I have a question about EDO memory upgrade. We have our first computer that is over 7 years old. A Pentium 1, 100 mhz, 1 gb Hard Drive (that we were told would never fill up, yeah right!) that has 40 RAM.
We have 3 other computers in our home, this one is used only as an extra for surfing and playing solitaire when all others are busy. We looked at a retail store this past weekend for some more RAM and was shocked at the high cost.
I was looking on ebay this morning the RAM and had a few questions. From what I can find we have one of the following requirments: • Four sockets with a maximum of 128 with four 32mb -OR- •Four sockets with a mximum of 256 with two 64mbs or four 64mbs.
How do I find out which of these requirments my computer has? Do I even need more memory for what I am using it for? I know that it would speed surfing, but with the DSL it's still seems pretty fast.
I really don't want to pump much money into this thing considering the age and limitations.
Thanks for your ideas

 

I wouldn't recommend you upgrade the RAM on that machine. SIMMS are quite expensive right now, and you're better off saving the money for the upgrade or replacement time. EDO RAM has to be installed in identical pairs. I'm not sure I understand what you said, but I would guess 128 Mb is the max your computer will accept. In those days 128 was a huge amount of memory. If you have 40 Mb you probably have 2 4 Mb and 2 16 Mb sticks in there, which means you have to remove the 4 Mb and replace them with 2 16 or 2 32 Mb sticks. That will give you either 64 or 96 Mb of Ram.

 

Pigfanatic, I, like trinitro, doubt that spending money on a machine of this age with its specs so low is a good thing. I also doubt for surfing, email and simple games you would see any real improvement adding RAM. I would clean the drive of everything I never used and this would give you a little swap space which if the drive is full would give the same result as adding a bit of RAM. Go to Crucial and enter your info on the PC and you will find out what you can/can't do and how much.....Mike

 

mike & trinitro - thanks for the input. I'll take your advice and leave it as is. You should have seen my face when I was told the price for the RAM at BestBuy! NO WAY would I put that kind of money into that machine!

When we took the computer from youngest son he had removed/uninstalled so much trying to free up space that it was a hugh mess! We reformated the hard drive and installed Win98 (it was running Win95). It has plenty of room on the hard drive since I don't forsee adding anything else to it except for the solotaire game that I mentioned, and maybe freecell.

It is good to have around for one reason. Just like our TV that has the UHF and VHF knobs that turn to change stations, this computer almost always gets a "WOW, that looks strange" from young people who visit!

Thanks for taking the time to help!

 

I would actually prefer running Win95 on that machine, it will run faster than 98 since it has lower requirements. Sometimes you can get a good deal on used RAM from Ebay, but I would personally never buy used memory. It's too easy to damage it. I say, reformat, only install what you need (and I mean no IE 6 and Media player 7 ), and keep on using it. I have a Pentium 200 with 48 Mb of RAM, and it's good enough for playing solitaire and doing browsing.

 

Well, I feel your pain. You probably will max at 128 RAM. You can go with 4x32 (128) or go with 2x32 (64). Only one problem, EDO memory has to be paired! I took out my original 2x8 (16) and went with 2x32 (64) and 2x16(32) and I got some pretty good speed from this old NEC PC.

I have a 33.3 and it is exceptable. I need to install a larger Hard Drive at some point. Good Luck, but I would not pump too much into it.

You can look at your system specifications to see what your system can upgrade to.

There is a good site to get pretty reasonable memory from:
[www.memory4less.com]

 

EDO memory isn't too bad if you buy it from one of the tech stores on-line. I recently purchased two 32MB sticks for $17.50 each. Local retail was around $100 each. With shipping it came to just over $40.
The newer memory types are cheaper but of course they aren't compatable.