 PC:
A CPU, motherboard, RAM, video card, keyboard, mouse
hard drive, sound card, disc drive, floppy drive, newer floppy drive,
network card, USB card, front USB card, webcam, microphone,
speakers, gamepad, joystick, floppy disk holders, and of course,
a sealed copy of Windows 98.
However, I did make one exception to the period-correct parts:
A new EVGA power supply.
I would rather use a new one that doesn't quite fit the theme than an old one that's probably gone bad in its box.
But now, the anniversary is here and it's time to put the computer together.
So let's take a look at some of the most important parts, starting with the CPU.
This is a 1 gigahertz, Socket 370,
Pentium III.
Featuring a Tualatin core, this is the last generation of Pentium III.
And I will be installing it into this motherboard actually made by Intel.
Intel boards aren't regarded as a great option when building a computer.
They're usually missing features that third-party boards commonly have, but I've always wanted to try one.
So I'm gonna be using this one in the new computer.
Any features it's missing won't affect performance anyway,
and this computer is gonna blow away the system requirements for Windows 98.
Especially the video card,
which is the beastly Voodoo 5 5500.
The final flagship card for 3dfx, the Voodoo 5 5500 has two discrete GPUs
and 64 megabytes of video memory.
The two VSA-100 GPUs run an SLI on a single card.
3dfx is of course the company that created SLI.
But before we try and put these parts together and make it POST, we need two more things:
First, the new monitor.
A typical VGA CRT that will easily support the now uncommon resolutions that this computer will be outputting.
And secondly, the motherboard tray from the InWin case.
It's a shame that this was never adopted as a standard.
I suppose I'll also want the new power supply.
Now that everything's out, let's begin the assembly with the motherboard.
And next, the CPU.
For the heatsink, I'm gonna go ahead and not use the 19 year old thermal pad that came attached to it,
and instead opt for some better modern stuff.
It feels kind of weird to put such a good modern thermal paste on such an old CPU.
After locking in place the heatsink and snapping on the fan,
I can put in the maximum of 512 megabytes of memory that this motherboard's 815E chipset will support.
And finally, it's time to install the Voodoo 5.
Now that all the basic parts are in, it's time for the smoke test.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
That's not good.
After a little bit of testing,
I've determined that the motherboard won't POST with the Voodoo 5 installed.
And if you look in this area right here,
it looks like a capacitor blew.
Which means I'm gonna have to recap the Voodoo 5.
With that taken care of, we can try once more to power it on.
*beep beep*
Excellent!
There are still a few more parts we need to put in the computer before Windows 98 can be installed.
So let's get out the hard drive, disk drive, 5¼ floppy, 3½ floppy,
keyboard, and mouse.
Now to install the hard drive, ...
and the disk drive, ...
which are both IDE drives...
and need to have the master and slave set correctly.
The floppy drives are much easier.
They just have to be plugged in to the right connector on the cables.
Now for my favorite keyboard for Windows 98,
Computer ergonomics were much bigger in the 90s.
and lastly what I think is a very interesting mouse
that is PS/2, beige, wireless, and uses a ball.
But now that everything's ready to go,
all that's left is to open my sealed copy of Windows 98.
After this has been sitting on my shelf for a few years, it feels kind of weird to open it.
There's not as much inside as I would have thought, ...
but all we need is the CD, and the boot floppy.
And now, it's time to finally install Windows 98.
With the install CD and boot floppy put in, we can fire it up and begin the install.
First the hard drive needs to be formatted, which takes a little over a half hour for a 120 gigabyte drive like this.
After that, it's ready to copy the Windows files over and start to configure the computer.
And after a couple more restarts, it's finally ready for the first boot of Windows 98.
The first thing I'm going to do is install the Voodoo 5 drivers so I can get rid of that annoying flicker while I'm filming.
Manually installing drivers after you get windows set up is definitely a relic of the past
since Windows will now just download all the drivers for you.
Now that the drivers are installed for the Voodoo 5,
I kind of want to change to a different theme.
Ah, that's looking much better.
Now I'll just install the motherboard drivers so I can get all the built-in stuff working.
Alright. Now that all the basic stuff is installed and ready, it's time to add in some more parts.
There are still a lot of parts left to go.
It would have taken a couple hours for me to fully show the unboxing of all twenty parts I'm doing here.
That's why I've been cutting them down.
So for the remaining parts, we're gonna have to just fly by them.
I plan on doing more detailed videos about the more interesting parts later. So stay tuned for those coming out soon.
But, once all those parts are installed, we're ready to experience the full boot up.
At this point, the computer is pretty much done. But let's add a few more extra parts to complete the experience.
Game controllers, webcam, microphone, and floppy disk holders.
Now the whole point of building a gaming computer is to play games.
Using Windows 98 for a gaming machine like this is popular for a reason.
Windows 98 at its core is still DOS.
What that means is they can play some of the first-ever games released for PCs.
In addition to that, the powerful Voodoo 5 in there was able to hold its own for a while after its release.
So we're gonna take a look at different games over a 20-year timespan, all running on the same computer.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed this look at a brand new Windows 98 computer built 20 years after the operating system was released.
I enjoy keeping these kinds of old computers around, especially for games of which I have a few.
But this is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience where you gather up 20-year-old parts to build something new.
And I don't consider this computer done yet either.
I already have some more brand-new parts that I plan on putting in here.
But I probably won't keep with the brand new theme forever. It's getting a little difficult to find these things.
So I'll definitely be bringing this computer back in future videos.
And if you're a regular viewer of mine or just thought this was a little short, worry not.
I'll be releasing a full experience re-edit that uses a lot more of the 150 gigs of footage I shot for this.
But for now, I hope you guys have enjoyed this look at it, and I'll see you later.