Keep looking.  After you add memory and hard disk (you can easily accomodate
household usage and web browsing on 3 gig, but the kids will chew through
that in hours loading their cds) you don't have an economically priced
system.  Plus, the old video architecure would yield poor game performance.

My brother had me set up for his 3 children a second-hand Gateway with a
p-II 300 slot 1 processor, 64 meg ram, 16 meg AGP 3d video, 24x cdrom, (no
burner) and a 10 gig hard drive.  The only upgrade it needed was a 100
network card so it can share the printer attached to his pc, which has all
the bells and whistles.    It is super for homework, and even provides some
entertainment, since the video is robust enough for many of their games.

That's the system you're looking for.  Unless you get it practically for
free, stick with a Compaq, Dell, HP, etc major brand that comes with
manuals, one-click recovery cd, web-site support for drivers, etc.
Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Johnson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 11:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] Advice on used computer?


Hello,

Wonder if I can ask for any advice or experiences with the following
system that has been offered to me for about 150 dollars sans
monitor.

Mobo: MB748LMRT, I think the brand is Xcel 2000, system chips
are SiS 620 by pcchips. It has a 300 MHz celeron in the slot 1 and
also a 370 socket (not real sure about the terms, etc. here so bear
with me). From searching the web, it seems that this will hold up to a
PIII at 500. Any idea how much this processer should cost used?

It comes with 32 MB memory, 8 of which is shared for onboard
video. That'll probably have to go up to at least 64, no? Seems to
have a decent sound system but the onboard modem seems to be
fried. It has a modem card in it but was not configured (or doesn't
work) when I looked it over briefly.

The HD is a 3.2 GB fujitsu. Win98SE is installed and loads slowly -
probably memory related? Perhaps putting Win95 on it would be
better.

I'm looking for something cheap for the kids to play with and basic
inet connection and easy sorts of stuff, etc. I'm willing to work out a
few kinks but what I don't
want is a can of worms or continual time-draining headaches in
keeping
it running.

What do you suggest?

Thanks in advance,
Eric

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