At 06:44 12/31/00, Dave Gillett wrote:
>On 30 Dec 00, at 22:37, Paul Weiner wrote:
> > I  have a tower computer that is just under 3 years old with
> > Pentium 1, 200 MHZ, 64 MEG RAM, 3 GIG Hard Div, Windows 95.
> > I've been adding software as I go along & recently purchased
> > Dragon Point & Speak. When I received it, I found that I
> > needed 266MHZ, so now my question. Is it feasible to upgrade
> > my system or replace it with newer & better system?
>
>A relatively inexpensive upgrade (~$100) may be possible if your
>motherboard can support an AMD K6-2 or K6-3 CPU.  These may have
>special voltage requirements, though...
>
>Failing that, you'll need a new motherboard.  MOST Pentium
>motherboards from 3 years ago were "AT" style, and with a bit of
>searching you may still be able to find AT-style "Slot 2"
>motherboards (~$100) supporting certain Celeron/PII/PIII CPUs
>(~$150)...and you'll probably need to replace your old RAM (FPM
>or EDO) with SDRAM (~$50).


Another thing to think about getting is a new hard drive. Large,
fast hard drives are selling for about $5 a Gigabyte now. If you
update your motherboard and processor, your hard drive could
become the main performance bottleneck in your system.

An IBM 30 GB 7200 RPM IDE drive that sells for about $150 might
perform twice as fast as your present drive. Note that a drive
larger than 8.4 GB would require either a newer motherboard
than the one you have now or use of drive overlay software
(another layer of complexity which can affect reliability.)

Regards,
Bill

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