On  8 Apr 98 at 14:31, Jim Meagher wrote:

> Most 486 vintage systems are running with 30 pin SIMMs so more
> likely than not, he will need new RAM.

  I never saw 72-pin SIMMs on a 386, but most 486 boards I've worked
with provide four 30-pin slots and 2 or 3 72-pin slots.  It WILL
depend on which slots are populated.  [I have worked with some 486
boards with only 30-pin slots, but not many.]

> I could be wrong, but I've never seen a 486 era MoBo with a
> PCI bus which means he has all ISA cards.

  Most 486 boards offered VLB.  A few offered PCI, a few offered only
ISA.  We don't know what he has.  [A very few boards supported both
PCI and VLB -- some of these, I hear, didn't work very well.]  Odds
are pretty good of him needing to upgrade to a PCI video card.

> And how about the LBA/DDO issue?  Many times those drive overlay
> programs wreak havoc with upgrades.  So he could also be looking at
> a complete reformat and install.

  I've never had any problem moving an LBA'd drive from one machine
to another.  I'll agree that DDO might be a trickier story, and not
all 486s supported LBA.

David Gillett