Either pc can accomodate your ide adapter card. You have an Ultra ATA-66
IDE card, I'm guessing. This '66' is not the same as 66 mhz. Regardless,
your hard drives are attached to the processor through a 33 mhz IDE BUS,
which is rated at 133 megabytes per second (32 bits (4 bytes) times 33mhz =
133 megabytes). Both of your pc's have a 66mhz front side bus, this is the
pathway to the memory, not the disk. As I said, the IDE bus is much faster
than your card, and the processor is faster than the ide bus.
Back to the original query, I would follow David Gillette's advice and put
the big drive into the P-II. The Win98se upgrade should happen at the same
time, so you don't have win95 bad issues with large drive size. I would use
the Pentium as the MSN pc. Of course, this is not an option if your modem
won't work.
As for the external cd-rw, it depends on how it connects to the pc. A USB
external cd-rw you could use on both pc's, by moving the cable. however, it
will write very slowly because both your pc's probably do not have USB-2
ports, only USB-1, which is a lot slower.
By the way, are these two computers going to be networked together? If you
upgrade to win98se, network setup is no problem, compared to setup in win95.
With respect to Mike Scott, I agree a cpu upgrade would be cheap, simple,
and rewarding if you can find one. However, that advice does not take into
consideration that you already own a cpu (the pentium II) that is at least
as good as the best upgrade you could do, because the pentium has
ridiculously slow memory by today's standards (so even 266 mhz outperforms a
450 mhz upgrade on the pentium, because the 266mhz Pentium II has a faster
memory architecture.) Therefore, the perfect 'upgrade' is to just segment
your workload so everything that can benefit from the cpu performance,
happens on the Pentium II.
The TX chipset is not compatible with AMD K-2 cpus UNLESS you use an upgrade
socket and cpu package (the 'package' part includes a voltage converter),
those marketed by Evergreen were popular, but I haven't seen one in a while.
The TX Chipset also did not have a very good cache controller, and
frequently had difficulty (depending on manufacturer) with anything more
than 64 meg of ram installed. It is not a good upgrade candidate. Since
you were able to determine the chipset of the pentium, do you also know the
chipset in the 266?
Tom Turak
-----Original Message-----
From: Kay Gibbs [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 12:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] What's my best option?
I wish I could invest in a new machine, but I can't right now, so I have to
make the best of what I have. Since posting this message I discovered I
could install a PCI adapter to accommodate the larger hard drive and speed
of the faster drive. My pentium uses fat 32 but the bus speed is only
66mhz, and I understand this apater card will help with that. I really
haven't spent anything as I was given a $200 gift certificate so I used it
to buy these items. It's like a free upgrade.
I'm wondering though, if these adapter cards will hurt the processor since I
would be running they system at a speed faster than the processor could
accommodate, but I understand the processor isn't involved in this process.
Do you know anything about that?
Thanks for your response, I appreciate the help!
Kay F Gibbs
>From: Howard Rubin <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] What's my best option?
>Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 08:37:34 -0300
>
>First thing to consider is wether either system would recognize a hard
>drive
>over 32 gigabytes. The second, what is the cost and availability of the
>memory for these older machines. It looks to me that there will be a 64
>bit
>revolution coming, possibly similiar to one that occured when we went from
>16 to 32 and FAT 16 to 32. For my money, instead of buying all of these
>extra parts, I would invest in a newer machine. You do not know how slow
>your video projects are till you try them on a newer machine! My work
>machine is a PIII 600mhz and I wish it was faster.
>
>Howard Rubin
>The Computer Doctor
>Fortaleza, Brazil
>
>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 13:46:47 -0500
>From: Kay F Gibbs <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: What's my best option?
>
>I have a pentium 233 with MMX and a pentium II 266 with MMX. the pntium
>has
>10 and 2 GB hard drives. The P II has a 5GB hardrive. I do a lot of
>website work and alot of work with photos and art. I also have a dragon
>Naturally speaking progran I will using frequently. I just purchased a new
>40GB Maxtor DiamnondMax
>hard drive and also an extra 256MB memory stick. I'm also purchasing an
>external cd-rw. I currently have an Iomega 100MB external zip drive. I am
>running windows 95 on the PII and win95 with a win(*SE upgrade on the
>Pentium. I plan on upgrading the PII operating system to win 98SE also,
>
>One of these systems will be used strictly for the internet, with only the
>opreating system MSN 8 and whatever software will be required with a cd-rw
>for dowloading, etc.
>
>I am trying to decide which system will be best suit
>ed for the internet and which will be best suited for my other work. Other
>programs I will add to which ever one I choose for my work will also
>include
>Canon Creative, Ulead Photo Impact, Compudraw and a fractal program.
>
>I definitely need the 40GB drive for these programs but I don't which
>system
>to put it in. If I use the Pentium for the internet, then it's going to be
>eally slow as I only have dial-up, but is that going to be the best bet???
>I know many web programs require at the least a PII and many won't work
>with
>less than a PIII now. I was also consdiering upgrading my Dragon program as
>well.
>
>Can you advise me on the best thing to do now, short of buying a whole new
>system?
>
>Thank you for your input.
>
>Kay
>
> The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering
> Mandrake Linux or Red Hat Linux CD sets along
> with the OpenOffice CD... at a great price!!!
> http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml
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