[geeks] Info for Cheap/Acceptable PC upgrades

[Tim H.]

I'd recommend win98SE if you want a significant variety of gamage, especially the crop-before-last and kids stuff.  There is still a fair amount of that stuff that doesn't like win2k.  If your game list all does win2k then definitely, win2K pro.  I would use a Gforce card, probably a Geforce 2 GTX card, they have dropped quite a bit now.

Tim 

On Fri, 31 May 2002 21:42:04 -0500
William Barnett-Lewis <wlewis at mailbag.com> wrote:

> Having stayed away from PC's for awhile except for work and my SunPCi,
> I'm not as up as I used to be on the current crop of economy upgrades.
> Tips are requested...
> 
> Here's the deal, at my office we are being transitioned from NT 4
> workstations to Citrix terminals (they get quite annoyed when I say I
> could have kept the NCD Xterms we had prior to NT and given them the
> same result, but I digress.) and the old PC's can be taken home for
> personal use if the disk is wiped. So, I may have my hands on a free
> PIII/450mhz wintel box. It's got on board video (4mb ati chip of some
> ilk), on board sound (ghu only knows), 256mb of ram, cdrom, floppy,
> ethernet, USB, and a 6gb IDE disk. My intent is only to use it as a
> gaming box - flight sims, RPGs like Wizardry, turn based war games like
> Steel Panthers, the occasional FPS (Medal of Honor happened to fall in
> my lap the other day for $.80 US in an asian country, for ex) and
> Virtual Game Station are what I expect to play. 
> 
> Obviously a cheap WD (as there is no critical data involved) IDE 40gb or
> so drive will get slapped in quickly. But beyond that, what are cheap,
> yet of acceptable quality, upgrades for the video and things like
> joysticks? Also, which is the best MS (bletch) OS for this kind of thing
> these days? I have copies of 98, 98se, ME, 2000 Pro, XP Home, and XP Pro
> hiding in my pile. I really only have any experience with 98se as that's
> what I run on my SunPCi card. 
> 
> Certainly the Flight Sims would all love a card with obscene amounts of
> RAM - Xplane and it's OpenGL certainly would. But I'd like to find a
> split the difference and keep it cheap solution. With a 5 month old now
> in the house, the computer budget is real slim.
> 
> Thanks all,
> 
> William
> -- 
> You better watch out    What you wish for;
> It better be worth it   So much to die for.
>                                 Courtney Love
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