Hi all,
I have been lurking for quite a while now but this is right up my street. Firstly may I say a hearty hello to all. Some who I have even had dealings with - (Ea) Anyway
>We have often considered this, but found that it's not cost
>effective.
Maybe your sums are wrong or maybe your buget has been clipped
I'll assume the latter.
>First you need a new motherboard and a Pentium chip.
>Then the RAM is not large enough and rarely fits the sockets on the new board.
Not in my experience ; 72 pin simms have been floating about for a long time. And anyway whats 40UKP buy these days Megs and Megs
>Next,
>to ensure that you're not strangling the new processor you need to
>junk your old display and i/o cards in favour of PCI cards.
No only if you want full pentium power rendering full colour polygons etc
Usually you average the two out and install a P133 motherboard + chip with your outdated video and controllers, you will get P75 speeds. Which runs Encarta and Access and Excel what more do you want?
>Next, the
>old hard disk in your 386 usually isn't big enough, so you need a
>new hard disk.
Sadly true but this is true for everyone. Buy a Zip drive. 8-]
> A sound card and CDROM needs to be added if you don't
>already have them.
Again this is only if the user has a requirement for multimedia which can be deemed a luxury if the user only does word processing. Buy a printer instead. Anyway sound card and speakers only costs 50UKP.
>drive. And what about installation, transport and technician costs?
This is the crunch. Exorbidant fees from workshops will prohibit this strategy for the fearful masses. A brave few will venture "under the hood" and find that it is easy to modify your hardware.
>
>Unless you can do a selective upgrade for yourself, the cheapest
>option is usually to buy a system unit and re-use the monitor.
>
So totting up
quote from watford electronics today
P133 + processor + 8Mb ... 200 UKP
CD Rom + sound card + speakers .... 85 UKP
Total excl vat .... work it out!
Total incl vat ... 335 UKP
BTW I am just about to do this myself to a 286 yes a 286 remeber them.
And UKP means pounds... remember that thread not so long ago about the strange A32 or some other code where the pound sign should have been. I have been using UKP for a long time now and many long time email users prefer this notation because it will display universally. In fact I dont even know how to get a real pound sign (US keyboard).
Regards
Ian
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also at [log in to unmask]
Ian in a personal capacity only
Thought for the day - Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at maths.
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