Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

COMPUTER BITS BY GEOFF COHEN gcohen<at>pcug.org.au Upgrading your old PC – is it worthwhile? Is it worthwhile upgrading your old PC or should you put the money towards a new one? The answer depends on the state of your old PC and the applications you wish to run. There are a swags of old 286, 386 and even 486SX PCs float­ing around now and a question I often get asked is “is it worth­while upgrading my old PC to run Windows, or should I buy a new one?”. The answer depends, of course, on what sort of PC you have and how much you want to increase the performance – and thus how much you are prepared to spend on the upgrade. The options are: (1) do a minimal upgrade and recycle the old PC so the kids can run Windows (word processing and games); or (2) go for a full upgrade by replacing the motherboard, CPU and hard disc. Is it worth it? First, you have to decide if it is worthwhile upgrading your PC. If you have a PC with a mono screen, a hard disc smaller than 80Mb and less than 4Mb of RAM, upgrading the PC to run Windows (especially Windows 95) is not really an economic propo­sition. In addition, if you have a major brandname PC (IBM, Compaq, etc), you will need to check if the beast uses a standard size motherboard, with normal plug in cards. Many brand- name computers use specialised components and cannot accommodate some of the standard parts used in clone PCs. However, if you your PC has a minimum of a VGA card, a colour monitor and at least 4Mb of RAM, it may be worthwhile upgrading it. At the time of writing (November 1995), Fig.1: the SimmVerter from Cameleon Technology accepts four 30-pin memory modules (either 4 x 1Mb or 4 x 4Mb) and effectively converts them to a single 4Mb or 16Mb 72-pin memory module that plugs into the latest motherboards. 32  Silicon Chip the cost of upgrading to a 486DX2-66 mother­board (including the CPU) is around $300.00, while a 545Mb hard disc drive and controller can be had for just $280.00. The cost of RAM is not too bad either, with the price of a 4Mb 72-pin RAM module currently around $230. What should I upgrade to? The answer to this question depends on what you want to do. Here are a couple of alternatives to consider: (1) Windows/games PC. If you only want to run Windows 3.1 at a reasonable speed – eg, so that the kids can run Word and a few games – I would recommend upgrading to: (i) a 486DX2-66 CPU (these are so cheap it’s not worthwhile using a slower CPU); (ii) 4Mb RAM; and (iii) an 80Mb or preferably bigger hard disc. (2) Microsoft Office/Windows 95 PC. These programs require a bit more firepower than the system listed above. To run Microsoft Office the minimum system would be: (i) a 486DX2-66 or 486DX4-100/120 CPU, a Pentium being even better; (ii) 8Mb RAM for Windows 3.1 or 16Mb for Windows 95; (iii) a 540Mb, 850Mb or even a 1Gb hard disc. In addition, a CD ROM drive is handy for installing pro­ grams like Office and Windows 95 , as it saves having to install from multiple flopp­ ies. I have noticed that there are still suppliers advertising Windows 95 systems with only 8Mb of RAM. I have tried this and it is very slow with Office 95. In fact, you need at least 16Mb for better performance and allow more programs to be opened. 16Mb is a good size for Windows 3.1 and 32Mb for Windows 95. Parity or non-parity RAM Most new motherboards have a CMOS option to enable or dis­ able parity RAM, the default option being non parity in the motherboards I have tried. Unless the PC is going to be used as a network server, non parity RAM should be adequate, as a RAM test is performed every time the PC is switched on. In any case, I cannot remember the last time I had a faulty RAM chip – it was, at least, several years ago. Disc controllers Some motherboards have two sets of 72-pin RAM sockets and four sets of 30-pin sockets. This photo shows a SimmVerter module, itself carrying four 30pin SIMMs, plugged into one of the 72-pin sockets at the rear. a Windows 95 system if it is to operate at a reasonable speed. Using your old memory A major problem used to be that while older motherboards used 30-pin SIMM RAM, the latest 486 and Pentium motherboards only have sockets for the new 72-pin SIMM RAM. This meant that upgrading to a new motherboard with 72-pin sockets necessitated throwing out (or selling cheaply) any existing 30-pin RAM, which was a tad annoying. Fortunately, a new device in now available which overcomes this problem. It’s called a “SimmVerter” and it effectively allows four 30-pin SIMMs (1Mb or 4Mb) to be converted to one 4Mb or 16Mb 72-pin SIMM module. All you have to do is plug four 30-pin SIMMs into the sockets on the SimmVerter. The SimmVerter itself then plugs into a 72-pin RAM socket on the motherboard. SimmVerters cost around $30 each, which is far less than the cost of having to replace 4Mb of RAM. They are available in four different shapes so that you can easily accommodate four SimmVerter modules adjacent to each other, if necessary – see Fig.2. Another approach is to see if there is any secondhand RAM available, either on the Net (eg, aus.ads.for­sale. computers) or in the Saturday paper. An important difference with the Pen- tium is the need to fit 72-pin SIMMs in groups of two. I won’t mention who fell for that trap the first time he installed a Pentium motherboard and used a single 8Mb SIMM, instead of two 4Mb SIMMs, and then complained that the !