[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Praise the lord my search is over! I have found the promised land! > Just when I thought I was the last surviving Mac user, I begin to > realize that there is a thriving community for us. So now I am gonna > make use of it! > > I have an 8500/120, 32MB RAM. I want to upgrade it, relatively > cheaply. I am not looking to make it a hot rod, just improve the > performance a bit. I like the machine and don't want to give it up. > I have been watching ebay for upgrade cards, but so far haven't had > the guts to spend more $$ on something that I am not really sure > about, performance-wise. I have visited many websites, only to > become hopelessly confused. What about memory? Think another 128MB > should be enough? Any other things I should think about?
Memory would be the cheapest single investment in performance. Data memory systems (http://www.datamem.com) is selling 128 megabyte dimms for $24 right now. This alone will make a big difference in your experience. Definitely worth the while. It's also the foundation step for any other upgrade you do, since any of the foillowing will perfrom very badly in only 32 megs of ram. I'd recommend getting two sticks at a minimum. (256 megs) but I'm a memory freak. After that, the next step would be to boost the processor speed. 200-250 MHz 604 cards should be quite cheap (someone on the Low End Mac swaplist was selling a 200 mhz card for $35 today). That would nearly double your performance right off. G3 upgrades are more expensive, but better, and G4 cards arean't all that far out of line. A G3/400 card is $120 at OWC (http://www.macsales.com) A G4/450 is available for $230. An ATA drive controller card ($55 for an ATA/66 card at OWC) will let you use much cheaper, much larger IDE drives instead of the small SCSI in there now, as well as add a cheap IDE CDRW. (I've seen some as low as $10 after rebates!) USB cards can be had as low as $15-20, Firewire around $50. These let you use new peripherals, like scanners, external drives, digital video cameras, digital cameras, printers, etc. As Rondo says, it depends on what you want to do with it. But be aware...as you enhance your system's performance (I'd have to say you're at the very lowest end of usablity, imo) you'll find you want to do more with it, since you could then do things you didn't think were possible... You could spend a *bunch* of money and get it up to running OSX reliably, but you're talking about $500 or more, which would be far better spent in saving for a new Mac. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
