Turning an old PC into a new one.

[Obaryu]

Ok, so my mom had a hand me down PC that was a couple years old. It was a E machine. So I thought it would be cool to use some of my spare parts and get a new case and at least get it to a point to where we could do a good upgrade and then later replace the parts we didnt have.

So I bought a new case for it and started taking parts out of the old PC and putting it together.
I put the following parts I had in it, a power supply, a cd/dvd burner XP Pro and I tried to use some older RAM I had that was PC133. However the old wouldn't accept it so I had to buy a couple sticks of PC 100. I bought a total of 512 in the PC 100 format.

So now I have everything working, but the problem is that I can only stick 1 stick of 256 PC100 in the old MOBO. I looked at the BIOS and saw where it mentioned something about shadowing.
I figured I would need to update the BIOS and then I could use both sticks. The MOBO is from Phoenix Technologies. I'm having trouble finding the BIOS for it though.
Does anyone have a solution or suggestions?

[CrazyPenguinDude]

well i have never really tried much work on Emachines (i put a new graphics card in my grandma's but i mostly work with Dell's. As for the Mobo i would check out Pheonix's site (if they are still around)

Anyway just try to find some specs on your mobo for us so we can give you an idea on some compatible parts. Also, your upgrades depend on what you want to do with the rig. If you were going to do some older games (2002 at the highest in year of release) you would need to probobly get a new mobo. And if you were going to do that you would either get a low end one compatible with some of your parts.

Anyway it all depends on what you want to use it for. Can you give us the date it was built?

[glc]

We need to know the model of the eMachine the board came out of - or we need to know the manufacturer and model of the board. It's not Phoenix - they are just the bios manufacturer.

[Obaryu]

Yeah Im definitely putting a new MOBO in there in a month or so. And a new CPU. Im thinking Socket 939. Ive already got a pretty good video card. A ATI 256 blah blah blah. And a good sound card. And then we can put better RAM in it and etc.
The old case lists the model as an etower 600is

[glc]

That's a pathetic motherboard - it's a Trigem with an Intel i810 chipset. It only accepts 66 FSB Celerons. It's more than just a couple years old. Maximum memory capacity is in fact 256mb TOTAL. I'm surprised it even works with a single 256 module - normally when you have 2 slots with a 256mb max for the board, you have to use a pair of 128's.

You gotta do your research first before going out and buying parts.

[Obaryu]

Yea, thanks for the tip.

[Obaryu]

Originally Posted by glc That's a pathetic motherboard - it's a Trigem with an Intel i810 chipset. It only accepts 66 FSB Celerons. It's more than just a couple years old. Maximum memory capacity is in fact 256mb TOTAL. I'm surprised it even works with a single 256 module - normally when you have 2 slots with a 256mb max for the board, you have to use a pair of 128's. You gotta do your research first before going out and buying parts.

So how old is it?

[glc]

Probably about 7 years.