In choosing a motherboard, you need to decided on a few things....    

.....what features do you want as on-board features ( LAN ? Modem ? Sound ? Video ? )
.....what processor do you intend to use ( Socket type ) ?
.....how many add-on cards will you need to use ( PCI slots ) ?
.....what video requirements will you have ( AGP4 ?-AGP8 ?) ?
.....how many USB ports will suffice ?

After you define these parameters, you can start going to manufacturers web sites, and by starting with processor type, see what board will bring all the other features,...then its up to you to find a supplier close to where you live.......

Thats how I would do it anyway.  I just built my system recently and its not too bad for a budget minded guy like me......my performance is acceptable to me....... 8)

Rifleman, Thanks for pointing out the obviouse lack of info in my post. I know its a stupid noobie thing to ask a question and not give any info to help get an answer. I'll remember not to do that again. 

deadknight, Thanks for the site i found a few others from searching around and after looking at newegg.com have decided to place an order with them in a couple days or so when i have the money.
Bye the way, did your prob with the real world weather ever get sorted out?

Thanks again guys.

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Kind of... It's actually quite weird.. Instead of being foggy 100% of the time now it is doing it at random. All the way up until I decided to contact microsoft it hasn't worked right and now I'm looking kind of stupid to keep having to tell microsoft that the situation is changing. Now they are probably thinking "yeah, right. it wasn't working and now it's kind of fixing itself".

I'm going to be ordering a whole new system from newegg.com here soon. I thought I was going to have enough cash but it turns out I have to wait a little bit.

The motherboard I'm planning on getting is an Asus P4C800 DELUXE.  It seems to be a good motherboard. You might want to check it out. The only issues I've seen people have with it is voltages setting themselves wrong or something like that. I really don't know much about them since this will be my first home-built system also. But besides the few reports of voltages not set right every other review I've seen has given it 5 stars.

Someone please correct me if I don't know what I'm talking about.  hehehe

8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

Swanny - That's my pick. Like most of you guys, I'm looking for the best for my meager money. I can get an Asus A7N8X DeLuxe from Computer Depot for $ 120.00. I'll mount an AMD XP 2700 processor and a 512M DDR400 PC3200 memory. All my other paraphanelia are still up to date. My V-card is a NVidia GF4, TI4200, 64 M. I'm still toying whether I should load back WIN98SE, or buy and load WINXP Home Edition for $99.00. Comments, anyone?

Hogans Alley

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And the moon's made of cheese I suppose?

What a load of of old crap!  

Windows 98 is quite happy with 512MB RAM! - With Sims such as FS2002 & CFS3, I'd say its damn near essential!


Another thing, if ,for example, you need to use '98 in a dual boot machine with over 512MB, theres an extremely hard and complex workaround that will fix this common and long adressed "bug".......

Anybody having problems in a machine as described, need to simply goto the Start menu (when running Win98 ), click on "Run", enter "Msconfig" click "Advanced" Check the "Limit Memory to" box and enter "512" (or whatever you wish to limit your RAM to - 256 for example.

Difficult eh?

Doh!

a few good amd boards:

Epox 8RDA3+ 6 Chn Audio / DDR400 / USB 2.0 / 8X AGP / DUAL LAN / 400 FSB / 1394 / SATA

cheaper version

Epox 8KMM3I 6 Chn Audio / DDR400 / USB 2.0 / 8X AGP / LAN / 333 FSB

asus good for quality i have heard

Asus A7N8X-D Nforce2 / DUAL LAN / 1394 / SATA

i cant post prices on these baords because i am in the uk and will be different but i advise any amd board to have a nforce 2 chipset in it they seem to work the best for amd.. hope this helps

daz

If you are set on a budget AMD system, then grab a mainboard with an nForce2 chipset that supports a 400mhz Front Side Bus speed, in case you want to upgrade the CPU later. The brand is up to you. I chose a Soltek SL75FRN2 and am very happy with it.

When you purchase a mainboard with the nForce2 chipset, make sure it doesn't have the onboard graphics chip unless you specifically want it, as they are a bit slower even if you install an addon card into the AGP slot provided as well.

(these boards can apparently provide onboard graphics similar to a GF4 MX 440 addon card)

As far as the CPU goes, just get the best bang for buck in your price bracket. I bought a XP2600+ because it was cheap at the time. It is actually faster than the Barton chips around that speed and overclocks a little with no hassles.

Win XP is a lot more stable than Win '98. I've been happy using it in a dual boot system along with '98 for over a year. I won't install '98  again, I dont use it anymore. The following is why.

Scania's fix for RAM limit on win '98 eludes me.

The upper RAM limit in the setting he refers to above is 999mb. This is short of the two 512 DDR sticks I have installed.

This means that everytime I want to run Win '98, I have to remove 512mb of RAM out of my box. Not really the done thing, eh?

However, a 512mb stick, plus a 256mb stick of RAM work fine in Win '98.

BUT!  The new chipsets run DDR RAM in Dual Channel mode, meaning you need two RAM sticks that are pretty much identical, to take advantage of the potential increase in memory bandwidth that the new systems are capable of.

This basically means you are going to buy 2 quality sticks of RAM, either 2 x 256mb or 2 x 512mb. The 1024mb option is really the way to go, considering the recent developements in software, the current price of RAM, and the lifespan of your new rig.

So, XP is a good idea. You can configure it (as I have) to look and behave almost identical to Win '98 without the crashes '98 is prone to.

While on the subject of RAM and an AMD based system, you might like to know that if you use an AMD CPU that runs at 333mhz (166mhz DDR) such as many do, then PC2700 (333mhz ram) will actually perform faster than PC3200 (400mhz ram). The reason is that the system has to convert the faster ram back by an algorithm which uses more speed than any advantage gained by the faster RAM.

So.........  Match your Mainboard FSB speed, CPU speed and RAM speed. If it's AMD based, this will be ALL either 333mhz or 400mhz in a modern system. If the system is matched up like this, It will run very quick indeed.

Have fun!