Old PC With AMD 850 Duron

AngelfireUk83 · Sep 11, 2005

I work in a bar at weekends and they wanted to me to look at there old PC they used for adding up the night's take in. Anyways I've looked at it it's an AMD Duron 850 (Pressuming it's an 850 cause it says 850 in felt marker on the edge of the chip). It's also got 256mb PC133 SD-RAM and 20gb Samsung Spinpoint 5400rpm HDD I've yet to find what motherboard it is but is it worth building up for like to store MP3's and stuff like that.

Would the AMD Duron work in a new up to date Socket A Motherboard?

c627627 · Sep 11, 2005

It should, yes.

It would run quite nice as long as minimal, close to no additional software is installed.

I have a dual boot 380 MHz laptop.

Partition C: Windows 98 loaded: painfully slow.
Partition D: Windows 2000, nothing installed (used for web browsing, basic word processing): quite usable, surprisingly fast.

JaY_III · Sep 11, 2005

If your gona buy a moderen Mobo, your gona need new RAM, As DDR is the only option you have... And since your buying a new Mobo, RAM it doesnt make any sense not to buy a MODERN cheap Socket A CPU IMHO

David · Sep 11, 2005

Jay makes an excellent point, unless you can get a hold of one of the older SDR or SDR+DDR boards it makes more sense to replace the whole lot while you are at it. A low end Sempron should suffice

.

Quailane · Sep 11, 2005

To play and store more mp3's all you could use is a bigger hard drive. No point in upgrading anything else because it is just overkill.

AngelfireUk83 · Sep 11, 2005

I'll boot the PC up and see what's on the hard drive I think it's got Win98 on it if it has I can try to fix anything that's needed. Like uninstall the software that's not needed update any drivers and clear out old clutter that's on it.

Thanks guys just that I've only seen a Duron and that was in 2001 on a old PC Chips motherboard but that snuffed it.

Cheator · Sep 11, 2005

Should do well at least. I had my bro's 900 mhz duron with a 9000 pro. I oced the cpu and it ran HL pretty nicely. I would suggest a linux distro though, with a minimal desktop, like Fluxbox.

JaY_III · Sep 12, 2005

Cheator said:
Should do well at least. I had my bro's 900 mhz duron with a 9000 pro. I oced the cpu and it ran HL pretty nicely. I would suggest a linux distro though, with a minimal desktop, like Fluxbox.

I would recommend against Linux.
Linux is for computer geeks. Not the average user

Ihave said many times before:
Linux is a great server but awful workstation.

BeOS was the last alt OS that had any potential for the average user.
But sadly we all know the fate of BeOS

Cheator · Sep 12, 2005

Well its not going to be a workstation. ITs going to be a file server and mp3 player. Mandrake can do this easily. So can Linspire. Its pretty much as easy as windows in those distros.

JaY_III · Sep 12, 2005

Cheator said:
Well its not going to be a workstation. ITs going to be a file server and mp3 player. Mandrake can do this easily. So can Linspire. Its pretty much as easy as windows in those distros.

You are forgetting the Golden Rule of the Average Joe.
They dont know Jack.
Linux is hands down too hard for the average person to use.
What happens when the actually want to install a PROGRAM
Or use Office, As MS office is too hard for them already, dont expect them to know how to use Open office, let alone install it.

I have worked with people when having them do something to fx a problem that didnt know how to right click.
Make your life simpler and live by that rule, as you dont need grey hair.

Also Windows-X sucks back the resorces just as much as windows.
The power of Linux is the command line.
Win2K IMHO would be the best OS for this application.

Cheator · Sep 12, 2005

...while I certainly agree that it can be complicated, for an mp3 player and storage server its...not rocket science. There are guides and wizards in these distros that make it terrifyingly simple. More than windows. Surei t can get complicatd, but its an mp3 player.

And as for x windows chewing up resources, while it is true it can, with a windows manager like flux, you can run your entire OS on 2 meg of ram. Which I have done before...

