At 11:37 AM 3/8/2000 , Bobby Sutton wrote:

 > I purchased a Gateway P5 133XL in 1995, ...Bios 1.010...
 > I installed a intel 200mhz overdrive processor, 80 megs of
 > mem, originial 1.6 hd, matrox millenium , ensonic...audio
 > system with a subwoofer and altec speakers, 17" monitor.
 > Runs great but have thought about taking it to local store
 > and installing new motherboard, athalon processor, 128 megs
 > of mem, and new video card and hard drive. They told me
 > approx 500-600 but I have doubts till they see system, it is
 > a 9 bay tower case with tape backup so I have plenty of room.

Hi Bobby

Like you, I bought a Gateway P5 133XL. (It was in October 1995.)
It had the 1.6 MB drive, the Matrox Mill 1 video card, and
Ensoniq sound card. Eventually I flashed to the AMI 1.010 BIOS.
The 133XL came with a terrible 6X Wierns CDROM drive that was
slower than most 4X drives and which had to be run using real
mode DOS drivers in Win95. The Sony made Gateway Vivatron 17"
monitor is very bulky compared to modern 17" and even some 19"
monitors.

I thought the Gateway monitor was high quality until I used
comparably priced monitors from Viewsonic and Ilyama. (Sony
does make some great monitors but the Gateway Vivatron was
bottom of the line Sony. (The same would likely hold if your
Gateway 17" was made by Mitsubishi or Hitachi.)

I upgraded the P5-133XL system to a K6-2/400 and a FIC VA 503+
motherboard that will run AMD K6-2 or K6-3 processors using a
100 MHz bus while using old memory (66 MHz EDO SIMMs). An AMD
K6-2/550 would cost $105 today (add $15 for a heat sink and fan)
and the FIC motherboard costs $68.

I think the one concern you should have is that your tower case
is probably an AT style case with a very underpowered power
supply. (My 133XL came with a 147 Watt AT power supply.)

It is my perception that most of the good motherboards are now
ATX format and won't readily fit in your case. And they would
need an ATX power supply. Besides, Athlons require a lot of
power and you would want at least a 300 Watt power supply. It's
time to set aside that old case, no matter how attached to it you
have become. Why not do as Jun Qian suggested and forget about
upgrading this system. If you must cannibalize the Gateway system,
at least get a new case and power supply. It's true that there
are AT boards available for Athlons and Penium III processors,
but there are drawbacks using them. (All the expansion slots
may not be usable with full length ISA or PCI cards, important
parts of the motherboard may be obscured by the power supply
or drive bays. There are extra cables involved with AT boards,
the AT power switch can be dangerous, and air flow may not be
optimal.)

I'd expect to pay up to $90 for a good ATX tower motherboard
(like an InWin 550 tower) with 300 Watt power supply (add $20
for two 80mm case fans), $90 to $110 for 128 MB of PC133 SDRAM
(why not pay the $15 more and get PC133 instead of PC100 in case
you want to use a 133 MHz processor some day?), $200 for a 600
MHz. Athlon processor with heat sink and fan included (a 500 MHz.
Athlon is only $6 cheaper than the 600 whereas a 650 MHz Athlon
is $29 more, so the 600 MHz. seems like a logical choice), $160
for an Asus K7M motherboard (one of the few really good Athlon
motherboards), maybe $160 for a TNT2 video card with 32 MB RAM
or $90 for a 16 MB TNT2. (Whatever brand or model video card you
choose, get an AGP card.) The brand of TNT2 is not so important
as they are all based on the same Nvidia video chipset and can
likely all use the same Nvidia drivers.) A Matrox G400 might be
another good choice for $115 to $165. Some people like ATI
video cards. (I have no experience with them.) Pay $40 for an
IDE 32X CDROM drive if you still have the original Wierns CDROM.
$160 will get you a 7200 RPM 10 GB IBM hard drive (a 5400 RPM
drive would be $10 cheaper but is older technology). You could
choose a larger IBM drive. If you want to install a 3.5" drive
in an external drive bay (for better cooling), add $12 for a
set of 3.5" to 5.5" drive mounting bracket with fans in the
face plate. (Be careful, some people sell this drive cooler
for $30.) IBM makes really nice IDE hard drives and sells
them at reasonable prices.

If you choose to get a new monitor, $300 can get you a really
*good* 17" monitor. Try to get a monitor with a max. resolution
of 1600X1200 because this should insure great image quality and
refresh rates when running at 1024X768. (If you get a monitor
with 1280X1024 maximum, it might be almost unusable for any
length of time at that resolution and picture quality might
even be limited when running at the more reasonable 1024X768.
Most people like to have at least a 75 Hz. refresh rate at
whatever resolution they use. 85 Hz. is even better.)

Some (cheaper) Athlon motherboards have problems. Since
everything builds on the stability of the motherboard, in my
opinion it would be a bad decision to save a few dollars by
getting the wrong motherboard...maybe just because a dealer
doesn't have the right one in stock. Be careful about what
video card you end up with. You don't want to get stuck with
a poorly supported card based perhaps on a proprietary video
chipset. (Your choice here would of course depend on what
use the computer will be put to. Older, cheaper video cards
like the Matrox G200 or even the G100 are fine for business
software but will not work with today's new video games.
(Most students probably want to be able to run the occasional
video game!)

You can get a 600 MHz Pentium III for about $70 more than the
Athlon. You could get the Asus P3B-F Intel based motherboard
for this processor for $30 less than the Athlon based Asus
K7M. (Whatever you think about Intel, there's no question
that they make some great motherboard chipsets.) So maybe
the Athlon is not *obviously* your better choice...
particularly as you could get an Intel 500 MHz Celeron for
$85 (plus $15 for heat sink/fan) and with the Asus P3B-F (a
very highly regarded motherboard), you would save more than
$100 compared to the 600 MHz Athlon and Asus K7M.

Prices I mentioned don't include shipping. A dealer could find
better prices but would charge you extra for handling...and
labor if he installs the parts. So why not build your own
system out of parts like I mentioned and save on labor?
Whatever you do, I think the prices and items I mentioned
should give you a starting off point in deciding what to do.

Regards,
Bill

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