help upgrading old pc

remoteboy

Hi folks. Looking for some advice on upgrading/gutting and filleting a PC. What I need to do is take an old (P1, 75MHz, Desktop case) machine and update it so it can run kid's games - Sabrina, Barbie kinda stuff i'm told. I've built a couple of PCs from scratch and am comfortable enough with the process. What I'm wondering is do I have to go for all the latest kit, or is there somewhere I can pick up some old stuff - I'd like to reuse the case and don't want to replace the power supply if i can avoid it.

Cheers

uch

Read the cheap computer components sticky it has all the best links to some cheap and wonderful hardware

RicardoSmith

Can't see the point in upgrading that machine myself. You'll probably buy a complete PII machine for the price of the upgrades you'd need for a P75. I know I gave an old P60 I had to a elderly relative who uses it to play cards on.

popinfresh

Just keep all the expensive stuff like the monitor, and the cd-drive if it's not reeealy slow. And then buy a pc without monitor etc.. I don't think you could get away without a new power supply,

weemcd

check komplett for bundles and www.overclockers.co.uk for special offers and cheap m-board-processor bundles, sound cards and graphics cards r cheap 2

remoteboy

I gave an old P60 I had to a elderly relative who uses it to play cards on.

This is all it is being used for at the moment.

Basically, it's a favour for the in-laws - someone (also family member) sold them this pup about 12 months ago. I agree with popinfresh, and just intend to keep monitor, keyboard, fdd, etc. but i'd also like to keep the case, so it looks like an upgrade and not a new machine (all ver political). What I'm wondering is presuming (and this is a big presumption) that the chassis is a standard size, should I be able to cram a small form motherboard and larger psu in to the box, or should I just fold, tell 'em its a pup and alienate half my wife's family? :rolleyes:

RicardoSmith

Well theres an outside chance its an ATX case and PSU its more likely its a AT case. If so it will be very hard to find a PII/PIII board that is AT compatible.

If you want to keep as much as possible, then I'd suggested max'ing out the ram. If the cpu socket is a socket 7 then you have some options. Check to see what the bios of that motherboard supports. You could find a P233MX and stick that in there. Theres also an outside chance you might be able to stick a AMD K6-2 CPU @ 350/400 MHz in there.

I would also suggest you get a PCI ATA66/100/133 controller and get a fast hard drive in there. Doesn't have to be big, but has to be fast i.e. 7,200rpm. As that will make a big difference in the perception of speed. Even a UW SCSI drive and card, which can be picked up quit cheap would make a bit of a difference. But try to avoid a 5,400rpm drives as they are quite a bit slower.

Then theres the graphics. Which is important if you are going to play games and a decent gfx card will take a lot of the work away from the main cpu. Its unlikely that the machine has a AGP slot and if it does then its probably AGPv1.0 which a lot of modern cards won't work in. So I'd say something like a Nvdia PCI GF2MX400/GF4MX420/Radeon9000 would spice up the graphics enough to play the less demanding games. Just get which ever is cheapest. You could get an older card like a TNT2 or a 3DFX card, but a GF2MX is better and probably cheaper.

If you can get a about 256mb of ram,, a 200+ cpu and a speedy HD in it, then it should be resonable in Win98 or even a optimised version of w2k or XP home would run ok. (I've run w2k and XP on 200/300mhz machines ok) Fast enough for non techies at least.

The hard part about all of that is trying to do it cheap enough so that its worth while. Because once you get close to €150-200 you into the price of a cheap Socket A and 1ghz cpus upgrades.

For some other options checkout these links. Bit pricy though : (

http://www.powerleap.com/
http://www.evertech.com/

If you need a hand drop us a email. Personally I reckon your best bet might be to source 2nd parts from some of the UK hardware 4 sale forums like OcUK, Hexus and The OCS. If you need a hand with that too let us know.

Occidental

remoteboy,

I should be able to help you out with a higher speed Pentium or MMX chip and possibly some memory. If you can provide details of what you have at the moment and possibly system board model, it should help.

Also might be worth having a look at one of the games you're hoping to run for min requirements. Most of these sort of things(Barbie, Disney etc) seem to like Win98 with 64MB and any graphic card that can do 256 colours or better, so it may not be as bad as you think.

remoteboy

Ricardo - thanks for all that - am going away to scratch my head and think it all through.

Occidental - thanks for the offer, will be picking up PC tonight/tomorrow, will check it out in more detail then and PM you with details of board.

BTW - how do i know if the case is AT/ATX compatible - will a measuring tape do the trick, and if so what kinda measurements am I looking at?

Thanks again.

RicardoSmith

Look up the model number of the board on the manufacturers website. It will be written on the PSU more than likely. The actual spec can be got here.

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/atx.htm