Upgradable???

[Harry]

My friend has an old computer... infact, very old,
it has: 2 hard drives: 500mb one and a 1.5gb one, normal floppy drive and normal cd drive.
24 mb of RAM.
pentium 1: 150mhz... eep!
and a 4mb gfx card.
and a smallish monitor, able to have 1024*768 but quite small.
I have yet to find out what motherboard it has, but I was wondering if this sort of thing is upgradable...

[Catsy]

That would make a fantastic DOS games box or linux playground. :)

[Looney]

Catsy is right, It would make a good DOS/Linux box but, thats about it. The only reusable parts will be the 3.5 floppy drive and... heh, CD-ROM (if it's at least a x16 or better). He would do better to look at part prices and build a decent one for a few hundred dollars.

[Juan_Fraglef]

Yeah, it's "upgradable" in the sense of the word, but I don't see you using any modern applications for it. The highest I see it going, is to the pentium 200. It can probably support 64 megs of RAM. The plus side is that you can probably use a bigger HD as long as you had win98SE or higher on it but I wouldn't even bother with this. Considering this is pre-P2, the board probably doesn't even have an AGP slot and is probably a hybrid PCI/ISA. Although there are still GPUs on sale that run on a PCI frame, don't expect a lot of muscle there either.

The best bet here is of course a new computer. This thing is beyond obsolete. I recommend, if resources permit, to find some PC mods, like the one that turned an old computer into an alcohol still. *drinky*

[Catsy]

If you like, take a look at my "Athlon" thread in this same forum. There's a lot of good ideas and links in there for affordable "bare bones" systems.

[Looney]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1111302&CatId=188
Chaintech 7NJL6 Socket A Motherboard and AMD Sempron 2500+ Processor 1.75ghz *$89.99 W/rebate

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=709397&Sku=H14-1000
High Power - ATX Mid-Tower Case with Front USB Ports and 300Watt Power Supply - Beige $29.99

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=115333
Hitachi / 40GB / 7200 / 2MB / ATA-100 / EIDE Hard Drive $57.99

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=686471&CatId=933
Chaintech GeForce FX 5200 / 256MB DDR / AGP 8X / VGA / DVI / TV Out / Video Card *$69.99 W/Rebate

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1084532&CatId=88
Toshiba SD-M1912 / 16x DVD-ROM / OEM DVD Drive $29.99

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=723375
Mushkin Green Line 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz Memory $89.99

$369.94 total for a totaly new comp that would possably run Doom3.... Maybe ;)

[Harry]

Hmm, he might as well get all-new parts and maybe just the same box, monitor, keyboard and mouse, without the motherboard added in the upgrades would cost around £170 to £200.(512mbRAM, new hdd, and processer and graphics card.)
since he knows nothing of computers I will probably accompany him to microdirect and see what they have.

[Looney]

I doubt that his box would hold the new hardware, and without the new MoBo the rest would be pointless. His Monitor would probably be fine, same with the keyboard and mouse.

[Harry]

hmm, so added to that, it would be a whole new computer, he's looking at £250 now:p and if he wants an even better one it'll be £300.

[Looney]

hehehehehe yeap :)