HOW TO UPGRADE FROM P2 - P3

I would imagine you would be able to upgrade the RAM a bit but you will need to check the motherboard specs to find out how much RAM you can put in there.
The hard drive size you have is pitiful so you will need to clear out anything you dont need from there and try to keep the used space below 70% or so.

If it's an AMD you can fit a another CPU that is as big as the M'Board can take and Fit as Much RAM as the M'Board can take. As you haven't made any mention of a Video Card you can fit one of those and remove the need for the CPU and System Ram to double as a GPU and Video RAM. That one change will have a very marked improvement on the system.

If it's a Intel CPU the Maker & Model of the M'Board is required as the P2's came in 2 speeds 66 MHZ and 100 MHZ. A Celeron is always 66 MHZ and this limits the ability to upgrade considerably as the M'Board will be a 66 MHZ M'Board & it can't take the faster Pentiums that where available at the time.

From Memory if you have a 333 Pentium it runs at 100 MHZ and can be upgraded to a 450 P2 or a 550 P3 in a Slot 1 Package or a 1 GIG P3 with a FSB of 100 MHZ not 133 MHZ and these are not common, Socket 370 mounted on a 370 to Slot 1 Adapter. But you really need to make sure that you know exactly what you can put on the M'Board before buying anything.

As for RAM this will all be Low Density SD RAM so you need to make sure that any RAM that you buy is Low Density and of the right speed if you plan on using the RAM that you already have. If you replace it all at the same time if you can get the Max Number that the M'Board can take the 133 MHZ Stuff will work perfectly well but if you start mixing Speeds you will most likely run into Timing Issues and have a Unstable System.

One other thing is if HDD Speed is an issue here or the Max Size that the M'Board will take limits you, you can fit a PCI to IDE Card and run a Bigger HDD or if you want to go all out fit a SATA to PCI Card and run SATA Drives for the HDD at least. I don't think that a M'Board of this age will make full benefit of the SATA Drives but they will still be faster than the IDE ones that you can get.

As for Video Cards you will have either a AGP or PCI Socket and if it's AGP it will most likely be AGP1 so you need to look carefully for a Video Card to use the AGP Slot. Any below 64 MEG should work OK even if they are AGP 2 or 4 but the bigger ones are not likely to even fit into the AGP Socket. Of course any PCI [i]Not PCI Express[/i] will work perfectly well and there where some that went to 256 MEG before they disappeared from the market.

I hope that is of some assistance.

Col

When you come to Queersland you turn your watch back 1 hour and the Calender back 350 years. :p

Here our [b]Glorious Leader[/b] Serjio Be Often Peeded Upon is still GOD and it doesn't matter that he died years ago. Well to some anyway. :D

But as for upgrading a computer to run the Current Software well the above is about right.The trick here is the word [b]Well[/b] Sure I know you can do it with less but really you are suffering a massive performance hit if you go any smaller and or slower that the above.

Although to be quite honest I don't know that the new hardware is so much better than the older was as I was using a Dual P3 450 MHZ with 4 X 256 MEG SDRAM and well the IDE Drives at least where 2 X 40 GIG Drives running on a Gigabyte GA6BSDU M'Board. There where a few 15K SCSI's thrown in for good measure and that flew along. A Dual Core that I built last year still couldn't match the old unit and it wasn't underpowered in any way shape or form. I just couldn't believe that the 512 MEG Video PCI Express Card that it used was any better/faster than the 64 MEG AGP Card that is in my old one. I just haven't been able to justify replacing the Old Dual CPU unit that I've been using since I built it new for a NT4 Server all those years ago. When the Server was taken out of Service I loaded XP Pro and it's been running that way ever since. I suppose if you start out with Great Stuff it last longer and does the job better.

Now that I have a replacement Drive to replace the one that died I suppose I should get busy and reload the Old unit as it was just better than the new ones that are around.

Col