Computer configuration - upgrade

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the situation. I am presently using a 233MMX, 64 MB RAM computer which pretty much serves my needs for word processing, spreadsheet and Net surfing. I do not use it for games. I could use a bit more speed when working on images etc but I am not desperate. It has its quirks but I know them by now and I can live with them.

Now, I have this friend who is in debt with me because of work I have done for him but he is pressed for cash and I am not so I just let it go. He has a computer (or parts of one) he does not need and has offered to give them to me if I want them. The price is right since it is zero but I am afraid of getting myself into a lot of trouble which maybe is not worth the while. The proverbial white elephant. This is what I would get from him:

Mini tower case w/ 250 W power supply
Motherboard: Jetway VIA 663AS with 128 MB PC133 RAM (audio on MOBO)
Processor: AMD K7 DURON 800 w/ generic fan & heatsink
AGP Video Card: Power Color Gforce2 MX 32MB (VANTA?)
HDD: 20 GB Seagate ST320413A
CD-ROM drive: LG CRD-8522B (cheapo)
1.44 FDD, Keyboard, Mouse (generic)
NO Monitor, modem, OS, speakers

While it is a step up from what I have, it is not a configuration I would choose myself if I were buying a computer. He is offering it to me because it was giving him problems freezing very often, so I would have to be ready to troubleshoot any problems. I would want to have it stand alone and separate from my present systems so I would need to buy a monitor, modem, speakers, WIN98SE, and anything else missing. I am afraid I may put good money to feed the white elephant and after a while find I have wasted time and money.

The OS presents a special problem because I want it in English and I am in Spain right now. I can easily get it in English when I return to Washington DC but then I will not want to assemble and troubleshoot this computer. This would be an immediate project to pass time in the next few weeks and see if I can get a better system up and running while keeping my old system as my base system. So I would have to see if I can order WIN98SE, which is what I want, from the US and have it shipped to Spain… which may arrive after I have left… (anyone have a better idea?)

I dunno. On the one hand I enjoy tinkering but, on the other, I may put some time and money into this project and end up with a pile of unusable junk. And believe me, I do not need more junk.

So my question to you is: Do you think it is worth the investment in time and money? Or pass on the offer and upgrade directly to a better system later on when I am forced to upgrade? All advice, observations and opinions are welcome.

2

Motherboard: Jetway VIA 663AS
Video Card: nVidia gforce2 (I think it is this one but not 100% positive)

3

Hmm now let me see , since you are in spain you could always order an OS from England , since this rock is closer
also you could also do a “transplant” that is to get your HDD cloned onto another or the one in that machine , then on that HDD remove all the system device entries . When you put this HDD into the newer machine it will force windows to auto detect everything all over again.Takes about an hour tops last time i did this was a few months ago seemed to work ok (but then the systems were quite closely matched)
oh and you need driver disks for this.

4

geepee, a couple years ago I tried the transplant thing and it was utter disaster and i made a fool of myself in front of an audience who thought I knew what I was doing _
At any rate, I would want to do a clean install of WIN98SE rather than transplant what I have on this one which is win95.

Perhaps because I am much more familiar with Washington, it seems easier for me to order from the US. The distance really does not seem an issue.

The main thing is I am uncertain on whether to embark on this project or not. It may be easy and rewarding or I may dig myself into a pit…

5

Win98SE will likely be hard to find by the time you’re back in Washington, as ME and XP have supplanted it.

I had a hard time finding reviews of the Jetway board in english, so I settled for discovering reviews that say that Jetway can make stable boards (which I found) and that the chipset on this Jetway was fairly stable (which I also found).

The board itself is about a year old, and was one of the last single-data-rate memory boards, so upgrading it in the future may be a pain.

The 250 Watt power supply has to go. It was even, possibly, the cause of the stability problems. Get an AMD-certified 300 (or more) Watt supply.

The geforce II MX is a neat little card at it’s price point. It doesn’t come close to the Geforce II, but it’s usually much cheaper.

Of the things that you mentioned having to buy, the only things of any real value (as in, “need to spend more than $20 on”) are 98se and the moniter. Moniters hold their value well, and could get translated to a system that you would build in the future. The kb/mouse/modem could also get transfered legally, so, if you’re ever going to get a second computer, money spent on them wouldn’t be “thrown away” if the system ends up being bad.

So those were the facts. My opinion? This system does not have a single part in it that I would buy today when building from scratch. It’s an upper-level budget computer from almost a year ago. There is little practical upgradability left in it (aside from pure memory size).

