Motherboard replacement in Older System

[Tom Bombadil]

Hello,
I hope some of you can help me with this decision:
I have a four-year-old Micron PC, which has become
laughably slow compared to current systems. I'm
planning to simply replace the motherboard. I am
looking at the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with a Pentium
4 of at least 2.4GHz.

My question is essentially: Will this work?
(And can I then move to XP?)

More details below, and thanks in advance for your comments.

-A



Current System
--------------

Micron Millenia running Windows 98 4.10.2222 (A) (This is Win98SE)

Motherboard: Intel SE440BX-2
with 600 MHz Pentium III and 768MB RAM installed

Onboard IDE has:
Plextor CD-R burner PX-W1210A
(primary slave vacant)
NEC DV-5500A CD-ROM
Iomega Zip 250

PCI Bus has:
Promise PDC20262 FastTrak66 EIDE Controller
with 4 hard drives
3Com Etherlink 10/100 3C905C-TX
Creative Labs SBLive! Value

USB is supporting several Epson printers and flatbed scanner


Goals
-----

Faster operation, especially for PhotoShop
FireWire for new film scanner and external backup drives
Free up PCI slots for new devices


Questions
---------

Can I simply swap in a new motherboard and maintain proper
operation of all devices?

The Asus board supports up to 4GB RAM in 4 DIMM sockets.
Are 1-GB memory sticks available?

Will the onboard Gigabit ethernet controller replace my old
3Com card with no problem?

Will the onboard sound replace my Creative Labs card too?

Later on I'd like to upgrade to XP.
Will everything still work then?

And do I want XP Home or Pro?

--end--

 

[philo]

Hello,
I hope some of you can help me with this decision:
I have a four-year-old Micron PC, which has become
laughably slow compared to current systems. I'm
planning to simply replace the motherboard. I am
looking at the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with a Pentium
4 of at least 2.4GHz.

My question is essentially: Will this work?
(And can I then move to XP?)

More details below, and thanks in advance for your comments.

-A



Current System
--------------

Micron Millenia running Windows 98 4.10.2222 (A) (This is Win98SE)

Motherboard: Intel SE440BX-2
with 600 MHz Pentium III and 768MB RAM installed

Onboard IDE has:
Plextor CD-R burner PX-W1210A
(primary slave vacant)
NEC DV-5500A CD-ROM
Iomega Zip 250

PCI Bus has:
Promise PDC20262 FastTrak66 EIDE Controller
with 4 hard drives
3Com Etherlink 10/100 3C905C-TX
Creative Labs SBLive! Value

USB is supporting several Epson printers and flatbed scanner


Goals
-----

Faster operation, especially for PhotoShop
FireWire for new film scanner and external backup drives
Free up PCI slots for new devices


Questions
---------

Can I simply swap in a new motherboard and maintain proper
operation of all devices?

The Asus board supports up to 4GB RAM in 4 DIMM sockets.
Are 1-GB memory sticks available?

Will the onboard Gigabit ethernet controller replace my old
3Com card with no problem?

Will the onboard sound replace my Creative Labs card too?

Later on I'd like to upgrade to XP.
Will everything still work then?

And do I want XP Home or Pro?

although you can replace your motherboard and use your old components...
there is a chance that win98 may not boot.

win98 is pretty good about reconfiguring itself to new hardware...
so chances are after a few reboots you should be ok

before you shut down win98 for the last time
you may want to startup in safe mode and delete as many components as
possible...
especially anything to do with you motherboard


btw: in the worst case, you should be able to reinstall windows back over
itself
and have not much more to do that reinstall your updates

and finally...
you may want to just back up your data

and do a clean install of XP
(if you do not have a home network, XP home version may be all you need.)


with a new system you might as well go for it
....if you still have your win98 cd you can get the XP upgrade cd and still
do a clean install... it will just need the win98cd for verification...

 

[Bob Knowlden]

The most obvious sticking point is the power supply: the P4C800-E will
want a P4 power supply with the extra 12V connection (ATX 12V).

If the mainboard is a real Intel Seattle 2 board, it ought to be
standard in from and readily replaceable.

I don't see any conflicts with the other devices. (No ISA cards, for
example.)

To swap the old drives into the new system, I suppose that you'd want to
do the standard trick (rename win.com).

You should have no trouble upgrading to XP, although you'll want to
download the drivers for every device, if available. XP probably
includes drivers for the Promise card, but it'd be wise to check.

You may also wish to run the Upgrade Advisor:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/checkcompat.asp

(32 MB download), which checks for hardware and software
incompatibilities. (For example: you'd need Easy CD Creator 5.x or later
for XP. Even if you already have 5.x, it might be a good idea to
uninstall it before upgrading to XP, and then installing it later.)

As regards the NIC: I'm using the 3com one built in to my P4P800. As my
network is through a cable modem (nominal 1.5 Mbps), I'd be hard put to
see the difference between the best gigabit NIC and the built-in one.

I'm not using the ADI onboard sound. I think that the SB Live Value I
used before was better than the onboard sound. (I'm currently using an
Audigy 2.) There may also be some advantage (over the onboard sound) in
CPU utilization, at the cost of using up a PCI slot.

I'm using XP Home. It's a bit déclassé, but I read Microsoft's offerings:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

and found that the additional features in Pro weren't worth the
additional $100 (US) to me. There are supposed to be no performance
differences, as they use the same core. XP Home supports hyperthreaded
CPUs, which may give you some incentive to upgrade from Win98.

