my current spec:
266mhz p II
6g hard drive
32mb
windows 95

i'm going to upgrade my pc but i need advice plz. my current spec is above.

i'm going to order a new hard drive first then the rest. do i need a new motherboard to install a new hard drive? gonna get 20g or 40g hard drive.

help appreciated.

advice appreciated plz.

i would sell that and buy a new one for the price your gonna pay for bits you may aswell buy a new base unit.

I was in the same boat as you are. I have a 4830 also and did replace the HD with a 20 gB HD. However, the bios won't recognize a drive bigger than 8 gB so you have to install the MaxBlast software or the Western Digital equivalent. Still, it did speed things up to get a 7200 rpm hd in there. The Quantum Bigfoot drive is a real dog. If you insist on upgrading the Compaq, then a new HD and some memory are your best bets. Put as much ram as you can afford in there (at least 128 MB) and a 7200 rpm drive and it will be faster, but still old technology. You can't fit a new mobo in the Compaq case since they use a proprietary design. You will have to start from scratch.

But as a previous poster said, the Compaq 4830 is pretty old and you would be better off to just replace the whole thing. I built a new system using my old monitor, DVD drive, keyboard mouse, printer, etc for under $500. I got a nice case with 400 W ps, Soltek SL75DRV mobo, 512 DDR Ram, 2x20 MB HDs, ATI Radeon 8500, Athlon XP1700+ processor. It is a much better machine and I still have the Compaq.

I will use the Compaq to run software for my daughter until she is old enough to notice how slow it is.

HTH

Bemax

how much would it cost to update the bios?

Nothing, but as previous people have said, you're better off buying new. I don't know where you are based, but local computer fairs in the UK supply 'bare bones' systems. These consist of case, motherboard, sound card, video card, memory, modem and processor. All you need to add is hard drive and CD Rom / RW.

A basic system, as above, with a 1100 processor and 128Mb costs around £170. Add a decent CDW and a 40Gb drive and you're probably talking about £250 - £300 in total.

Maybe a bit to find at once but it'll save you a lot of time, effort and expense in the long run.

dunno why i didn't think of this before but i'm just gonna buy a new base unit and just connect my old monitor to the base unit. as far as i'm aware, my old monitor should fit the new base unit?

the cable for connecting the monitor to the base unit hasn't changed to usb or any thing has it? my monitor cable isn't usb.

anyone wanna help?

monitors aren't connected by usb

But your monitor is pretty old.....I bet it won't be able to even keep up with the latest graphics card your new PC has.....

I forgot to mention that you can't update the bios for the Compaq. Compaq doesn't support that motherboard and it is a proprietary bios (not Award or AMI).

You old monitor will be fine. Monitors don't have speeds, they have bandwidth and if you have a monitor that works at 1024x768 with a refresh rate of > 60 Hz, then it will still work on the new card at that resoluton and that rate.

Your keyboard and mouse will also work fine as will any CD Rom drives/DVD drives, Floppy drives, Network cards, Sound cards, etc. (as long as they are PCI). I only bought the mobo, case, psw, video card and memory and am using everything else from the Compaq.

HTH

Re my monitor post......what I meant was it probably wont have the capabilities to use the highest resolutions the new graphics card/onboard graphics can use....it will obviously still work........

my monitor is still pretty top spec. i just wanna upgrade it abit so i can surf the net and word process. when i go uni, i will buy a top spec pc.

where can i get MaxBlast software or the Western Digital to update my bios?

i got windows 98 and ME so will the new OS help in recognising the bigger hard drive?

*bump*

*bump*