On 12/27/2015 04:44 PM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
Since I am a real Windows dummy, I hesitate to upgrade to a current I7 CPU with SATA hard drives. Is there any reasonable possibility of using an I7 CPU with Win98SE? Are there still I7 motherboards which support at least one floppy at a time - either 3.5" or 5 1/4" floppies? Are there any Video cards available which still support FULL SCREEN mode at 132 columns? Mainly, I would stay with the 12 year old system for another 25 years if I had reliable spare parts and Netscape 7.2 would still continue to support e-mail with newsgroups that are still a small but vital link to other activity that I find interesting. Are there used hardware parts still available for a Pentium III system? I realize that there are no guarantees, but where would I find sources for such hardware?
I haven't tried to run Win98SE directly on an I7; at that point, I'm usually running VirtualBox or another emulator, which allows me to tailor the (virtual) hardware characteristics to what Windows wants.
Asrock seems to have quite a few motherboards that retain both a legacy floppy connector as well as an ATA one, in addition to the usual SATA and USB3 ones. I've had few problems with their Socket AM3+ boards. However, only a single floppy drive is supported.
--Chuck
