Mirlyn said:
Professur said:
Just to throw in a little late, HP's have the A: before the twist, contrary to everyone else in the world. Just FYI.
Aye, and some of the older Compaqs were the same. Flat/straight single cables from board to drive.
I've seen few bad cables or bad motherboard ports compared to the ole' flipped-cable problem. Glad to hear thats all it was.
Well it's ancient anyway in terms of computers, I know for a fact that BCM discontinued this board in '96, 2 years before I bought the computer - I hate PC World! It's a micro ATX with onboard sound and 2MB of onboard video, both disabled. There is no agp only 3 pci slots, one of which appears to be faulty. It has a 370 socket and takes a pentium 266 or cyrix 300 maximum. The cyrix runs at the equivelent of a p233, which is adequate for wordprocessing, which is basically what it's for. I surfed with it for 2 years before I built my thunderbird so it isn't that bad.
It originally had a 16mb riva tnt video card and an sb 16 soundcard which I added, but all I got back was the case with built in floppy, mobo, ram, processor and heatsink - everything else had been removed - I gave it to my niece not that jerk! The disks, cards and all peripherals had gone. I'm really mad at both him AND my sister for letting him do that and not giving Sophie a replacement. I have to say my sister was technologically challenged - there's no other word for it - she didn't see the necessity of using or owning a computer except to play games.
Anyway it's now:
Cyrix MXII 300 MHz cpu
FR-500 mobo
128MB EDO Ram (I originally added 96MB when I found I couldn't upgrade the processor - it improved performance - that is the maximum the board takes)
Seagate 2.1GB 4500 rpm HDD - cost me £8 inc postage
Creative 52x CD-Rom - my spare
Savage 3 8 MBPCI video card - £12 (£4 more than the agp type)
Sis 4 Channel soundcard - £6
17" IBM P70 monitor - cost me £25 s/h 18 months ago for the tBird but doesn't like the ATI card so I bought a new one 6 months ago.
Standard keyboard & mouse }
60 watt speakers} both came from original system
OS: 98 (mainly because it takes up the least HD space).
Jasc - paintshop pro 7 and animation shop 3}
MSword - she doesn't use anything else} these are for Rachel
About 15 free games programs that run directly off the HD and take up little room - my utility programs for maintaining the disc - about 2/3 of the disc is free.
I've ordered a couple of games that will run on it and some educational software for Sophie. I also have some reference materials in her age range - I've been trying to convince them that using the computer will benefit them - talk about the dark ages - hopefully she'll use it.
Neither of them have actually used a computer much except at school but if they actually use it and get into it then I'll build them a better one for Christmas - there's no point my spending that type of money unless I know it's gonna be of use and used regularly. In the meantime I will keep an eye on it and carry out regular maintainance as at this point in time I wouldn't trust them to do it without screwing it up.
