[RESOLVED] older p166 system

[sage19]

Okay, have someone who wanted to try and 'upgrade' an old system they bought, wanted to make sure before I bought anything that it'll be worth while. Heres a link to the description of the system.
http://www.ari-service.com/blender/cache/501972-801.htm

its a pentium 166, assuming not mmx - says supports overdrive processor, would this be what I'm looking for?
http://www.computersurplusoutlet.com...tID=CPU-ODP200
Not necessarily buying this from the site listed, but one with best description of product.
Secondly, going to upgrade ram, not sure how much right now but since it only has 16mb, anything will help.
Next, anyone know of a decent pci vid card that it might be good to put in? Nothing too fancy of course, probably a lower end ati card is what I'm going to do, or a cheap trident.
Any other suggestions, and do you think the processor upgrade would actually be worth it?

[billmez]

Hello, In the market for a new boat anchor? Seriously, I don't think I would waste the money on a processor upgrade because of the anemia of the rest of the system. Your biggest performance gain would be in ram (up to 64m, min of 32) for W95. As to the video, I always had acceptable service from the cheap Tridents, but much better results with the Low end Diamond pci vid. Hope this helps,

Bill

[Darren Wilson]

If the first link is the system that you are buying then the follwoing pertains to it.

The machine runs a i430HX chipset so it should be able to support Intel Pentium chips upto 233MMX. I wouldn't worry about the Overdrive chips as they wouldn't offer you any benefits apart from headaches. One good thing about the HX chipset is that you could actually go above 64Mb of RAM with n drawbacks (other than software) and the full amount is cachable by the chipset still. I would also find out how much a CACHE upgrade for the board is to 512Kb (if not already fitted).

32Mb Minimum 64Mb preferred and 128Mb if you really want to go the full way.

Video card I would is fine ( ATI Mach64 ) for general windows use , but if you want to upgrade it for anything else I would say go for something such as a Matrox Mystique PCI or even a VooDoo 3 PCi.

Depending on exactly which board is installed you should be fairly sae with any Hard Disk up to 8Gb, possibly higher depending on BIOS updates availability for the board. Or you could fit a bigger HDD and use a drive overlay software to configure it.

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Darren Wilson
Webmaster
The Carpers Lodge.net
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[iccrmman]

that particular board will only support a 200MMX processor, unless it was one of the last produced. Also it will only go to 128MB of RAM(32x4 installed in pairs!)
http://support.intel.com/support/mot...sktop/TC430HX/
This will give you more info on the board.


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My cats breath smells like cat food. - Ralph Wiggum