What to do with my PC?

flapo1

flapo1

New member
Hi guys

I have a very old (by today's standards) PC, with AMD k62 running at 400 mhz, two 5800 RPM Hard Drives, 128 MB of RAM and a Soundblaster LIVE.

What should I do? Should I update my computer or should I try to sell it and buy a better one, just keeping my HD's and my RAM? That's because a friend told me that in order to upgrade the processor I had to change the mobo and the case.

What do you guys think could be the best option?

Thanx in advance
 
What do you want to do exactly with your machine? What applications do you want to run? How many tracks do you want to record simultaneously?
 
I bought a new one and put a big hard drive in my old one. I am going to use my old one as an Mp3 storage computer and play them through my stereo. It is even older than yours (pentium pro 200 96M RAM.) I put a 40 GB hard drive in it and it is working great. My only problem is that I am trying to use it through a network with my new one. I have it connected to my stereo and it will play the Mp3's fine if I select them from the old computer. Icannot figure out how to play the Mp3's by selecting them through the network, because then they output on my new computer's sound card. If I wanted to just select them without a network, it runs fine. You could also donate it to a school and write it off as a tax deduction for the full purchase price.
 
If you are looking to do digital audio recording, sell it and get a new on....maybe keep 1 of the hard drives because they arent fast enought to do serious recording...keep the soundblaster because real audio cards usually dont do midi......check to see if your RAM will be compatable with your new computer, otherwise sell it also......

as far as specs on your new computer, pleeze pleeze let some of the guys here recommend stuff for you......
 
I'm also using an old PC as an MP3 server. Similar to yours Flap - a K63D 350 mhtz with Sound Blaster Awe 64 card. Has a 43 gig drive connected to a Maxtor ATA100 controller card. The old PC is hooked into my living room stereo system (with cable digital music service) and TV set, as well as my LAN. I can select and launch MP3 songs from that system, but another way is to use remote control software. I'm using Symantec PC Anywhere in TCP/IP LAN mode. This way as long as the MP3 system is powered up I can take control of it from anywhere in the house. If I'm listening to cable music and decide I want to record something, I can even launch Sound Forge remotely and have the MP3 jukebox record it.
 
Thanx for your kind replies. What I intend to do (and have been doing for about a year now) is to record my band with n-track. I have been able to get as much as 8 mono tracks with simple effects.

Unfortunately I live in Mexico, and I cannot do the tax trick someone suggested :(

Sometimes 8 tracks are ok, but i'd like more control over tracks and a bit more speed... :D

SALUDOS AMIGOS!!!
 
Flapo,
Do you know what make/model your motherboard is? It may support the K6II+ or K6III+. These CPU's have on-chip L2 cache. What the hell does that mean? They're faster:

from an article on Anandtech.com It is clear that the K6-2+ and K6-3+ processors offer quite an attractive upgrade option for aging Super7 systems, at a very reasonable price. With a K6-3+ 450MHz around $60 and a K6-2+ 550MHz for a bit more, the K6+ series chips may not be easy to find but do provide quite bang for the buck. As is typical with chips manufactured on a small architecture, overclocking the K6-X+ processors will go very smoothly for the most part, given that your motherboard supports high enough multiplier settings.
Click to expand...

The whole article

I'm using a K63+ 450 overclocking to 550. That plus 320MB of RAM and an ATA100 card supporting 7200 RPM ATA100 drives gets me enough performance that I can run up to 20 dry tracks, and maybe 15 or so with some plugins.

I'm not sure what they are going for these days, but I got one for ~$70 last year.

Queue
 
Have you tried tweaking to get more tracks? I run n-tracks on a really puny Pentium 150 MHz and can get 7 mono tracks with one stereo ( for drums), with reverb on one track. All I did was set the buffers high - which you probably won't want to do because of the lag you'll get between pressing PLAY and anything happening - and reset the Virtual Memory so that both Max. and Min. settings are the same. You might get more tracks doing this. You might meet your requirements without spending any more money.
 
Thanx again guys I really appreciate your input.

Queue: I have no idea about my mobo, I guess it's a "cheapy" one, because those are the most common here in Mexico. It had audio and video cards incorporated in it (both low-low-low quality). I really don't know if my K6-2 is the "+" one, but anyway I dont know how to overclock it. If it's not the "+" one, i think I have a problem, because here in Mexico you can only get new processors in most stores, so I'm "stuck" between choosing a Pentium III or a higher generation AMD.

Atwork: I have tried all buffer settings in n-track, but the one I have seems to be the best one. Regarding the virtual memory thing, I haven't tried anything yet (basically fearing to make a mess out of my computer) but please tell me more or less what I gotta do and of course your help will be very appreciated.

Bye!
:p
 
Mobos with audio and video included are indeed usually seen as low quality for audio recording purposes.

With the information you've given so far (old machine, unknown mobo, difficulty to get parts), it seems like the best way is to get a new machine. Depends how much money you can spend. Pentium III with at least 500-600 Mhz (the more, the better, ideally 1 or 1.2 Gb) would be my suggestion. Others will tell you to get AMD T-Birds (cheaper for approximately the same speed) but there is always someone to bring up the incompatibility issue. Others will tell you a Celeron could do.

Selling your old computer wil be tough if you want to keep the RAM and hard drive. Unless someone is just looking for the remaining parts, but... they're old. Keep the soundcard though. That's a helpful tool.

Buena suerte!
 
I followed the instructions in Sound on Sound magazine about resetting Virtual Memory. This article is available online at their website. The URL is:

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jul00/articles/pcmusician.htm

hopefully that'll take you straight to it. If not go to their main website, click on their search button and do a search on 'virtual memory windows'. The article you want should come up as no. 13. it's called Getting Started with Windows 95/98 Music Applications. Only of use if you're using Windows 95/98. It's a great long article covering a lot of stuff. The stuff on Virtual Memory comes right at the end, just a paragraph and a screen shot, I think.

As a computer novice I followed the instructions, rebooted, sat back and half expected the PC to blow up. Thankfully, it didn't. I reset the virtual memory a year ago and it's still going strong. I'd better mention that there is the risk of something going wrong doing this. I took that risk and it worked out. But you never know. You'll have to weigh it up yourself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top