Upgrade: added 1.0 GHz

Post #18,695 by Andrew Grygus 11/18/01 6:29:42 PM Reply	Upgrade: added 1.0 GHz Took a hard disk and network card out of a client's machine and built a new computer around them. Was 200-MHz K6, now 1200-MHz Athlon. No problem whatever (of course I had to set video to VGA and reinstall video driver, but no other changes). Don't try this with Windows. I was pretty sure it would work OK, because I did a 233-MHz to 1200-MHz upgrade for the same client a few days ago, and that machine has been in production for a couple days now. Why didn't I use a new hard disk? Why bother. The client is paranoid and doesn't allow anything to be stored except on the server where it gets backed up to tape - and to the backup server - every night. So the drive only had a few hundred Megs used, and performance isn't an issue since just about everything happens over the network. Even with my totally "follow the dots" installation procedure it takes about 5 hours and a site visit starting with a blank drive. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #18,712 by SpiceWare 11/18/01 9:54:31 PM Reply	Not using SDD? My understanding is the SDD driver will auto detect a video card swap. Never tried it myself though. Darrell Spice, Jr. [link\|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/\|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
Post #18,715 by tonytib 11/18/01 10:52:59 PM Reply	Well, it can be done with Windows, but you won't like the results. I just swapped motherboard CPU (a K6-2/450 to Athlon 1.2G) with Win 95 -- well, the system did work, just barely, with no CD-ROM's recognized, etc. That's after many reboots. I have since done a total re-install. In so many ways, Windows is crap. Tony
Post #18,855 by inthane-chan 11/19/01 6:00:20 PM Reply	Actually, there's a relatively simple way for Win9x fam... Before uninstalling the old system and installing the new system, copy your Win9x install CD (just the Setup dir, not the rest) to your local hard drive, in case you don't get CD-ROM. Boot into safe mode. R-Click on the "My computer" icon, select Properties. Select "Device Manager" tab. You'll see somewhere down there an icon titled either "Plug and Play BIOS" or "ACPI BIOS" depending on the type of PC you have. Select it, then click the "Remove" button. Shut down your computer, install the new hardware, and reboot. The machine will ask for new drivers, and reboot about six million times, but EVERYTHING will be reinstalled - and I have never run into a non hardware-related problem when I do this. And I did it ~300-400 times when I was a hardware tech. Worked great. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #18,935 by SpiceWare 11/20/01 9:53:30 AM Reply	interesting workaround would have saved me many hassles over the years. Had I known this before, Winxx might still have a partition on my OS/2 system. I used to keep a Winxx partition but got rid of it due to the problems I kept getting after doing major hardware upgrades. I did leave Winxx on the Thinkpad, no possible conflict with major hardware upgrades there :-) Darrell Spice, Jr. [link\|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/\|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
Post #18,819 by Andrew Grygus 11/19/01 2:16:50 PM Reply	SDD does detect cards on the fly. These were older machines so they had Trident drivers. For one of them, there was enough memory on the card and no need for faster than PCI video so I reinstalled the Trident driver. The other one didn't have enough video memory, so it was replaced by an AGP card with the SciTech driver once the machine was up and running. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]

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