TCS - Upgrading a Home Computer

Upgrading a Home Computer

by Gordon Leaman
Tulsa Computer Society
From the January 1998 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

You may have read, not too long ago, that the real driver for the constant improvement in personal computers is the gaming industry. This has proved to be true at the Leaman household as of late. Ever since Myst (a non-shoot 'em up game using great graphics and puzzles that keep both young and old up late at night) was introduced to my daughter Becky and my niece Shannon in 1995, we have been eagerly awaiting the sequel, Riven. Myst only took six months for the girls to solve and I hope Riven will take at least that long. The problem will be the temptation to look in the solution book that came out at the same time as the game. I digress, so back to the story. After missing several holidays and birthdays, Riven finally hit Tulsa the last week in October. Becky and I were returning from Broken Arrow and took a chance to stop at Computer City. I had checked just the week before and they showed more than one hundred copies on order. Well, there it was in the biggest display as you entered the store. We grabbed up a copy and headed for home, little knowing what we were about to open up.

With all the time to prepare for Riven's arrival, we had upgraded to Windows 95 several months ago in August. At about the same time Riven's completion was debuted in the Wall Street Journal. I don't remember them mentioning that besides Windows 95, Riven would require at least a Pentium 100Mhz and a 4X CD-ROM. We were still running a Compaq Presario 866 with a 486 CPU and only a 2X CD-ROM. Well, here we come to the driving force I mention at the start of this article. We tore home and as I read the Riven packaging (and went Oh-no), Becky started the installation. Surprisingly Riven loaded and actually ran on our machine. But not very well. The graphics sputtered and the music and words came in fits. Of course, Becky wanted to know how soon, I was going to take care of these problems. It wasn't going to be that night.

Our biggest hardware upgrade up until now had been a 28.8 modem installed by Intellex, our Internet Service Provider. I had added a couple of 8Meg SIMM's to beef the machine to 24 Meg's of memory. This was only after having been to a few of the refurbishing computers sessions and having gained enough confidence (?) to open the case on the computer and know what an expansion slot was. So where else do you shop to computer needs but on the web. Checking out Intel and Compaq webpages for CPU upgrades, they both state that an upgrade was available to only a Pentium 83Mhz. Was it time for a new computer? Luckily a suggestion was gained at the very next the refurbishing computers session. An upgrade of the 486 CPU to a 586 133MHz was available from Evergreen through Computer Discount Warehouse. Back to the web that very night, and sure enough there is was, "486 to Pentium Performance" for only about $100. A little more surfing and the Evergreen upgrade was found to be available from CompUSA's webpage also.

Now for the next trick, how to upgrade the CD-ROM drive. Well, the swap meet was coming up the next weekend, so why not look for a faster unit. Saturday finally came and off to the the swap meet for a look see. So many choices. With a little advice from a couple of friends, who will remain anonymous, I settled on a 12X unit (price $55). Off to CompUSA, to buy the upgrade in person. Boy was I home free. Guess again. Later that afternoon, after some time for other family obligations, the computer was opened, the old Panasonic 2X drive removed and the Mitsumi IDE CD-ROM drive installed (following all the instructions provided with the unit). Power up, run the software and no big flashing error messages, however the instructions in the manual don't seem to be matching up and Windows 95 doesn't see the new drive and gives an exclamation mark in a yellow circle in the device manager under CD-ROM. The explanation says that the Panasonic is missing. Out to the Mitsumi webpage we go looking for tech support. One of the questions concerns why the door to the CD-ROM does not open. Yeah, we're having that problem. The diagnosis, "You may have an IDE model...plugged into a 40 pin 'Mitsumi' labeled port on a sound card. The Mitsumi labeled port is an older proprietary interface and is not compatible with the newer IDE models..." Oh by the way, our Compaq does has a SoundBlaster 16 MultiCD audio card which is capable of working with Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi interfaces. Just turns out, the newer models have gone for IDE interfaces which use MicroSoft supplied drivers. Reinstall the Panasonic, and start thinking of a new sound card?

As the afternoon led into evening, there was one success. The Evergreen upgrade worked. The Compaq had a Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket and within a matter of minutes the machine was back into commission. Was it faster? It just so happens that a year ago I got a CD with Ziff-Davis' WinBench 96 and WinStone 96 test programs. The Evergreen ad shows Winstone 96 results under Windows 95 at 100% increase. Our results for Winstone were an increase from 17.5 to 23.6 overall and a little less for Winbench. Well 50% isn't bad and we do have more memory than the test machine by Evergreen. (have recently noticed a faster processing of graphics on LviewPro and a much faster download and processing of graphic from Intellex. But some of that may be due to their new digital lines and new usenet server.)

This story does have a happy ending. Monday night, I stopped by U.S. Computer Hospitals and related my problems with the CD-ROM drive (I was thinking of buying a new sound card). The technician suggested that I only needed to "slave" the IDE drive to the hard drive and it should work (he could sell me a new card if I wanted). I would still need the sound card for the audio. I could hardly wait to get home and try the suggestion. By golly, it worked. This time the installation software followed the manual and allowed me to run all the tests and pass. And when Windows 95 came up, the new CD-ROM drive showed up in the device manager. I fired up Riven and saw the first part in all its' glory with no sputtering. Becky is now exploring all the interesting sights and sounds of this new world and I have learned a few things about upgrading a computer. The new plug and play units are probably a whole lot easier than what I have related.

This week I loaded the new Netscape Navigator. What is DirectX, 3-D graphics, etc. and do I need them? I think I'm going to the On-line Saturday and ask a few questions. Oh, Don...



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Tulsa Computer Society 12/08/97
Don Singleton, President
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