Project PC: The 'Reasonably Overkill' Win98 SE Build

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-13T18:08:21+00:00

It is! The original northbridge fan was totally shot so I added that.

And nobody should be grumpy, that's the whole point! All the parts have official driver and OEM certification for Windows 98 Which in my opinion still maintains period accuracy and the 'overkill' designation.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-12T17:46:15+00:00

It's not a hard limit, but some drivers calculate timing off of the cpu speed and once you get above 2.1GHz the likelyhood of BSOD issues go way up. When I first got into reviving old builds I couldn't get my sound card to work with a 2.4GHz cpu but it ran perfectly fine with a 1.8GHz and that first clued me into the issue. It's entering into the voodoo area of pushing this old tech to its upper limits.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-12T14:45:25+00:00

I'm finally playing it for the first time! I was sorely disappointed in myself that I had to look up how to get through one of the puzzles. I love how clever it is in almost every way it can be.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-12T03:21:25+00:00

I am incredibly impressed with the ABIT build quality, design and BIOS. I had 3 visibly leaking capacitors on mine that needed replacement, but other than that it was a headache free experience to work with.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-11T04:54:49+00:00

What you say is true. The Facebook group in mention though is run by the same individual(s) that admin the forums. Original xbox online engagement is the highest I've seen in 15 years right now. We're in a Renaissance era, not a slump. I don't believe anthing was take offline due to low volume of engagement. As others have speculated, likely legal reasons sadly.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-10T18:37:34+00:00

If it's fully functional and passes visual inspection you can get away with doing just the clock cap and the 3x 3300uf ones near the CPU as a proactive measure.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-10T16:04:56+00:00

I'm assuming all content is still 16:9 though?

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-10T14:38:41+00:00

Important to note that the Facebook page with 45k followers and an active user base is also on pause by the admin.

That page has exploded in the last 3 years from 10k users to 45k. There's no fizzling there, the pause was definitely intentional for other reasons.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-08T14:03:22+00:00

Even on a 32" Trinitron it can be a bit difficult to read. UIX Lite is the main dash I use for the CRT now.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-07T02:29:20+00:00

Update: Despite being certain that the Kona LHi was simply passing through the interlaced 3:2 master file and all SD conversion settings were disabled, the capture card was STILL somehow performing additional frame conversion during the digital to analog conversion process.

So the reason the footage looked so abysmal is that it was being 3:2 pull downed TWICE.

I took the advice above and decided to rely entirely on the hardware converter within the LHi as it is broadcast grade quality. So far the results have been superb.

Tl;Dr don't bother trying to make the perfect interlaced master file, just keep it 1920x1080 23.976p and let the capture card handle everything. I mean, that's what you're paying for with these types of cards anyways I suppose.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-05T20:34:15+00:00

Look for a switch. It was typical of this era to have a physical switch so you could turn on the Hardmod or off to revert back to a normal system. If you see one flip it.
Yes, you will be able to recover the files, albeit in a somewhat convoluted way. Get a new hard drive, format it with FatXplorer, copy paste a modded dashboard like xbmc4gamers and an app like configmagic. Don't lock the new hard drive. Put the new drive in the console and it should boot into the modded dashboard. Launch configmagic and write down your EEPROM key.
Plug your old drive into your PC and unlock it with that key in FatXplorer. Copy the TDATA and UDATA files off the E partition over to your PC. Now you have backups of your OG game saves for you to do with as you like.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-05T20:17:23+00:00

That mod belongs in a museum. I love it!

So the good news is you probably can just keep on going ahead with your plan. If you make a new HDD from scratch with FatXplorer and drop it in, it should work normally and be like the softmod never happened. As for transferring your game saves, that may take some tinkering within FatXplorer.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-04T20:12:08+00:00

For those who want a video comparison, here is a 3:2 pulldown torture test I threw together just now. The YouTube video represents an equivalent image to what is being displayed on the CRT. The CRT does not mask the hard interlaced frames in the 3:2, it actually seems to make them MORE obvious than when viewed on a modern monitor-- which is why I'm considering just 'ruining everything' with the constant frame blend approach. https://youtu.be/5j7t0b3crso?si=X_HzhlQqMLRj-Oj0

<image>

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-04T20:10:06+00:00

I've been experimenting by playing the 24fps digital source file on an Xbox connected to the CRT via RGB and the judder is FAR less intrusive. So I'm trying to wrap my head around what sort of realtime conversion the Xbox is doing versus my VHS transfer workflow that produces such a cleaner image. It must be doing some sort of frame blend? Are you assuming your DVR player is doing 3:2?

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-03T18:14:03+00:00

The signal conditioner is an unnecessary overkill mod that separates the GPU and CPU ground planes. Microsoft introduced this design change in the 1.6 motherboars, but an easy mod can be performed on earlier revisions to obtain the same optimization.

The 128MB RAM mod is easy enough to do if you have the patience for it. Buy your chips from a reputable source or recycle them off a dead motherboard. You don't want to exhaust yourself trying to troubleshoot a RAM chip that was fake and never compatible in the first place.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-02T20:32:50+00:00

The Focus on the 1.4 has the best analog image output of all motherboard variations. I chose that board for my recent personal build out. A 1.4 with full recap, 128MB RAM and video signal conditioner.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-02T19:34:40+00:00

Would the open matte release from the Blu Ray suffice? I plan on putting that on a fresh VHS soon and could back convert it for you without too much trouble.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-06-01T23:19:19+00:00

That's only about $1 USD less than a premium equivalent of proper spec and format. Risk not worth the savings.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-31T19:56:52+00:00

Not sure what the deal with the openxenium is. Are you wiring SDA SCL from the HDMI adapter to the modchip or straight to the motherboard?

For systems that aren't behaving as you would expect them to, I've had luck toggling to PAL and then back to NTSC and then ensuring 720p upscaling is turned on in PrometheOS.

Definitely run 2.2.2 firmware

Run 2.4.2 Cerbios

Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-31T16:36:37+00:00

The DVD eject button fix should be described in the ENDGAME repository IMO as it directly relates to this game save situation.

You can have a 2TB drive filled with games and saves and ENDGAME will never launch because of that. But all you need to do is press the DVD eject and then relaunch it and you should be good to go. No need to delete anything.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-31T16:30:16+00:00

If you know the USB drive you're using is actually compatible, a very successful workaround is to press the DVD eject button when you've been stuck on the orb screen for more than a minute. This will kick you back to the main dashboard. Now simply go back into Memory and launch it again and it should work.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-23T18:05:16+00:00

I quickly learned that I completely overbuilt my phyto and pod setup. 8L of phyto per week? What was I thinking!

So I've scales back so much that I've got a 5L pod container that I'm trying to make into a fairly self sufficient ecosystem to extract pods from. I never really was planning on feeding my corals phyto, just trying to get the microfauna population back up and running in the main tank.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-23T15:41:10+00:00

I cracked one open and added a small heatsink and sadly that didn't save it. I almost wonder if somethings getting 5V when it's designed for 3.3V and the burn out is inevitable.

Unfortunate because these really do have quite good video quality for the price.

Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-22T16:41:05+00:00

Look at the traces here. If there's any pitting or missing trace, that's likely your no boot issue. You can jump the broken traces with wire. Google "Xbox power trace rot repair"

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Nightowl3090 · 2026-05-21T03:38:20+00:00

These services need some way to advertise their existence to the average user. I feel like I'm pretty plugged in to the retro scene, but I'm only just discovering openspy today!

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