So, if you were planning on buying a new PC within the next year regardless of whether or not you get this machine, I’d say pass on it and buy new, then transfer everything once.

If you were looking forward to squeezing the last bit of life out of your current system, then you might wanna give this box a try. In terms of forgiving debt, check out the components on pricewatch.com to find out what the fair market value is.

-LV

6

A trend I’ve noticed concerning PC133 memory: it appears that a lot of memory rated at PC133 is marginally functional at 133; usually “cheap” memory is involved. This has most often manifests itself in periodic and unexplainable “freezing” during operation. The remedy I most commonly use is to downgrade the memory bus speed to PC100. This usually takes care of the problem. So…

You might want to replace the memory with a “named” brand that is warranted to work at 133MGHz. Or downgrade the bus speed.

I recently upgraded my ex’s machine from AMD 450 to AMD Duron 800. It proved to be a significant boost, and has made video processing much easier for us. I highly recommend such an upgrade especially if you’re doing image processing. Also, with the new mother boards you can get more speed out of the system by simply upgrading the processor.

7

LordVor, BoiToi, thanks for your input. I think I would want to go with WIN98SE because it sounds like the one with the least problems. I see it sold on ebay and I wonder if I might even find a used, cheaper, copy from someone who upgraded to XP. If I could find this for under $50 it would be ideal as I do not want to put a lot of money into this system.

I agree that “This system does not have a single part in it that I would buy today when building from scratch” but again, it is “free” in a sort of a way. I just want to limit my investment and my losses.

If I have to buy a new power supply and PC133 ram, I might as well forget about it. Maybe I could improve slightly the power supply with some big ass capacitors. By the way, the mobo is (I believe) jumperless so I would not know how to slow the bus speed. Probably I would have to learn and investigate more than the project is worth. would that slow the CPU and everything else? If it is a question of slowing everything down, maybe I do not need to do it by a full 25% (bus from 133 to 100, processor from 800 to 600) but slowing it by 10 or 12% (bus to 115 -120, processor to 710 aprox) would improve RAM reliability and maybe lower power consumption, which, in turn, would help in using that power supply. Is there an easy way to change the clock speeds on this board? Would it slow disk access as well?

8

Hmmm, I am looking at the mobo page I linked above and I see this: 200MHz Front Side Bus with double data rate which does not match what you are saying… Also JumperLess

Support Add CPU Voltage Select in BIOS setup.From +0.1V ~ +0.075V(one step 0.025V) Is this something to tinker with?

9
      • There are sellers online that carry close-out and refub merchandise; if you take look around you could probably find a (generic) 13-inch monitor for about $50 and an (also generic) Winmodem for $10. This takes time though, and the selection and deals vary so it’s best to do your searching at a casual pace.
  • The OS is the one place you won’t get away cheap, unless you’re willing to load an illegal copy or bet on an honest auctioneer on Ebay. ~ If you lay down the money, Win98se is still easy to buy retail-OEM (a manual, CD and startup floppy shrink-wrapped, no fancy box), so are Win95sr2, 3.1 and DOS 6.22 for that matter, they just don’t come with new PC’s anymore. If you buy online, be sure that the price includes a CD, user license and activation code, and that it isn’t an “upgrade” product.
    A few weeks ago I paid ~$100 for OEM Win98SE. I didn’t even have to order it, the PC store/builder I went into had it on hand.
  • I’d also agree that the 250W power supply is too small. - DougC
10

>> The OS is the one place you won’t get away cheap
>> A few weeks ago I paid ~$100 for OEM Win98SE

DougC, I was hoping to get Win98SE for half that… What I guess I could do, is test the system with a copy of win95 that I have in this system. If that system seems to go well and run stable, then I could buy a copy of WIN98SE. That way I am not risking buying the OS and having no use for it later if the system’s hardware is no good… I keep thinking about all this.

11

These used components are worth (in the US) ummm…in the 300ish dollar region total, if functional. You can get 700-800 mhz fully assembled refurb machines with a warranty for around $ 400+/- or so I don’t think it would be worth carting it back to the states.

Personally (even as diehard geek tinkerer), I do not think the time and money investment are worth it. I know you are a world traveler so being in Spain is probably no big deal to you but if *I[/i} was in Spain the last thing on my mind would be goofing around with (or investing a penny into) a potentially flaky used PC.

When you are back in the states drop a thou or so for a muscular athlon or P4 system with XP Pro (or 98se if you are so inclined).

I worried about you Sailor. You’re in Spain for God’s sake. Eat! Dance! See the Prado!

