I thought Windoze versions from 2k or XP upwards no longer messed up lilo/grub...
Also, IIRC, you can relatively easy re-write grub even if it gets messed up, as long as you either have some installation disk (you could make a floppy, but floppies (drives and/or disks) have kinda disappeared...). I don't know if Ubuntu actually explicitly offers the option to re-write/reinstall grub in its installation menu, but even if it doesn't, you can just run grub-install. It's not _too_ inconvenient.

I like the idea about trying win98
How do you plan to force the install for your card, though ?