[NTLUG:Discuss] hardware upgrade

[Steve Baker]

Michael Sandfort wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've got a brother who's going to law school next year and needs a basic
> computer for wp/email which dual boots win/linux.

Of course nobody at law school has time for playing games or surfing the
net - right?!?  :-)

If it's *truly* only for WordProcessing and Email then a 486 running
Linux is *plenty* good enough. (Although perhaps not great for running
Windoze).  Heck, even a 386 would do *that* pretty well.

>  I have an old
> 486DX4/100 from which I'd like to salvage as much hardware as possible:
> 
> Seagate ST31200N 1.05G HD
> Samsung VG32163A 2.16G HD
> Sony    CDU55S   CD-ROM
> MediaVision Pro-Audio 16 Sound Card
> Cirrus CL-GD5402 Vid. Card

...if this had (say) 32Mb RAM, then it would be fine for doing WP and Email.

Note that Lawyers are just about the only professional group who have
standardized on WordPerfect instead of M$ Word - so you'll *CERTAINLY*
want to be sure to get WordPerfect for Linux (the free version should
be OK).

Most college campuses have ethernet access for students - you need to
check whether you need a modem - or a network adaptor - and if so, what
kind.

> Having read through Chris Browne's page on inexpensive linux boxes and the
> links there (Red Hill, etc.), I'm thinking I can do this for about $260,
> minimal replacements being (including shipping):
> 
> FIC VA 503+ + K6-2 at 450MHz = $140
> ECC PC100 64MB SDRAM      = $70

(RAM prices are about to shoot up again - don't delay on this item!)

> ATI Xpert 98 Video Card   = $50

I would be inclined to spend a little more on the video card and get
something that can do 3D.  A Matrox G200 or G400 perhaps.  The G200
ought to be pretty cheap by now - and its' not at all a bad card.  You
could consider that $69 Voodoo-3/1000 that somebody mentioned on this
list...once again, it's not a *GREAT* card - but at that price, it's
worth having just for games if you were planning on spending $50 on
a graphics card anyway..
 
> As far as I know, I don't need an I/O card, since primary/secondary IDE
> are included on the mb.

Yes - that's pretty standard these days.

> The CDROM appeared on a linux blacklist around
> '95, but I think this has been resolved. The sound card seems to be
> supported. My major problem (I think) is that I don't know anything about
> DMA or AGP.

What do you need to know?  You need to have an AGP slot on your motherboard
or you'll soon be unable to find compatible graphics cards - you can go nuts
and find a motherboard with 4x AGP...but if this is *TRULY* for WP and EMail,
what do you care about speed?

Unless you are tweaking for absolute maximum performance, you'll almost
certainly find that all this stuff "just works".
 
> 1) Am I missing any important hidden costs here? (apart from my time,
> which I'm willing to take to learn a little more about this stuff :) )

Yes.  The main problem will be that your power supply will probably be
the old style - which won't work with a modern motherboard.

The case probably won't have the right form factor for the motherboard
either.

Hence, you should probably expect to pay another $60 or so for a case
plus power supply (I got my son a cool translucent purple one for $58
in Fry's).

(Strangely, a case *with* a power supply costs about $10 less than a
power supply.  Someone could start a good business buying cases, taking
out the power supplies and throwing the rest away! :-)

Your keyboard and mouse may have the wrong connectors on them for a
modern motherboard.  That happened to me when I upgraded my 486 and it
was cheaper to buy a new keyboard and mouse than it was to buy the
adaptors for the old ones!!  I'm also a big fan of those split keyboards
which have greatly reduced some of the RSI problems I'm afflicted with...
It's well worth the extra $10 to get a split keyboard.

Many of the modern motherboards have just one - or at most two old
ISA-bus slots - most slots being PCI.  If your 486 boards are all ISA-bus
then you may find you can't re-use all of them.  I had a perfectly good
ISA-bus sound card - and an ISA slot to put it in - but when I came to
look at PCI-bus network adaptors, it was cheaper to toss out my old sound
card and buy a new one with PCI bus so that I could get a super-cheap
ISA-bus network card.

This stuff can get crazy - and highly counter-intuitive.

One thing to consider is giving your brother whatever PC you have now
and putting together a new one just for you.  That way you can justify
spending a little more on the grounds that you would have wanted to
upgrade some or all of it in the next six months anyway.

In my house, my son gets whatever I have - and I replace or radically
upgrade his old box each time.  That seems to work out pretty well but
YMMV.

> 2) Is configuring this FIC mb as daunting as Red Hill seems to suggest?
> (in particular, for a very amateur hardware person such as myself)

I don't know about that specific motherboard - but every other one I've
tried (and I must have been through a dozen of them over the years)
has been just a matter of looking at the manual to find what jumper
settings you need for whichever CPU type/speed you want and doing
what it tells you.  Pretty much everything else should be OK out
of the box.

Obviously there are exceptions - but I have yet to hit one.

> 3) Is this a good idea, or is it crazy to be doing this when cheapo
> machines can be had for about $500?

I don't see any actual machines at that price.  You see them down
to that when you take the $400 "discount" for signing up for some
ISP or other...but you'd be crazy to take that offer.  Some places
(Fry's for one) sell 'Bare Bones' PC's at that price - but most
don't include RAM or hard drives.  You have the hard drives - so
that's not an issue...but beware of those deals. Read *ALL* of
the fine print.

I recently built a machine to pretty much your spec for a friend
and we got in for under $600...including a DVD player from 'Electronic
Discount Warehouse' in Arlington (a VERY dubious establishment - but
exceedingly cheap).

You have to be quite careful with ultra-cheap PC's because sometimes
they use boards that *appear* to be standard, supported devices - but
which are in fact subtly different cut-down versions.  I've seen that
from just about every major PC manufacturer - Dell, Compaq, Gateway...
and worst of all by *far*, Packard Bell. (Never *EVER* buy anything
from Packard Bell).
 
At least if you put it together yourself, you get exactly what you
want - and you know exactly what you have.  That's not so important
for Windoze users - but if you are going to use Linux, you have to
be a bit more careful because not every device out there is supported.

Putting together your own PC isn't difficult.  It only gets hard if
you are trying to do stuff like overclock components, tweak the
motherboard for every ounce of performance, etc, etc.

I like to buy my parts from Fry's because they are VERY good about
taking back things that aren't compatible, or you just plain don't
like - they do it with absolutely no questions asked.  That's especially
important with Linux because you often find that (for example) the
scanner you bought (and researched) has a Linux device driver - but
only belatedly do you realise that the driver only supports monochrome
modes or something.  (That happened to me - and Fry's swapped the scanner
with absolutely zero fuss).

That kind of thing would be a real pain with mail-order parts.

Just Do It!

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker at hti.com      (work)