I was talking with a friend tonight about webcams. We got to talking, and I realized just how primitive my computer is, compared to some. First of all, it only has about 1.86 GB of HD space, and of that I only have 103 MB left to use (yah, i know what youre thinking "How the hell has that boy gotten along with only that much?). My computer also lacks USB ports, something i’d need for a webcam. It only has serial ports. The modem is also only 33.6k! And, my CDROM drive doesnt open anymore.
I want:
a CD-RW drive
a DVD drive
a USB card/ports (whatever)
at least 13 gigs of HD space (i ran out trying to install PSP 7 today, had to chuck a few extraneous progams and files)
a 56k modem
Bear in mind, my computer is 3 years old. It’s pretty basic and bare bones, so if there’s anything you computer geeks out there can suggest that I would need, or would be good to have, please say so. Any idea on price as well?
Look under headings of products, and the best prices. Simple.
1- Purchase no less than 15-20GB of hard drive.
2- Purchase nothing slower than a 4x CD-RW(I recommend Creative Labs)
3- buy the cheapest USB form card possible
4- Look for older 6x-8x DVD’s(I still recommend Creative)
5- More RAM When making these upgrades, you are best off getting at least 64-128 MB of RAM, since your computer will need to be a bit more robust.
6- Buy the cheapest name-brand 56K modem you can get.
Oh, you might want to consider upgrading your sound and video if you are planning on adding DVD to your system.
It started out as a P1 90mhz unit with 8 megs of RAM, a 28.8 modem and pretty basic hardware. That was about 4 years ago. We still have the same tower but other than that most everything has been replaced.
“Frank” is now a P2 350 with 32 megs of RAM, the sound card and video cards have been upgraded, the old 14" inch monitor burned itself out so now we look at things wit a 17". The old modem lies idle as we upgraded to cable this spring. We got a motherboard to accomodate the changes. The hard drive went from 3 to 8 gigs.
If you can upgrade and can either do it yourself or find a good tech this might be the way to go. We got some of our parts really cheap or free from people who were upgrading their own computers. It should fill our needs for some time to come.
I believe you can get a serial to usb converter from most computer stores…
Don’t do it man! And don’t let anybody tell you that it’s easy either. I’ve been there and done that. The time and effort you spend on upgrading will not be worth it. Just go out and buy a new one. You will thank me.
By the way, I am a techie and computers are not new to me. It’s just that the nuisance of buying CD drive A and HD B and all the other shit is just half the battle. When you get it home you will find that it’s not compliant with your BIOS and your controller. You’ll go back to the store and talk for hours with the technical staff who will gladly take back the drives but will be essencially of no use in picking the right new one. Not to mention the hours and hours you’ll spend on the iternet trying to download the BIOS upgrades. So you’ll be jerking those cables and jumpers for night on end until you luckily stumble accross the right combo… maybe.
Save youself the grief and buy a new computer. You don’t have to go for the top of the line if you don’t want to spend large amounts of money. But believe me, the sanity you save maybe your own.
Make sure you know what type of RAM you need before you buy it.
By the way - just to play the other side of the “self-uprgades are bad” debate, I just bought an AMD Thunderbird 750 and an ASUS A7V motherboard, and had very few problems getting it set up. The hardest thing was the selfish thing: Overclocking it I know I know, I shouldn’t have, 750 is damn fast enough, but I couldn’t resist. The ASUS A7V just makes it so easy.
Just don’t go doin’ it unless you know what you’re doing or know someone who does.
It is rather nice having a 750Mhz processor that whips the crap out of a PIII 800, though.
-FJG
P.S. Please, no AMD-hating responses… Save it for the pit where I can easily ignore it…
Since you are talking about upgrading a whole slew of things in one go you may find that buying a new PC is even cheaper. I’m serious…add up the cost of the items you are buying and compare for your self. I won’t bother with the economics of it all unless you really care to know.
The balance sheet gets worse considering you didn’t mention what type of CPU you have or how much memory. Given your other specs I’m betting those are well behind the curve as well. Indeed, given some of the notes I list below a motherboard/memory/CPU upgrade may be necessary to run the other items you want seriously making the case for an entirely new PC even stronger.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
DVD Drives are VERY CPU dependant when watching DVD movies unless you have a good hardware DVD decoder. If you don’t have the decoder you need roughly an Intel P-III 600 or better (personally I’d say P-III 700 to be safe). Anything else will get you choppy playback. You can absolutely forget it on a 3 year old CPU…it’d be more like a lside show if it worked at all.
