Settings to make the best Win95/98 gaming machine?

I have a number of 95/98-era machines that I'd love to get to someone who can use them. My suspicion is that a lot of them might be most desired by people looking to play older computer games.

I've never been a gamer and my memory going back to the old DOS LOADHIGH days is a bit fuzzy. Would anyone be willing to offer any tweaks that would be considered either necessary, recommended or just helpful to make a bare 95 or 98SE install better for vintage games of that era?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Here is what I used back then. And I still recommend PowerfulPC for 95-WinMe
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...897-PowerfulPC

386 MB of ram was the fastest working , yes 512 was slower.

HDDs 7200 RPM minimum , 10,000 would be top of the line.

A 2nd hdd on the other ribbon where all swap files can be placed.

Brings back memories of my first home-biuld in 2005 (?) with an Abit KV7 Socket 462 motherboard and an Athlon XP3000 processor overclocked mildly to 2300. Didn't have dual-channel RAM, and Train is right - 384MB (3x128MB) RAM was faster than loading up any more memory.

nVidia graphics cards worked way better than Radeons with AMD boards. Intel CPUs had faster operating speeds, but AMD processors/boards processed more info at once and were superior in my mind at the time.

If you can get hold of AMD boards, do so. Abit were hands-down the best. Their BIOS was super-friendly to overclocking nuts like me. Biostar was very under-rated IMHO, I built a few of them and they too were reliable units. The Athlon XP3200 processor was a waste of money; clocked faster but more restricted. the XP3000 was better at 2167GHz. Otherwise, go with the fastest Intel Pentium4 board you can find. Later boards, including dual core mobos will work but it's more fun using the legacy hardware for the legacy systems. They were made for each other.

I've tried using old game software on later boards, and it just does NOT work as well. Rather like putting Bluetooth technology into a 1955 Packard Caribbean. The archives here are full of suggestions; take a snowy winter afternoon and do some reading. I have one Abit and four Biostar AMD boards still for sale, CPUs extra, dirt-cheap if you're interested. I'm now disabled and am liquidating all my old working inventory.