New motherboard advice request...

I'm thinking of building my dad a new computer for his Birthday.

He has a largish collection of old games, some go all the way back to DOS days. I've gotten around this by using removable drive bays, I don't like dual boot setups (if something goes wrong I still have a functional computer with the second drive).

I'm thinking of something Athlon 64, (are all 64's dual core?).

Here is my question, what motherboard, using the above processor, will still boot Win98SE? I do not want to emulate or mode this, I want the real McCoy, which means I need motherboard drivers available for the motherboard.

Any Suggestions?

 

You should be able to run Win98SE on just about any hardware, the trick is going to be finding drivers for the older Windows. Many/most mobo makers are no longer producing drivers for any OS older than Win2000 for their new boards. Before buying a particular board, visit the maker's web site and see if they have the needed drivers available to download. That way you'll know before you shell out the dough......
And, no. All Athlon 64 CPU's are not dual core. Look for the 'X2' for the dual core chips.

hd2k

 

Your problem wont just be with the motherboard. I've been searching for you, and have found that the ATi xpress 200 chipset boards still support Windows 98, if you can find one of those boards. If you do manage to find one, then your stuck with a new problem, unless you find an AGP model and get a Radeon 9800 or less AGP video card then you wont be able to get video drivers either. Unfortunately your going to either have very limited upgrade capability or your going to need to get Windows XP/Vista and get an emulation program like DOSBox for the Dos programs. Good luck with whichever path you choose.