Attempting to upgrade my putt-putt computer this weekend - HELP!

[hatrack]

I have an early Bronze Age computer at home - 120 Mhz Pentium, Windows 95-

Hey! Stop laughing!!-

and anyway, am planning on installing an external hard drive this weekend. I have a 98 upgrade disk in hand already.

Any recommendations for specific drives or hints on installation?

Thanks!

[GOPisEvil]

1. More RAM. As much as that thing'll handle.

For the money, it's the most effective upgrade in my very humble non-techie opinion.

[papau]

2. AOL 299 cost 1.7G cpu/lexmark printer/17 in CRT with commit to

23/month for a year or two with AOL.

Only software was XP and Sun's Office

But this may be a better solution.

[BloodyWilliam]

3. I might be able to help.

PM me, I have some times. :)

[Pale_Rider]

4. Ensure that the BIOS on the motherboard will ...

... support the new external drive. Older BIOS will not recognize all of the drive's capacity. Also Windoz98 is doomed to be desupported by MS soon.

[DBoon]

5. Forget Windows

Run Linux or one of the BSD versions. They do better with slower machines.

Also with older hardware you can be pretty much assured that the *nix version will have drivers for it.

[Blue_Chill]

6. 120 Mhz? As in 0.120 Ghz?

Yikes! I think it's time for a new PC. I'm not talking top of the line here but you should be able to buy something ten times as good as your for VERY LITTLE MONEY.

[hatrack]

8. Yeah, I know, I know . . .

I got it back in 1996 when I started grad school and couldn't spend a hell of a lot of money for a computer.

But there's a thrifty - no, strike that, CHEAP, side of my personality that finds the idea of upgrading more appealing than buying a whole new system.

[Blue_Chill]

10. Think of it as upgrading your monitor

After all you can keep that. :D

[Maine-i-acs]

7. Check the External drive out carefully!

BEFORE you open the box - in case you have to return it. Many are not WIN95 compatible, but start with Win98 and up.

[RossMcLochNess]

9. Talk to any "techie" friends about it

I have a buddy of mine who replaced the processor and added a much larger hard drive for about 40% of the cost of a new computer. Really not too difficult to do according to him but its all greek to me. In short, see if you know of someone who could do an upgrade piece by piece for you. It'll be cheap and you'll be happy.

[ajacobson]

11. Don't lick the CPU for luck.

n/t

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. Time for a new computer

You won't be able to boot from the external, so hopefully youa ren't planning on that. And truthfully, given the age of the computer, are you sure you can even ad an external drive? All the externals I know of are USB or Firewire, and there's no way your computer has those.

If you want to up the performance of your machine, put win98 on it and add more RAM. You can pull the harddrive and pop in a new one, or even keep the current drive and add a new one, but yuou'll have an older BIOS that probably won't handle any drive larger than perhaps 20G.

[KTM]

13. Bwahahaha.. sorry, can't help it.

A Pentium 120 ?? Thats as classic as they get !! That, I believe, is the first generation of Pentium chip... that is, the alpha test...

Here's the scoop: Any motherboard that ran a 120 likely could not support a processor over 200Mhz - probably not even gonna reach that. Even if you COULD, you'll have a hard time finding one..

Likewise, the RAM on that thing is old school SIMS.. they dont make that stuff anymore. We make keychains out of them now. Again, if you COULD find any working RAM, it would actually probably cost you a ton - more than modern memory would. And, since at that time RAM was prohibitively expensive, the board probably wont support much of it at all anyway.

It also has no USB support, no AGP video support - heck, do you even have PCI slots on that ?!?

My friend, what you have is a very nice doorstop. It has done its job. It's time to let it go - or donate it to a museum. I'm not trying to be a dick... but you are tossing money down the tubes by trying to keep that thing going. Go to Best Buy, get yourself one of those cheap eMachines - they are really not that bad for the kind of basic use you probably hope for, and you can get one for about $400.. how much was that external drive gonna cost ??

Honestly, I agree with the poster above - you are about to be really disappointed.