rr_ww

Hi all!

I know a little about computers, so thought I'd ask for advice here. Currently have a 166mhz Pentium, with 49mb ram running Win95. The Motherboard can only go to 233mhz and 64mb Ram. (Was told that by Gateway 2k themselves when we bought it in July 96) If I want to upgrade significantly, is it just as simple as buying a motherboard with a 2gb mhz processor and 512mb Ram and swapping everything over? HD,floppy,Cd, sound card etc and then upgrading to either Win98 or Win2K?

Anyone got any recommendations? For equipment/suppliers.


Thanks for reading
Richard

ChrisB

One thing to bear in mind if is the Gateway case is a proper ATX form factor chassis. If it's custom design, you'll need a new case to drop in a motherboard.

New motherboards also need an additional feed from the power supply in the form a small four pin plug and given the age of your PC I'd be surprised if it had it. Asus put a feature on their motherboards called EZ-Plug which removes the need to buy a new PSU as you use power supply connector for a hard disk.

I'd be inclinded to ditch the existing CD-ROM and replace it. Maybe look at a CD-Writer which will be much quicker in terms of reading - writers start around £40 these days.

ChrisB

As an alternative, how about the XPC SB51G from Shuttle?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...stems_110.html

You'd just need a new CPU, RAM and could re-use your HD, CD and Floppy if you didn't want to upgrade them. It has onboard graphics to get you going. If you find you want to get into games, it still has an AGP slot to take a kick *** video card.

Match it up with something like 2Ghz P4, 512MB RAM and you'll have a nice PC which doesn't take up all your desk.

suba

definitely check out the shuttle! it is so small and compact! check it out at...

www.gemma.co.uk
www.ultim8pc.co.uk

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Just a quick but very important thing. If you are on your original HD and from back in 96, it will run like a complete pig and bottleneck your lovely new machine like you would not believe. The CD won't exactly be zippy either, as memntioned already. I wouldn't transplant anything bar the floppy drive to be perfectly honest. You would be better off selling the old goat complete and putting the money towards the new parts.

Cheers,

Nick

Mick

iTrader: (1)

The deals around for new PC's are amazing.

With a machine that old, ditch the lot and go for a complete new package - it won't cost you much more and everything will be matched up correctly.

GCollier

Agree with Mick - ditch the lot. You'll probably find the case has lack of cooling for new components, the PSU is lousy (I had a gateway full-tower P200 from 1996, and was disgusted to find a 145W PSU in it!), the cards possibly ISA and won't fit a modern MB. Also, as has been said, some bits of your old system will definitely be a bottle-neck in the new machine.

If you want a good hassle-free machine, I'd go for a dell. I self-build some of my machines, but unless you enjoy it (read "are a masochist") or have specific requirements, I'd go with a manufacturer like dell.

Gary.