found an old pc, wanna upgrade

[skippykills]

the other day my friend's neighbor was getting rid of an old Packard Bell PC. so i offered to take it considering i dont have my own PC. i opened it up to find 100 mhz PI, 1 gb insides. so i booted it up today and it wasnt formatted and it started up w/o a problem. one game i noticed was on there was C+C Red Alert, which i was amazed it could run.

so now im faced with the decision to put my money towards this to hopefully make it my own. or just salvage what i want and get rid of the rest considering it may be useless.

so if anybodys got suggestions i'd really appreciate them.

 

[Martin]

Most likely, the Packard Bell PC's motherboard is way too old to support modern Athlon/Pentium 4 processors.

Depending on your flavor (Intel or AMD) I suggest getting a new motherboard, along with a new case with a new PSU (since these new proc's will require some more power), add-in cards, and everything else, but keep the monitor, keyboard, mouse if you have to.

 

[skippykills]

thanx for the advice Geforce, but can ya relay that to me in english? sorry im not the best w/ new PC hardware.

i only got the PC, nothing else. but im gonna use an old keyboard to my other pc, and a wireless mouse that works fine with it.

my friend said he has his old video card he is willing to sell to me for about 20 bucks (dont remember specs). im deffinetly gonna buy a new MB cause this one deosnt support anything beyond pII. now ive heard of all the debates of Intel v. AMD but im still undecided. if you can share some light on that for me that would be great.

the case i think should be ok. it sits horizontal which is now problem for me so i guess it alright.

but the main thing im skeptical about is the audio/phone jack(real name?) card. if i put a ethernet card in will it disrupt the current communications of the present card? if so then i guess ill have to get a new audio card also.

thanx in advance

peace
MR

 

[SePhErUm]

HEY! I'm still stuck with a p2 333 .. lol. And i have a 4 Meg video card that sucks.. Yes it's made by ATI. ATI Rage Pro Turbo.. LOL

 

[skippykills]

haha, i feel your pain SePhErUm, im running a 266 mhz PII with some shitty video card. its a web surfing pc, nothing else, haha

 

[Chopper]

You won't be able to upgrade that much. I know some of the mid PI era motherboards handled upto 300mhz or so. Then when the 500mhz K6's came out they released BIOS updates so they would run those. However if it's early PI then I doubt you can get anything out of it.

I'd take all the cards and use them as spares. The hard drive could hold something, like mp3's and the RAM could be sold to somebody who wants to upgrade an old POS they have or a printer that takes simm memory.

Of course, copy Red Alert to your main computers hard drive first!

 

[Martin]

i only got the PC, nothing else. but im gonna use an old keyboard to my other pc, and a wireless mouse that works fine with it.

my friend said he has his old video card he is willing to sell to me for about 20 bucks (dont remember specs). im deffinetly gonna buy a new MB cause this one deosnt support anything beyond pII. now ive heard of all the debates of Intel v. AMD but im still undecided. if you can share some light on that for me that would be great.

the case i think should be ok. it sits horizontal which is now problem for me so i guess it alright.

but the main thing im skeptical about is the audio/phone jack(real name?) card. if i put a ethernet card in will it disrupt the current communications of the present card? if so then i guess ill have to get a new audio card also.

thanx in advance

peace
MR

Intel Pentium 4 - consumes less power, generates less heat, more expensive, and is a good stable solution by itself and when overclocked.

AMD Athlon XP - cheaper, more efficient chip architecture (a lower clocked Athlon can outperform/compare to a higher clocked Pentium 4- e.g. Athlon XP 1600+ at 1.4 GHz vs. a Pentium 4 at 1.6 GHz). However it is power-hungry and generates a staggering amount of heat (though the stock cooling fan/heatsink solution cools it well)

Model numbers: (They are NOT the actual speeds, but their model numbers identify that they can be compared to similar clocked processors from competitors)

XP 1500+ - 1.33 GHz vs. P4 1.50 GHz
XP 1600+ - 1.40 GHz vs. P4 1.60 GHz
XP 1700+ - 1.47 GHz vs. P4 1.70 GHz
XP 1800+ - 1.53 GHz vs. P4 2.00 GHz
XP 1900+ - 1.60 GHz vs. P4 2.06 GHz
XP 2000+ - 1.67 GHz vs. P4 2.20 GHz
XP 2100+ - 1.73 GHz vs. P4 2.40 GHz
XP 2200+ - 1.80 GHz vs. P4 2.53 GHz

And coming soon:

XP 2400+ - 2.06 GHz
XP 2600+ - 2.20 GHz

And get a tower case. Most likely you got the cheap desktop LPX form factor with the Packard Bell. Nowadays, stick with ATX specification, as well as your case has a good power supply (300w baseline by our standards).

As for your audio question, usually both the sound and ethernet cards will not conflict with each other, but in some cases they do. Whether or not you should upgrade those is entirely up to you, but if you are getting a new speaker system, you'd definitely want a sound card good enough to take advantage of that.

 

[skippykills]

i dont know about upgrading this now. the more and more i think about it i sounds like it wouldnt be worth it to upgrade. so i think im gonna build my own.

so far ive found a good site that sells parts cheap. ive found a MB and case so far that i like. now i just wanna get the processor sorted out, then i wanna work on audio, cd-rom, HD.

this is the MB that im probably gonna get
http://www.computer-show.com/Modern/itemdesc.asp?CartId=4387757ZQWOB98&ic=MOB031&tpc=

and heres the case
http://www.computer-show.com/Modern/itemdesc.asp?CartId=4387757ZQWOB98&ic=CAS001&tpc=

if you guys could point me to a relieable site that i can get a processor cheap you would help me out SO much. thanx in advance.

 

[ikellen]

Not too bad parts, just if you plan on upgrading later, I would go with something faster because those parts will become out of date in the age of 2+ ghz proc's.

 

[Retro]

Personally I wouldnt touch a PB PC, I used to have one and continually crashed after a year of use. I was pushing it to its limits though way back in 1995 where it had a 75MHz P1 and 4mb of RAM!. I would recommend their printers and scanners though. I reckon you should go with your idea of building from scratch or just buy an average PC and upgrade.