I want to build a new computer for my dad useing a 64 bit AMD cpu with Nforce chipsets on the motherboard. The problem is, my dad is old and he refuses to branch away from Windows 98 SE. I don't see any possible way of there being drivers for windows 98 SE to for the nforce chipsets and a new video card, but I thought I'd ask anyways....would windows 98 SE work on a new 64 bit AMD system?

Why do you want to get him a 64 bit CPU when you are not going to use the 64 bits? Even if Windows 98 should work on the processor, you are not going to gain any performance than from a 32 bit CPU.

Well, since he is my dad i wanted to get him something good, even though he won't ever benefit from it. but i don't see how windows 98 would work on it becuase the video card would be brand new and the nforce chipsets, along witht he video card, were made after windows 98 was declared legacy, so they're not going to make drivers for windows 98 and windows 98 is not going to have generic drivers for them. Am I right or wrong?

Take windows xp, turn off themes, set start menu and control panel to classic and there is barely any difference to windows 98.

Well, yeah....I agree. But the problem is my Dad is really into collecting programs and he has all these programs (hundreds of dollars worth he said) that will only run on Windows 98 and he refuses to switch to a diff. computer if He can't use them.

You should test whether his programs work. If he still has original installation cds, it isn't that hard to try to install them to an xp machine. There are hardly any programs that don't work in xp.

I second that. WinXP is not so different in terms of handling than 98 if set up right. further more, XP can run programs in compatibility mode. I never came across any app that couldn't be run on XP, be it native or with emulators.

Windows 98 can run most programs that ran on 3.1, XP can run most programs designed for 98 and some designed for 3.1

Edit: this site might be of help, http://www.ntcompatible.com/compatibility.html

Naw, he already tried XP once on his computer and there were some that wouldn't run that he couldn't live without. He could do a muiltboot on a new machine but I don't think there would be any Windows 98 genereic drivers for a current video card or the Nforce chipsets.

Install for him modern Windows.

IF some of his programs really won't work under it, the ultimate solution is setting up Windows 98 under virtual machine, such as VirtualPC or VMWare (some variants of it are free), new computer will be fast enough to run them like that.

Alternativelly he could use some ditro of GNU/Linux together with Wine

No need for wine, qemu would be much better.

And why complete, CPU-hungry emulation of whole machine would be better than quite fast virtualisation (VMware or VirtualPC) or, practically as fast as native, "API emulation"? (Wine - and before you'll say not everything works under it...well, that's the place for virtualisation).

Not to mention ease of use of these methods relative to each other...

With a computer fast enough and using qemu/win98 he wouldn't miss the feeling of his old programs and enviroment.

You mean this as a joke (in that case: ROTFL, good one ) or seriously? If seriously...that's exacttly what VMware/VirtualPC does, but faster...

I downloaded and installed the Qemu for Windows in which it has a menu system. I hit command [c] and created an image file. But when I run the image file it doesn't look on the physical drive A for the Windows 98 start up disk. I read several documents and spent several hours so far trying to get Windows 98 set as a guest... this program looks really cool and I'd like to make it work. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Ohh well, I was talking exclusively about wine. Guess I should have cut the quoted portion better

I have never compared seriously qemu and vmware (afaik virtual pc is not available for linux), mainly 'cause I just prefer dual boot over emulation.

darin, Qemu is really not appropriate for home user, not to mention very slow. Try VirtualPC or VMWare.