In <[log in to unmask]>, on 07/14/99 at 01:13 PM, Eric Wertman <[log in to unmask]> said: >Hello All- >>... > I need to know what sort of motherboard he has, so I can properly determine >what sort of Upgrade possiblities it has. How do you get that >information? I'll tell you what I know- >486dx/66 >16M ram (4 slots, all full) >trident svga card (i believe it sits in an agp slot, but I am not >positive) I believe it is an AT form factor >4 ISA, 3PCI slots >Award Bios 4.03G? (I'm not sure about the number, but I think >that's what it said. I also wrote down a number series from >inside the bios setup, which I don't have on hand either, but I >can get) >Anyhow, thanks for any input or general advice! >Eric Wertman Eric: Your friend is probably blessed with a very early PCI board w/o AGP. With 4 memory boards and only 16M, he is probably using FPM 72 pin SIMMs. They should be 60nS chips. The BIOS is probably Award 4.50. The bad news: At best you might upgrade to an original Pentium but would be limited to maybe 120MHz, but more likely an AMD K5 or 486/100 is the upper limit. You could replace the memory with 16M boards. That would make some stuff run somewhat faster. The Bios may not be Y2K compliant. Upgrades: 486/100 $ 25 (local surplus house) (4) 16MB 60nS $130 (non-parity, $150 for parity) BIOS Upgrade $ 50 (just a guess!) ---------------------------------------------------- total $205 Now you've got a slightly faster obsolete computer, and lighter wallet to lug around:) In the bay area you can get the following: MB+K6-2/400 or Celeron/366 ~ $180 PC100 128MB ~$130 ---------------------------------- total ~$310 Then, of course, you may need a new disk to hold Bloatware 2000. And you may have to replace one or two of your ISA bus cards. I have two simular systems running, but i'm not going to upgrade them. It's much more cost effective to get a new system. The existing systems will be relegated to an internet gateway and a hardware engineering station. jan lambert ----------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask] ----------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website regularly for FAQs, articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more http://nospin.com - http://nospin.org