A few days ago, my monitor power supply failed (I got a new one from
Maplin, so no problem with that, now). Electrolytic capacitors in
the old one were bulging a bit on top. As my computer is the same
age (I assembled it in 2002) I thought I had better examine that as
well. One capacitor on the main board looks a bit dodgy to me.
So, I am thinking of upgrading my system. I would certainly want a
new main board, and I understand that means a new processor as well.
The existing system is an MSI K7T266 with an AMD Athlon 1800+ CPU.
I see no need to replace existing peripherals - monitor, mouse,
keyboard, scanner.
The question is, can I re-use other, internal, bits? I would
certainly want to retain the existing zip drive, but the floppy
drive (which I have not used in years) is not important. The
graphics board is a nVidia MSI G4MV460 and I have two 500KB memory
cards. Is it worthwhile retaining those?
Should I instead be thinking of a completely new computer? If so, is
buying one with Linux already installed a good option? I do not have
my own internet connection, so would want the system on CD or DVD.
Software might recognise older hardware, but I suspect old software
might not be so good with new hardware (at the moment, I have Debian
4.01r). I presume I could install my existing hard drive alongside
the new one, copy user files to the latter and remove the old system
from the old drive, retaining that to use as a back-up.
Any recommendations, opinions or warnings as to what to avoid are
welcome.
Peter Alefounder.
--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL:
http://www.hantslug.org.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------
