Upgrade Tips & Info ~www.Spider-boy.com

Take a few minutes to decide what you already have and what you want to have. Some older PC's are not able to be upgraded enough to meet current technology ( or even come close ). But an upgrade within your budget that produces a noticeable difference in performance is always worthwhile, in my opinion.

New motherboards will have an updated BIOS, faster memory for the new CPU and probably USB ( Universal Serial Bus ) support. This is why I suggest upgrading as a combo instead of just attempting to get away with merely popping a new processor in an existing, older motherboard.

By replacing the motherboard, you can gain increases in memory. Increasing from 16MB to 32MB or 32MB to 64MB, etc. will give you performance that you will see immediately and be pleased with. Just replacing the CPU will not give you this advantage / necessity. Also, the addition of newer BIOS will give your system much more flexibility for future needs and possible upgrades as it may support higher-end processors and have more expansion slots for you hardware.

As people use their computers more and more, they suddenly discover that that once huge 8gig hard drive is not so large after all. With programs becoming larger and larger, the space gets swallowed up fast( and that's a topic for another column! ).

What's a person to do? Well, you can decide to replace the drive that you have or simply add a second drive to the system. The newer hard drive kits make installation a breeze even for the PC-challenged.

Five easy steps to install your new HDD are...

Shut down the PC, pull the power plug and open the case cover. As you take out the screws and slide the cover off, make sure that your hands and fingers touch the bare metal of the case to avoid "static-shocking" the components inside!! Static discharge will ruin your PC's hardware ( sound & video cards, etc. ).
For this article, let's assume that you are adding the drive and it will be a dual hard drive system. You want the new drive to be the Primary Master and the old drive as Primary Slave. Set the jumpers accordingly. Note: These drives will be on the Primary IDE connector on the motherboard. This will make it so you will need to set the jumpers on your CD-Rom drive to Master on the Secondary IDE connector on the motherboard. Refer to the manual for each location.
Step two is to mount the drive in the PC's available open drive bay using the screws that came with it. Make sure that the colored edge of the cables attach to pin socket number one on both drives AND the motherboard. Also make sure they fit snugly. Go ahead and attach the power connector to the new drive and then double check the power connectors and IDE cables on the original drive and the CD-Rom while you're thinking of it. Take a moment to make sure that all ISA, PCI or AGP cards are snug and have good contact.
At this point (with hands, feet & arms out of the case! ), close the PC's cover and now you can turn the PC on and if you used a newer motherboard or it is fairly new to begin with, your BIOS should recognize the new hard drive and assign each component accordingly. If it does not, then you'll need to either use the utility that comes with new drives or manually enter the system's BIOS and do the settings manually. Each BIOS can be different (i.e. Award, Pheonix, etc. ) so I won't cover that here will will at another date. You can use the drive utility to extend the BIOS information in the boot sector and also to partition the new drive for use...multiples if you desire.
Now you can run the drives installation software or simply do an fdisk and format yourself if the drive has no utilty software. This topic is covered fairly well in the Archives and can be accessed via the Nav Bar at the bottom of the page.
If all has gone well and sometimes it does...your computer will boot from the new drive ( or the old if you set it that way ). At this point you can move contents from one drive to another, delete files or create new folders on the installed drive.

Today's software is so memory intensive that if you're going to run Win98, you should have at least 64MB of Ram. But in the coming year or so, even that may not be enough. Analyze your computing needs to decide how much memory you'll need.

Ram can be tricky to upgrade yourself if you don't know the specifics or what type of Ram your system needs. Adding too much memory can actually hurt your machine or, after a certain point it may not even recognize the excess. Ask questions from people who know. The Computer Board at eBay is a great place to start for a quick run down by those-in-the-know!

Sound Cards: These have made leaps and bounds lately in the areas of incredible 3D stereo audio. If you decide to upgrade your sound, invest in some new multi-media speakers while you're at it. You can really make your system rock for less than a $100 bucks. A very worthwhile upgrade considering all the mp3's, streaming media and animation appearing on the 'Net today.

Video Cards: With the right video card upgrade, your monitor will come alive. I used to suggest 8MB's as a minimum. Now 16MB to 32MB is getting to be standard. Also, you will want to choose between a PCI or AGP video card. Look at your motherboard for available open slots. The brown / tan slot will be an AGP slot.

Whichever you decide, make sure that your system can handle the hardware before you buy!