First, the disclaimer
I can get around the PC environment reasonably well but mostly I’m a Mac user. I’m not really into the hardware side of computers in general, and PCs in particular. I know the software I use on a regular basis and I’m not really interested in knowing what video card works best with which PC cpu blah blah blah…
Now the background
The company I work for is having a silent auction to sell off old IT equipment that is no longer needed.
Here is the list of computers they’re selling:
Dell Optiplex G1 - 300 to 333 MHZ CPU - 64MB Ram - 4 to 6 GB Hard drive
Generic Tower - 300 to 400 MHZ CPU - 64 MB - 4 to 6 GB Hard drive
Premio Centella - 300 to 333 MHZ CPU - 64MB Ram - 4 to 6 GB Hard drive
Generic “Triangle” Tower - 350 to 400 MHZ CPU - 64MB Ram - 4 to 6 GB Hard drive
Compaq Deskpro Workstation - P3\550 MHZ CPU - 64MB Ram - 10 GB Hard drive
That’s all the info I have about the machines.
The Setup
I’d like to buy one of these to set it up for gaming. Not serious online-first-person gaming; but to let my young son play games like Backyard Sports, Reader Rabbit and such.
The Question
Which of the above systems, if any, would be adequate? Which is the better option? And what should be my upper limit of bidding? Lastly, are any of these actually a good base for building a serious gaming machine?
I’d try for a Dell Optiplex G1 - 300 to 333 MHZ CPU - 64MB Ram - 4 to 6 GB Hard drive.
Don’t expect any of those to be very fast, they are sold on ebay.com too (search for Optiplex),so you can see what they are worth, maybe $10-20 with $35 shipping, but you don’t have to deal with shipping. Fine for kids.
I run a Pentium II 450 at work which at least 2 years ago could play many of the latest games available. However that machine had a high end video card which although old held it’s own.
You probably should check the minimum requirements of those games but in all likelihood most “kids” games don’t take a lot of memory or advanced graphics rendering. I would imagine these machines would be able to handle those types of games, but you might as well get the minimum requiremnts straight from the horses mouth so to speak.However by todays standards 64megs of memory is pretty damn low.
The upgrade pathway for most older computers is limited and a lot of times can be expensive enough to make it hard to justify. I wouldn’t try to make one of these machines into a high end gaming machine. The type of motherboard will determine how much room you have to move. Also on many business machines the video card is integrated into the motherboard and most integrated video crads aren’t all that great to begin with. The other problem with older computers is that they have older parts. If you don’t feel that you can fix things yourself then this is another potential expense that is looming. Power supplies and hard drives love to fail on people.
Also are these complete computers (mouse/monitor/keyboard/software/etc.) or are they just auctioning the towers. If they aren’t complete and you don’t have all this stuff laying around then they aren’t worth a whole lot, IMHO. Even with a complete system I wouldn’t put in more than 100 bucks in my opinion. Maybe 150 but that would be stretching it IMHO, but could be justifiable if you don’t have too high expectations.
A lot of business auctioned machines will come with wiped hardrives meaning they come with nothing. If they still have an OS you may get stuck with a machine with Windows 95 and newer os’s like XP or 2000 probably won’t run real well with just 64 megs of RAM if they will run at all (not real sure of their min requirements). In that case your kind of stuck with upgrading the machine raising the total cost.
I guess there are three main questions that still need to be answered. Are these complete units, what kind of software do you get, and what is the upgradable limit of the motherboard if you wanted to upgrade the system? This will do a long way to determining what if any value these machines may have.
Depending on how much you want to spend I have seen several low end new computers advertised in the 500 range here in Austin or even from Dell. For this much you may be able to get a new computer with new software. Sure it won’t be a blazing gaming machine, but it will be able to a lot and probably do it better than the other machines you are looking at in the auction. If you’re not willing to spend that much then I might suggest looking in the classifieds to see what computers for sale in your area are looking like.
Like I said I’m by no definition a computer expert, but I have built my own computer that I use right now. I have also looked into upgrading my parents old 333mhz which wasn’t really feasable. Anyway I really think you need more info to figure out how much these things are worth.
Eh, if you get any of them, get the “Compaq Deskpro Workstation - P3\550 MHZ CPU - 64MB Ram - 10 GB Hard drive” and, as Kinthalis suggested, upgrade the RAM. I wouldn’t pay more than $50 for it, but might be willing to shell out $60 if they’re wanting to throw in a 17" monitor. (But hey, if you can get them to give you a 15" where you had none before, take that, too.)
The latest Reader Rabbit software still only requires Windows 95, 32MB RAM and 100MB of disk space; in fact, most of Broderbund’s software for your son’s age group is pretty low on the requirements list. The popular “Franklin the Turtle” series of games also have similar requirements to the Reader Rabbit software.
As for building a serious gaming machine for the more adult games–especially the most recent games? Nope. Not a chance. You could, however, get a nice toaster screensaver in case auntie em and I don’t last and I come looking down the Texas way.
