Seeking Ancient System Recommendation

[EdTechGuy]

A few months ago I inherited the following ancient system from my father-in-law

Asus K7V
Athlon K6 (600 MHz)
128 MB RAM


Not surprisingly, it's a bit pokey. My question is, is it worth it to add RAM, or am I going to have to gut the whole thing to get a meaningful improvement? By gut I mean replace motherboard, CPU and RAM. The RAM alone I figure I could do for $20. If I have to do the bigger option, I'm looking at spending five or six times that.

 

[Zorg]

Is this a joke? Where's the camera?

 

[BGP_Spook]

A few months ago I inherited the following ancient system from my father-in-law...it's a bit pokey. My question is...am I going to have to gut the whole thing to get a meaningful improvement?

You seem to have jumped the gun a bit on your line of questioning.


The very first question to be asked is, "What am I going to use this computer for?"

After that, "What OS am I going to use?"

After that, 'How long do I plan to keep this computer?"

And then your question, "Is it worth upgrading or should I start over?"


If:
The answer to the first is, "browse the web and word processing."
The answer to the second is, "[insert any OS older than XP]."
The answer to the third is, "until I find something better."

Then the answer to your original question is, "No."

Otherwise, please respond and let us know.

 

[randomizer]

5-6x $20, Thats not going to buy you a new system :? . Try 20-30x You could spend $50 on another stick of RAM if you can find compatible stuff, but its better to spend it on a new system. If you had an amd athlon K7 then your system may be fine, but the K6 is, as you put it, "ancient" and doesnt really stand any more.

 

[Zorg]

Sorry, I temporarily lost it. If you have no cash, and aren't planning on doing anything but surfing the web and word docs, it will work fine. Adding ram never hurts. I have to assume that you have windows 98. If you do you will need to apply a change to the SYSTEM.INI file, under the [386Enh] section. Add a new entry with the following: "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" (without the quotes). You can get to this by clicking start and run and typing msconfig and clicking ok. You should do this even if you don't add ram because 98 would access the page file at 64 meg unless you did the fix. It should speed it up a little.

 

[EdTechGuy]

Let me clarify. The machine is a secondary machine which my goal is to make fast enough for my wife to tolerate it as a web surfing/emailing/word processing box. It currently runs Ubuntu Dapper .

[My primary machine is slightly less embarrassing

KM88-V
Athlon 64 2800+ (Clawhammer)
512 MB RAM
]

I guess I would view my option 2 (replace mobo, CPU, RAM) as in essence starting over. The PSU seems fine though it's only 300W. And the case is intact. Keeping costs low is very important. If I had $500 to spend, I'd start from scratch.

 

[Zorg]

Beware of the 300 watt chinese power supply if you are going to throw money at a mobo and cpu. That's the first thing that I would upgrade. I would set her up and see if she finds it acceptable and then go from there.

 

[Zorg]

I have a friend with a quantex 450Mhz. It is completely pigged out, he smokes etc. I gave him an 800Mhz w/ mobo back in 2003. He only had to buy a copy of XP and I told him I would build it for him. We are talking cheap. The CPU/ Mobo still sits in the box. What you gonna do?

 

[joefriday]

Sounds like your good to go Ed. The CPU is more than enough for a browser/business apps box. A good ethernet connection and you're set.

If it were me, I'd look for another 128 MB of ram (or at least 64mb), and most importantly, a modern-ish hard drive (you failed to list what hard drive it is currently using). Most computers of that era had around 10 to 20 GB 5400 rpm hard drives, with as little as 512kb of cache on the drive. I can tell you fist hand that a simple upgrade to a modern 40GB 7200 rpm hard drive with 2MB cache will greatly improve the response of the system.

Another thing Ed, the 600MHz CPU you have is a K7 Slot A Athlon with 256KB on-card L2 cache running at half processor speed. Much better than a K6.

For the ram, if you can't scrounge some from your nerdy friends, Ebay has lots of PC100 sdram modules in the 128mb size for $10 shipped.

good luck on the new project Ed, and happy computing.

 

[chuckshissle]

! Is that thing runs Windows XP at all?! I guess you can upgrade the motherboard and cpu on that one and add some rams.

 

[Zorg]

He said he is running linux and, more importantly, it is for his wife to surf the web and write docs. I say let it eat, unless she is not happy with it.

 

[joefriday]

I run XP on a PII 450, 256mb ram, 20GB western Digital 5400 rpm hard drive w/2MB cache, and a PCI ATI RAGE 128 graphics card. It's quick enough to do everything except play newer intensive games (it'll play Quake III fine), and it would be pretty slow at encoding work. However, the computer works great for my friend, who uses it mainly as an office computer and multimedia player (it's just fast enough to play DivX without dropping frames). he also uses it to burn CDs and sync MP3 songs with his Sansa e260. It's a decent computer for being 100% free.

But really, unless you absolutely need XP for some software requirement reasons, most old computers do fine using a 9x or Windows 2000 OS. Afterall, the only real point in having faster, bigger, and better hardware is to run larger, more resource-hogging applications (or to complete lengthy tasks in a shorter amount of time, such as encoding). With the right software you can make almost any computer fast. After all, a Pentium 233 MMX might be super slow trying to run today's software, but put it in a Windows 95 environment and it will fly. Of course some things simply require a minimum amount of CPU power/RAM (prime example: a modern Lexmark USB printer simply will not print with a Pentium 233 MMX; it's just not fast enough to keep up with the printer), that's why it's always a good idea to know exactly what you'll be doing with your computer before building it, so you don't over/under build.

As for Ed, the orginal poster of this thread, why Linux? If you have a copy of Windows 98SE or Windows ME I'm sure the computer would be much quicker. I've tried DSL Linux on a Pentium 200 MMX with 64MB ram vs windows 98 on same machine, and Windows 98 was MUCH quicker, and you really can't get a less-demanding Linux distro than DSL and still expect to have a semi-usable computer. Honestly Ed, try windows 98/ME or even Windows 2000, if you have a copy of these OS's handy.