old PC question
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- eps
I'm a mac guy and I just inherited a PC from my sister. IT's super old, but i can't afford a new one and want to soup it up. Other than getting a new processor and more ram what can I do? How hard would swithcing in a new processor be? I don't have much money and I don't need it to be super fast. I just want to run Coldfusion and some database apps. Can anyone help me out? Thanks.
Eric
- jox0
well, adding some more ram to it would speed up the app's. You might wanna check out what the motherboard can handle before getting a new processor (done that). Exactly how old is it?
A new graphics card could speed up "some" parts also
- eps0
IT's a 133 mhz Gateway. I would estimate that it's four years old. How can I find out more about what processor the motherboard can handle? Can I replace the whole motherboard?
- jox0
I've had a 133 before, if I remember correctly those motherboards could handle like 90 to 133mhz, or 120 to 166 mhz. might wanna look into that and see what processors it's made for?
Yes you can replace it but if you buy a brand new one, the other parts won't fit (the ram is competely different in most cases, SDRAM, DDR and whatever they're called).
Because motherboards for 133mhz aren't out there anymore I think.Getting a new, standard PC with like 1,6 celeron isn't more than $400 these days, at least not over here, though.
- unknown0
prolly not worth it - you'll replace the morther board, add some ram and get a bigger hard drive... before you know it, you've spent enough to get you a brand new dell!
- atomica0
EW, you're kinda SOL, the RAM for thats probably gonna run ya more than its worth, as for processors you'd only be able to get it to 166 maybe, 200 most likely. I've got something like that under my futon been sitting there unused a long time.... I dunno how much you're willing to spend (since you wrere planning to soup it up...) but unlike macs the parts to get a new machine going are relatively cheap, I just built an awesome system that runs amazing for about 650$ you could get something to run coldfusion and those simple apps for under 350 i'm sure.... that'd be my opinion on the whole deal.
- eps0
That's what I thought...
I just have other stuff that I need to spend my money on first, and was hoping to get this thing up and running cheap. Oh well.
Eric
- jox0
133 isn't *that* slow if you just run 2 or 3 apps. (takes an awful time to load, but it works)
However, a 3-400 mhz isn't worth more than $100 to $150 these days, so if you're planning on some more serious work on it, get one of those instead.
- Mick0
For about $120 you can get a 1Gig system...
http://www.tigerdirect.com/appli…
New motherboard, new CPU, just buy 128meg ram (about $30) and use your old case and drives.
If you get a motherboard with built in video and sound you won't need a video or audio card.
- sparker0
That box is hardly worthless, though. No need to upgrade it just to run db stuff....why not install one of the smaller Linux distro's on it and make it a test server?
You can put Slackware on a machine like that - as long as you don't use the new KDE or GNOME environments...an X11 window environment will work fine.
You could make it a full on web server running Apache, PHP, PERL, MySQL and a mess of other things and it would run fine.
Finding the parts to upgrade it would be a hassle, not too mention since it's a Gateway you have to be careful matching sizes of hardware and all...some old Gateways are so proprietary that you can't fit a standard motherboard in them.
- mbr0
Not worth it. That is so old, the thing is very unlikely to even have parts available.
Here's the way to go (these deals are soooo damn cheap, it tempts me to buy a new one every week!):"Dimension 2350 desktop Celeron-2.2Ghz 128MB DDR Memory/Free upgrade to 60GB 7200RPM HD, Ethernet, 6 months ISP, XP Home desktop $349 - 10% coupon = $314 shipped free."