Obtaining an old computer and wish to upgrade

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gartulan

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I am getting an older computer which I wish to upgrade
It is PII 333mhz
128MB Ram

Is it relatively inexpensive to upgrade from this level. How do I determine what level of expansion my motherboard will accept.

I have already put in extra ram--cd burner--new hard drive so if I could upgrade that would be cool.
 
The most important thing IMO would be to check what the CPU interface is, if you need to upgrade that.

If it's a Slot 1 (I think it would be) you'll need a slotket adapter and one of the old socket 370 Coppermine Celeron or PIII, both already outdated themselves...

You might want to leave that part of it alone, and use a larger disk with a PC ATA card that'll give you a bit better disk perf.

I think that computer is past upgrading but that's just me...

OTOH, the computer is pretty OK for soem light-duty audio work, and some general home work if you see fit. It's not for the trash can. Yet.
 
Thanks---Then again I like to game.......Maybe I should just salvage the ram, hd, and buy a bare bones system from pricewatch.com.
 
Since it's a PII, it should be an ATX type Provided it's basic stuff and not propriatary (like Compaq or Dell) it should be no problem to drop in a new motherboard/cpu combo. You would probably need new RAM, but you can use the hard drive / floppy/ CD-ROM / Case / power supply / video / etc.
 
So certain kinds of ram only work with certain boards---or is it just that ram has gotten a lot better in the past few years?
 
The answer is yes and yes. As processors have increased in speed, motherboards have resorted to faster memory buses (which require faster memory) in order to keep up. Your current system probably uses PC-66 or PC-100 SDRAM DIMMS. These were subsequently replaced with PC-133 chips, which are now being phased out in favor of DDR or RAMBUS type chips.

The good news is that memory is cheap. I would suggest looking for the cpu/motherboard combo you like, then once you find that buy whatever RAM works in that unit. 128 megs is good for most applications, 256 is better, and 512 is as much as anyone (or at least 99% of all users) should ever need
 
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