Serial --> USB converters may do in a pinch but they still suck. Serial ports are VERY slow…especially in comparison to USB. If all you’re using is a USB mouse you won’t notice but if you try unloading photos from a digital camera via serial you may as well go watch a movie while it does its thing.
CD-RW drive. If your CPU/memory system isn’t fast you can make a lot of shiny coasters (from buffer underruns). You don’t need a speed demon for this but at least a P-II class CPU should be on board for this one.
You may find a 13 GB harddrive is not supported by your motherboard (in fact I’d be willing to bet money on it if your motherboard is 3 years old or older). It is possible a BIOS upgrade could get you around this but I’d check first to be sure.
Seriously…I’m a computer engineer as well and have been through this forest many times. Quicksilver is right. Get a new computer…it’ll save you a world of heartache and quite possibly be cheaper as well (Farris’ experiences aside…he had a new CPU with a very modern motherboard and presumably newer RAM making his life much easier than what you’re describing).
I totally agree that upgrading with the same motherboard is not a good idea. Buy a new package deal, unless you know someone with enough savvy to put together a system from new parts, which could be much cheaper, depending on what you get.
I guess what I should say is, if you can afford it, buy a whole new system and sell the old one (or use it for an MP3 box for your car ) I just couldn’t afford a brand new package, so I spent about 300 bucks and upgraded my own stuff.
Folks, never overclock a CPU that has a built-in cache. Look for the Celerons w/o cache for that purpose. All in all, a new PC is the best option for the OP.
I upgraded my own PC, a 300mhz Pentium II. Originally, it had:
6GB HD,
64 MB RAM,
a ‘shared’ sound board (I learned that lesson),
a 24X CD ROM,
and a 8 MB graphics card.
Now I have:
a dual 8.4 and 9.0 GB Hard drives,
192 MB Ram,
Soundblaster Live,
a DVD ROM,
a 2X Write, 2X Re-Write, 6X Read CD-RW (cost $109 at the time);
and 32 MB AGP graphic card.
Now it is as good as it gets, using the same motherboard. All I need is a new CPU/motherboard, then I have a whole new computer.
Capacitor: I honestly and truly don’t want to start an argument, I’m just telling you: I do have an overclocked processor with an on-chip cache, and it runs superbly!
BTW - If you’re getting a burner and can afford to pay a tiny bit more, buy the newest (or next to newest) plextor CD-RW drive. Aside from its spotless reviews, I’ve never had a buffer underrun or any sort of error for that matter.
…I really don’t think it’s worth the money to upgrade a relic like that. A computer that old can’t be more than 100 or so MHz, can it? How much RAM do you have? Unless you’ve added some since you purchased the computer, you can’t have more than 32 megs and may even have as little as 16, am I correct?
I think the financially wise decision is to purchase a new computer. Heck, you can get a Dell [awesome machine] with 64 megs of RAM and a clock speed of around 700 MHz for something like 7 or 8 hundred dollars. It would have the muscle to run all the heavy duty stuff you could ever desire.
If you can afford it, however, you should throw in the extra hundred bucks or so needed to get 128 megs of RAM. That would be best. I have 64 megs and I am going to purchase another 64 meg chip because with all the stuff I’m running, I’m maxing out the way I am now.
If you have the know-how and the patience to wait for good deals, you could build a new computer for far less money than it costs to buy a whole system. Wait for good packages and deals, it’s well worth it.
If you don’t want to wait for deals or don’t want to bother building a new one, buy a retail pc. I’d recommend going to http://www.dell.com and checking out the systems they have that you can customize.
I’d say there was some kind of hardware DVD decoder in the system you watched. Below is one quote I dug up but I recall seeing a better description somewhere else. At the very least, the fact that video card manufacturers include DVD decoders on their video boards should tell you that DVD drives alone don’t get the job done. It looks like I overestimated the horsepower needed a bit but the gist of the whole thing is still there.
I’m getting one of the new Radeon All-In-Wonders when they ship next month. Only a 32M card, but it just does so much really well, and totally wipes the floor with nVidea’s ass.
Im pretty sure you can’t update it Doob. Because it doesn’t sound like you have an ATX case. You should get a new system with me at Pc People & keep the old one for backup. YOu can keep the monitor but you shold get a new keyboard.