"You say you've had your desktop for more than a week? Throw that junk
away, man, it's an antique!" (Weird Al Yankovic, "The Pentiums".)

Have fun.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be altered to avoid spam. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Thanks to both you and philo for responses. I have to admit ignorance
about lots of this, so please bear with me:

The most obvious sticking point is the power supply: the P4C800-E will
want a P4 power supply with the extra 12V connection (ATX 12V).

That's something I'd never have guessed.
This means replace the existing power supply (somewhere in the case)
with a P4 one, such as
<http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=559264&Sku=H261-7000>

Is it likely to fit where the old power supply is?

If the mainboard is a real Intel Seattle 2 board, it ought to be
standard in from and readily replaceable.

That's what the Sandra program said.

I don't see any conflicts with the other devices. (No ISA cards, for
example.)

To swap the old drives into the new system, I suppose that you'd want to
do the standard trick (rename win.com).

I don't know anything about this. What does it do exactly?

You should have no trouble upgrading to XP, although you'll want to
download the drivers for every device, if available. XP probably
includes drivers for the Promise card, but it'd be wise to check.

You may also wish to run the Upgrade Advisor:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/checkcompat.asp

(32 MB download), which checks for hardware and software
incompatibilities. (For example: you'd need Easy CD Creator 5.x or later
for XP. Even if you already have 5.x, it might be a good idea to
uninstall it before upgrading to XP, and then installing it later.)

As regards the NIC: I'm using the 3com one built in to my P4P800. As my
network is through a cable modem (nominal 1.5 Mbps), I'd be hard put to
see the difference between the best gigabit NIC and the built-in one.

I'm not using the ADI onboard sound. I think that the SB Live Value I
used before was better than the onboard sound. (I'm currently using an
Audigy 2.) There may also be some advantage (over the onboard sound) in
CPU utilization, at the cost of using up a PCI slot.

I'm using XP Home. It's a bit déclassé, but I read Microsoft's offerings:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

and found that the additional features in Pro weren't worth the
additional $100 (US) to me. There are supposed to be no performance
differences, as they use the same core. XP Home supports hyperthreaded
CPUs, which may give you some incentive to upgrade from Win98.

"You say you've had your desktop for more than a week? Throw that junk
away, man, it's an antique!" (Weird Al Yankovic, "The Pentiums".)

Have fun.

The rest of this sounds like excellent advice, and I'll certainly take
all this into account (as well as philo's backup advice etc) when I move
on to the XP upgrade.

So my plan now is:

1. Get the power supply, motherboard, CPU, and memory;

What about memory? The Asus list of recommended memory for this board
shows nothing bigger than half a gig. I'd like to be able to go to
the full 4GB the board spec supports in the four slots...

2. Put them in and see if all is well.

I can reinstall the old board if I'm stuck somehow.


3. (Later on) Get the XP upgrade CD (still have my Win98 disks);

4. Install XP. I'd like to do this as safely as possible, so
I'd like do it in a way that will allow falling back to Win98.
So I'll try dual-boot.

Once again, thanks.

 

[Al Franz]

P4 power supply with the extra 12V connection (ATX 12V).

At what point in the CPU upgrades do you require a ATX 12V power supply, for
all Pentium 4's ?? Pentium 2 and 3's run on a standard ATX case with power
supply. Didn't even know this was an issue?

 

[JAD]

yes the introduction of the P4 brought with it another connector from the PSU (4 prong dongle). some MB Manufacturers included a
Molex connector on the board matching the female (HD"S CD-ROMs etc) so you could use that in conjunction with, what was now going
to be known as standard ATX later to be known as P4 ready ATX

 

[philo]

Thanks to both you and philo for responses. I have to admit ignorance
about lots of this, so please bear with me:





That's something I'd never have guessed.
This means replace the existing power supply (somewhere in the case)
with a P4 one, such as
<http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=
559264&Sku=H261-7000>

Is it likely to fit where the old power supply is?


That's what the Sandra program said.


I don't know anything about this. What does it do exactly?


The rest of this sounds like excellent advice, and I'll certainly take
all this into account (as well as philo's backup advice etc) when I move
on to the XP upgrade.

So my plan now is:

1. Get the power supply, motherboard, CPU, and memory;

What about memory? The Asus list of recommended memory for this board
shows nothing bigger than half a gig. I'd like to be able to go to
the full 4GB the board spec supports in the four slots...

2. Put them in and see if all is well.

I can reinstall the old board if I'm stuck somehow.


3. (Later on) Get the XP upgrade CD (still have my Win98 disks);

4. Install XP. I'd like to do this as safely as possible, so
I'd like do it in a way that will allow falling back to Win98.
So I'll try dual-boot.

Once again, thanks.

if you replace the motherboard , hopefully your machine will bootup ok and
reconfigure

if it locks up
then boot up with a cd support floppy and rename win.com (in your windows
folder)
then just reinstall windows back over itself...
the installer may default to c:\windows.000 so opt for other directory
and install back in your original windows folder (usually just
c:\windows )

i;ve done a lot of harddrive transplants and found win98 *usually*
reconfigures itself ok


also, concerning RAM
even though your mobo may support 4 gigs of RAM you usually only find it in
sizes up to 512megs

i have heard that 1024meg RAM is avail but it costs *more* than twice the
price of the 512meg

 

[redeyedevil]

To swap the old drives into the new system, I suppose that you'd want to
do the standard trick (rename win.com).

Bob,

Could you please go a little in detail about this renaming win.com? This is
so that one does not have to reinstall the OS, right? What exactly are the
steps?

Thank you,