rec.autos.simulators

To all you techies out there!! (That was a compliment)

I currently have a Gateway2000  P166 MMX with 32 megs of ram. Not sure
of the motherboard model, but it only supports up to P200 MMX.

I was thinking of upgrading.  I have a former coworker whos cousin is a
reseller and he has a new PII MMX 300mhz CPU/ATX F.F. motherboard combo
that he is willing to sell to me for $800.00

First off...  can I do this swap with my existing hardrive, etc.
Secondly... I think that is a good price.. seen similar going for $900 -
$1,000.00

It does accept the same SDRAM as my current board.. so Im assuming I can
use those 32 megs plus add another 32.  

Im concerned about compatibility with hardrive, cd rom, etc...  What
kind of issues do I need to answer??  (yes.. im new to this stuff!!!)  I
have installed my own overdrive chip and RAM before... but thats about
it!!

All and any info would be appreciated.  If the above is not a good
idea... Id like to hear some good ideas for upgrading my computer.  I
dont really want to spend $200 - $300 for a P200 for the small gain I
will get.  AND... im not totally confortable with the overclocking
idea... dont want to fry my processor or anything else!!

Again... all and every idea would be appreciated.

Scott B. Husted
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~sbhusted

While I love to tinker, I'm not sure I'd consider myself a techie. I would
think as long as your getting a new motherboard with the cpu, you should be
fine. Move your hard drive, video card, etc. over to the new board. Sounds
like a pretty good deal too, but am not real familiar with that
motherboard.
--
Don Burnette
I-65 Racing
Dburn on Ten

Make sure your case can support the ATX Form Factor.  Not many do.

Regards,

John Wehman

Sounds like a decent deal... is it the 440LX chipset? (i.e. does it
have an AGP slot?) You may want that for future video card
upgrades...

You shouldn't have any problems... unless your current
motherboard has a built in disk controller and the new one
requires a card... I don't know enough about Gateway (or
the newest mother boards) to say for sure...

This should not be a problem... if the memory is ECC (if the
contacts on the modules are gold not silver), they will definitely
work. If the modules are non-ECC, they will probably still work
but there *may* be a little performance decrease...

I'm certainly no "expert", but the only thing I can think of is that
you may need to get a disk interface/controller card...

Well, that puts you one up (well, two up!) on a lot of people! Can
you believe people actually take their computers in to a store and
pay $30 or $40 just to have them pop in new memory? Sheesh...
that's only one step away from robbery...

You are definitely better off putting that 200-300 bucks towards
the new PII motherboard...

One thing you can never go wrong with is adding more memory.
In the Windoze 95 environment, memory upgrades have the best
cost/performance ratio of any upgrade you can make... I'm not
sure why you are upgrading, but more memory may be all you
need to get the performance boost you want... (of course, it may
well *not* be all you need... like I said, I just don't know why you
are upgrading...)

Finally, like someone else posted, make sure the new motherboard
will fit in your case!! It seems obvious, but................

- Mike.

====================================================
 Mike Holthouse - Indianapolis, IN
 I'm sick of spam!! To e-mail me, remove the "x"...
====================================================

Thanks to everyone who emailed and posted on this subject.

I should have mentioned that I knew that I needed a new case =)  It will
not fit in my gateway case.

Im also waiting for the Hercules Thriller 3D to see how that is and
match that up with a new Voodoo2 chipset card when they come out.  I
currently have a crappy RageII 3D.

Also... the reason for my upgrade is generally to handle future ***
needs better and an attempt to stay somewhat in the middle of the pack
in technical performance.  My computer is heavily used for business as
well as *** (wish I could afford just a *** pc) I had a 87mhz
penitum overdrive which died after a year with my old Compaq Presario
=)   So obviously the P166 MMX was a big jump for me to begin with.  I
got a pretty good deal on the Gateway system because I called at a time
when they were switching over their casings, etc and got a discount off
on that.  I have a 15 inch monitor so I didnt have to buy that either.
I hope to get a 17 or 21 inch in the next 12 months.. I have other
priorities right now and am still recovering from the major funds drain
my May wedding put on us =)  (I still want to purchase a new race car
for SCCA in the next couple of years... Spec Racer, S2000, if the
money.. GT1) Anyway.. =)   I got the P166 MMX with 32megs of RAM  3.2
gig hard drive (I have another 1.2 gig from my old system which i havent
put in the new one yet, still have over a gig left on the 3.2) 33
fax/modem, intellimouse, sidewinder joystick (go them to throw that in),
office 97, Windows95, MMX game pack, microphone, and keyboard for
$1500.00 a little over 6 months ago.  Thought that was a pretty good buy
at the time.

Thanks again to all that helped and are helping... I do appreciate it!

Scott B. Husted
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~sbhusted

You should run some sort of system monitoring program to log CPU, disk,
memory and other I/O activity while you are running the program whose
performance you would like to increase.  The log should give a clue as to
the performance bottleneck and thus tell you where you should spend your
money.  Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with Windows95 to say what
system monitor to use but I would bet there is something out there that
will do this.

--
Will Fiveash (remove REMSPAM. from my email address when replying)