At 03:23 PM 10/24/1999 , Mary Elise Zimlich said:

>I got my friends computer open (hope I can close it back up). Indeed the
>hard drive is 200MB. Is it worth putting a cd drive in the computer with
>such a small HD. My feelings are since she won't have room for any programs
>she needs to upgrade the HD, too.

My own personal opinion is that it would depend on what types of programs
your friend is planning on installing...The advantage of the CD-ROM is that
with many programs only a minimal amount of actual hard drive space will be
used since the CD-ROM contains the vast majority of the data...

>The ide cable to the HD does not have a spare
>connector and there is not a spot on the
>motherboard for another ide cable. So actually, I don't even know if I can
>put a drive in- I was going to change the cable, but that might not work.
>This may be beyond my level of expertise.

You can get an IDE cable with two connectors but be aware that the data
will most likely only be passed as quickly as the slowest device on the
cable can handle it.
You may potentially be slowing down the hard drive a great deal if you
Master/Slave it to the CD-ROM drive...

Just my $.02...
--
Regards,
Alan

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