<at>#$%^&* thing wouldn’t work. If you want to improve Windows performance, the cheapest option is to increase your RAM. Upgrading from 4Mb to 8Mb makes the biggest difference and Word 6, for example, loads many times faster with this simple upgrade. Increasing the memory even further will provide even MODEL B MODEL A MODEL C MODEL D Fig.2: SimmVerters come in four models (A, B, C and D) so that they can be fitted to adjacent memory sockets. An upgraded disc controller card may be necessary if you are upgrading the hard disc. Assuming that you are going to stick with an IDE disc, you can purchase a multi-I/O card for around $25. As well as running your floppy drives and two IDE hard discs, this will also generally provide two serial ports, a parallel printer port and a games port. If you have (or are upgrading to) a VESA motherboard, then you should buy a VESA multi-I/O card, as they are much faster than a standard ISA card. Note, however, that most new Pentium PCI motherboards will already have the floppy, hard disc and I/O controllers on board. In that case, you don’t have to worry about a separate I/O card. Hard discs Depending on your requirements, you could stay with an existing 80200Mb hard disc and buy a used 100200Mb drive. However, a new 500Mb hard disc is only around $200 and a minimum of 150Mb is needed to run the full Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Office suite of software. If you are fitting a hard disc of 500Mb or above and have thousands of files, you need to consider how to partition it. For drives under 512Mb, a one byte file will take 8192 bytes. This increases to 16,384 bytes for 5121024Mb drives, and so on. In other words, the larger the logical drive, the larger the space that a one byte file effectively takes up and this wastes space. For example, if you have an 850Mb disc with 10,000 files, this will waste (on average) 10,000 x January 1996  33 The ZIP Drive – 100Mb On A $33 Disc speed at which Windows updates the screen may not be all that fast if an old ISA video card is fitted. Starting at around $120, a VESA or PCI video card will speed things up considerably. Typical examples, using ATPERF for relative performance details, are:      Old ISA  2       VESA 12      PCI 20 Another item to consider, if you want to use high resolu­tion (ie, 1024 x 768 or larger), is the amount of video RAM. A new video card should have a minimum 1Mb of RAM (preferably with sockets to accept more), or you can just bite the bullet and get a video card with 2Mb of RAM for even better performance. Installation Most computer users don’t consider backing up the large hard discs that are now being sold. There’s an old saying that there are only two types of computer users: those who have lost data and those who will lose data. The truth is that backing up onto floppy discs is often too cumbersome, while tape drives have the capacity but are quite slow when it comes to retrieving files (unless you have a DAT tape drive). External drive An external drive is the answer to backup problems. One interesting new device is the Zip drive which has recently been released by Iomega. This is a (relatively) cheap 100Mb removable disk drive which retails for around $370, with the 100Mb discs selling for around $99 for a pack of three. When installed, it is assigned a drive letter and is treated just like any other disc drive. I have been using the parallel port version for several weeks now. It really is quite nifty – you just plug it into a parallel port, run GUEST. 16,384/2 bytes, or around 80Mb. However, if this disk was configured into two 425Mb parti­tions, you would save over 40Mb of space. So consider carefully how you should partition the 34  Silicon Chip EXE and copy to/from the ZIP disc. A SCSI version is also available for the same price and is reported to be three times faster than the parallel version. On the down­side, the SCSI version isn’t as portable and you have to buy a SCSI controller for it. Testing I did some testing and found that large database files copied to the Zip drive at about 4.5Mb per minute. Alternatively, by using Norton Back­up and saving to a logical disc drive, I was able to copy at an effective 8-10Mb per minute and fit over 250Mb (before compression) on one 100Mb disc. So, at just $33 per disc, the Zip drive is good for archiving applications. Assuming that it stands up to prolonged use, the Zip drive is a good product. I tested mine by copying files to and from it for over 20 hours without any problems. Zip drives are imported by Polaroid Australia (1800 066 021) and are available from computer dealers and from Harvey Norman retail stores. disc (using FDISK), before you actu­ally start using it. Video cards Even with a Pentium processor, the For timid souls, there are many computer shops and techni­cians who will upgrade your PC for a reasonable labour cost. If you are more adventurous, replacing a motherboard is a relatively straightforward job. First, remove all cables from the PC (including the power cord) and remove the cover (this is usually done by removing a number of self-tapping screws). Once inside the PC, remove all the plug-in cards from the mother­ board. Depending on the age of the PC, the motherboard itself will probably be secured by two or more screws that will need to be removed. Once this has been done, the motherboard will then either lift or slide out. The next step is to swap the nylon clips from the old to the new mother­ board, after which the new mother­board can be installed in the case and the plug-in cards reinstalled. An important point to note here is that if you have two connectors that go to the power connector on the mother­board, the black wires should be next to each other when they are plugged in. Another option that you may want to consider is a new case, especially if the old one is looking a bit tacky. A complete mini-tower case and power supply can be purchased for less than $100 and would certainly improve the value of the PC if you wanted to sell it. Finally, if you have any problems locating a SimmVerter, I purchased mine from The Logical Approach in Canberra – phone (06) 251 6511. SC