JaY_III · Sep 12, 2005

Cheator said:
...while I certainly agree that it can be complicated, for an mp3 player and storage server its...not rocket science. There are guides and wizards in these distros that make it terrifyingly simple. More than windows. Surei t can get complicatd, but its an mp3 player.

And as for x windows chewing up resources, while it is true it can, with a windows manager like flux, you can run your entire OS on 2 meg of ram. Which I have done before...

See the problem lies with You have done this so it must be doable for others.
Well lets just say i work with too many people that confuse me with the simplest problems everyday...
The part that confuses me is how thier problem, is even a problem, as even the simplest of task can be hard for them.

SO basicly, I have NO, nitch, ZERO faith in users, and asume the worst case every time. If they know a little great. But if you prepair for the worst case, your always prepaired.

AngelfireUk83 · Sep 12, 2005

So we have a debate here whats the best 1) clearing out whats not needed and just fixing anything like updating drivers. 2) Or formating and installing a new op I can't get my hands on any others except a new installing of Win98se or Using XP Pro.

XP Pro would suck on this machine I'm not going to keep it like I said just clearing it out and using it for MP3 files and other stuff. Not having to clutter up the new PC full of crap as my boss is getting fed of her mate doing so that's why she asked me to have a look at it.

Cheator · Sep 12, 2005

Hm. Well if you got a bit more ram XP would rock. Again, on that 900 mhz duron of my brother's, XP worked great. As did windows 98, 2000, and even BeOS.

AngelfireUk83 · Sep 12, 2005

I'll look out for another 256mb SDRAM shouldn't be that hard to find I think it's has 2 slots on the board it has now.

-_{MoW}_-Assasi · Sep 14, 2005

whoa, wait up a sec, y dont u buy a iPod or a MP3 player and plug it into the club's system eh? Thatl work

But i would say, leave it as is, its gonna just play music anyway, so why upgrade anything?

AngelfireUk83 · Sep 16, 2005

Well I managed to get the thing up and running it had Win98 on it and was seriously corrupted kept asking me for the Win98 set-up disc that thing went missing ages ago my boss said.

Anyways I formatted it and installed XP pro, SP2 and other programs that I'll think they'll need. Only problem is I can't activate it it's now saying I need a new product key I've only activated my copy of XP PRO 9 times over 2 years. I'm going to give them a ring and tell them that the only thing I've changed is the motherboard and memory.

See I've used one of my old Sk-A motherboard with better sound and more memory it's now got 512mb installed and I've set the chips in BIOS to run at 133mhz. Also I can OC the duron to 1.345mhz but it won't boot up I think the PSU isn't powerful enough.

The Coolest · Sep 16, 2005

These chips MAXED out usually at around 1-1.1GHz, no way in hell you're gonna get 1.3GHz with regular air cooling and w/o insane volts.

Cheator · Sep 16, 2005

Well I don't know about that, TC. My brother's Duron 900 went up to 1200 mhz on air with decent temps and stock cooling. This was on a decent voltage too (not too much higher than stock) on a KT133 chipset (some crappy MSI mobo I hated). Its certainly possible that my brother's was a great chip, but its also possible the durons could go a little more before whimpign out. I can't say however. I only owned 1.

AngelfireUk83 · Oct 23, 2005

Can anyone tell me the specification of the Duron 850 I can't seem to find it on Google nor AMD's website. I just want to know the FSB of it as I've just been given the go a head to upgrade it from my boss. She's paying for the parts I was going to stick it on this motherboard I was going to use for a 3rd PC.

The motherboard I'm using you can find here:
http://global.aopen.com.tw/Products/mb/AK79G-1394.htm

I was thinking this board a new 80gb Hitachi Deskstar SATA150, PCI SATA Card to enable SATA support & 256mb GEIL Value DDR PC3200 memory.

Turns out he's going to play some old games on it so the 256mb DDR ram should be surfice.

Old PC With AMD 850 Duron

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