12

Astro, I know you are absolutely right but I just can’t help myself, even when my experience tells me I’ll be sorry later. I just don’t learn. I am one of those people who can’t ignore a “bargain” even though in the end it is an awful cost.

I know full well I would much rather buy a new system and save myself the trouble. I know full well the time and effort I would have to put into this is not worth the value of the parts I am being given… and yet I find it hard to refuse them because they are “free!”

I used to have a girlfriend who called these plans of mine “econoshits”. What can I say? I’m a sucker for “free” stuff. I know you are right even before I asked. And yet I am hoping for someone to validate my desire to tinker…

A couple years ago I went to China to visit a girlfriend. The trip is costing a fortune in airfares, hotel etc. and I spend half the time tinkering with her computer which has the OS in Chinese! It was the Chinese new year and they were all partying and I’m tinkering with her computer. Once I get started nothing can stop me. And then she didn’t appreciate it because she felt I should be paying attention to her and not her computer. Oh well.

Don’t worry though. I am still getting to do all the other stuff here. In fact, I just saw a special exhibit of paintings by Goya in the Prado. Many paintings came from the museums all over the world, some from Washington and NY.

At any rate, yes, more and more I think I might pass on this system. I may be traveling again in the next few weeks and the system would probably end up in a corner and become one more thing to get rid of later. A pity though. I might have had some fun.

This is a good project to recommend to someone else. If it works out OK you get credit and if it fails… it’s someone else’s problem. (I love working as a consultant!)

13

But when you go to Via’s page on the KT133 chip controller that’s on the motherboard, you get both
*** 200MHz FSB Settings**
And
*** Supports up to 1.5GB PC100/133 SDRAM and Virtual Channel memory**

I’m a bit confused how you can get a 200MHz DDR FSB with PC100 memory. In any case, it’s got single data rate memory in it now, and usually a chipset won’t support both single and double data rate memory.

This is something that you would “tweak” to improve system stability if you were overclocking it. Oh, and the memory clock would likely be set in the computer’s BIOS on a jumperless MB (as would just about everything else).

If the system was working flawlessly, I’d say go for it. But you’re going to have to spend between $100 and $300 on a moniter (depending on how low your standards are), another $40 on mouse/keyboard, $50 on power supply, $10 on modem, etc. And you’re still going to be left with a year-old low-end system.

On the other hand, add $328 to what you’d have to spend, and you can get an Athalon 1600+ with an nForce chipset board (with integrated graphics equal to the geforce II MX and integrated sound equal to the Xbox’s, severe step up from the Sound Blaster pro integrated on the “free” mb). Get your buddy to give up the hard drive and cdrom, throw in $50 for memory, and you have a full system that will fit your non-gaming needs for the next 3-5 years. And it’ll still be kinda upgradable.

If you really want the system now, buy quality pieces. Get a good moniter, get a good power supply, keyboard, mouse, etc. Then, if the system doesn’t work out, spend the extra $400 and throw out the free MB, CPU, and memory, and put in modern ones. It’d kinda be like buying a new computer in stages.

Or, like Astro says, you could just go play outside.
-LV

14

It seems like the hard drive is the only thing I know is worth taking so I already have that and I can use it in that system or in any other. ven the CDrom drive looks crappy. It had not ocurred to me to look in the BIOS so next time I go by his office I’ll look in there and see what I find. I might learn a thing or two which, in the end, is probably the only benefit I would get if I decided to go for it. I have spent many hours tinkering and they seem wasted but the truth is I have learnt a ton.

15

If you want to recover some cash sell the the components in Spain if possible. I’m guessing that the relative value of those items are likely to be somewhat higher there than here simply due to volume and avilability issues. The Nvidia based Gforce2 MX 32MB might be work keeping as it is quite a nice card. It’s not absolute bleeding edge but it has plenty of horsepower for almost any game and it’s very well supported being based on an Nvidia video chipset.

Here is the video card

http://www.power-color.com/html/cmx2s1.html

16

Most motherboards have a jumper to override the automatic settings. Then you can select the CPU bus speed, the PCI bus speed, and the memory bus speed separately. These mother boards are also supposed to be able to tell the difference between PC100, PC133, and 200MHz memory.

I’m not saying abandon the free system. I like free, free is always fun. Just be aware that you may have to selectively replace components and tweak system jumpers. And be prepared to do just that. If you’re afraid of doing this, then this project might be too much for your patience.

Win98SE was generally stable for me, except that WinME had better video support (including IEEE1394, which I use to transfer video). But my brother swears by XP. He says he had all kinds of problems with his Intel machine until he upgraded to XP. Now everything runs like a dream.