Upgrading older PCs

Upgrading an older system means making some tough decisions. You may find that many of the components in your old system are incompatible with newer PC designs. Here are just a few examples.

In short, almost every component of an old PC except a PCI expansion card is either fundamentally incompatible or less than ideally suited for use with new PC motherboards. Even the motherboards and processors themselves have evolved so radically that older motherboards not longer support the newest processors. Of course, the more recent your old system is, the more viable upgrade options you have.If you've got a Pentium-based system, you have several possibilities. You should, however, start by asking yourself a few questions:

1. Is there a brand name and model number on the motherboard? If not, it is probably a proprietary mainboard and cannot be replaced or significantly upgraded with replacing the entire system case. Is this an option, or are you trying to preserve the existing case, memory, etc.
2. What is the budget for your "upgrade options?"

The Good News

You may be able to upgrade the CPU. You need to look at your manual to determine how fast a CPU your system supports. A P120, for example, is based on a 60 MHz front side bus (FSB) speed, with a multiplier of 2 (60x2=120 MHz). A Pentium 90, also based on a 60 MHz FSB, uses a 1.5 multiplier. (60x1.5=90). These systems may or may not support a 66 MHz front side bus and higher multiplier values. If your system does, you may be able to go to 233 MHz or possibly even higher. (AMD chips that may be compatible with your motherboard are available in speeds of 450 and 500 MHz for a few hundred dollars).

If you do not have a motherboard manual, you may be able to locate a bank of jumpers on the motherboard, with a legend silkscreened nearby, indicating various multiplier and voltage settings. You may also be able to locate the required info on the motherboard manufacturer's web site. We urge caution when replacing a CPU. Newer CPUs have different voltage requirements from older processors and sometimes, the motherboard simply cannot support the chip you may want to use. A local computer dealer may be able to advise you on your options.

You could use the sound card, hard drive, floppy, Zip drive, SCSI card, mouse, speakers, monitor and possibly other components if you replaced the motherboard and upgraded to a more current processor, of which the AMD Duron is currently delivering the best "bang for the buck." You would have to be careful to get a motherboard with enough ISA slots to support your existing ISA cards, or give them up, too.

The Bad News

If you have an old SoundBlaster sound card with a CD-ROM drive attached directly to the sound card via a ribbon cable, you will be able to keep the CD working only if you do not upgrade to Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition. Windows 95 has native support for the SoundBlaster's onboard Sony "proprietary" CD-ROM controller, but Win98 and WinMe do not.

Your video card is probably slow. An upgrade will definitely help, especially if you play games.

You have an AT case. Most existing motherboards these days are designed for the newer "ATX" case design. ATX offers a number of advantages, including a more advanced power supply design that allows the computer to automatically shut itself off when you use the "Shut down" command.

Consider Your Options

My advice is to keep your old system as it is and sell it or give it to a family member, and get a new AMD Duron or Celeron-based PC. At this writing, these systems start in the C$300 - 400 price range, complete with CD, hard drive, 128MB RAM, 3-D video, 16-bit sound, KB, mouse, case, etc.

As well, I wouldn't focus too strongly on whether a new motherboard fits your existing AT case or not; A new ATX case can be had for as little as $30 (CDN).

486 Owners

I'm sorry if this is not what you would like to hear, but my advice is to retire the 486 (sell it or give it away - I've seen refurbished 486DX/66 systems for sale for as little as $29 CDN!) and get a new system. As mentioned above, the best bang for the buck right now is an AMD Duron. You could, if you want, build it yourself, with a suitable Duron motherboard, a new case and new RAM.

If you elect to upgrade your system, you'll probably find that your old hard drive is terrifically slow compared to the latest models, which have data throughput as high as 100 MB/sec. Your old IDE drive probably supports maximum transfer rates of 16MB/sec or less.

Similarly, your CD-ROM is probably a lot slower than the 50x or 52x models that are now selling for around $50 - and a CD burner or DVD-ROM is only a few dollars more. You may or may not be able to use your old sound and video boards, but if your sound card is an ISA model, I'd recommend leaving it behind, too. Similarly, if your video card is not an AGP model and is more than a couple of years old, it is far, far behind the performance curve. Your old keyboard won't have a PS/2 connector, etc., etc.

In short, I guess what I'm saying is I wouldn't bother trying to upgrade that machine. Keep it for use as a firewall or a network router or sell it to someone or give it to charity or whatever. The computer world has changed dramatically since 1995. You can now buy a complete 1 GHz system (sans monitor) for about C$270, or an AMD Duron 1400 for about $350. That should give you another 5 years of service or so.

If you prefer to keep the expense down under $200, then yes, an AMD upgrade is one way to minimize your costs and use most of your existing components. I wouldn't do this, at this point, though. It's like throwing good money after bad. In essence, you'll spend at least $200 ($75 for the mainboard and $100 or so for the chip and RAM) and then you've still got a machine slower than most machines on the market today, and you're still suffering from slow hard disk speeds, slow CD access, etc. Most industry observers were surprised when AMD did not discontinue these chips in the first half of 2003. That should should tell you something.

Keeping your Old Data

The most valuable part of your system is probably the data on your hard drive. Your hard drive would become drive "d" in the new system, in a typical scenario, with a larger, faster drive the default boot drive as "c." Any dealer should be able to help you with this. You could put your old hard drive in the system (at least temporarily) as drive D, copy the data onto C, and then return the old unit to the 486 or leave it in your new system as a backup drive.

Conclusion

If you buy a new system or elect to upgrade your existing one, you can almost certainly add your existing hard drive and monitor (and printer, if you are happy with its output) to it, along with any supported expansion cards. For most 486 or Pentium owners, starting with a new ATX case and a motherboard compatible with the CPU you are planning to use gives you the most options.

I believe a system based on the 600 MHz AMD Duron delivers the best bang for the buck right now. In my area, a 1400 MHz Duron, with 128MB of RAM, 30GB drive, CD-ROM,56K modem and integrated video, sound and LAN sells for less than $350 CDN.