posted
Hi, techie friends. I have a question about a project I'm about to do, and I was wondering if you could help me out.
I have a friend with a really old computer. He doesn't want to replace it, but he would like to upgrade it so that it will work better. I have a fair bit of experience building and upgrading computers, so I offered to lend my services. But there are a couple things I'd like to be sure of before I send him out buying parts.
First off, the computer is a Sony Vaio PCV-RX550. We're looking at adding RAM and a second hard drive. (And perhaps a DVD burner, but I don't have any questions about that.)
Question #1: His computer has two memory slots, and they will apparently not accept anything bigger than 256MB (ouch!). One of the slots is free, so we're going to put one in. According to Sony's website, this will fit in the slot. But my friend wants to go to Comp USA or something and get one so that he doesn't have to wait for it to be shipped.
Of the specs listed, which are important to match in order to make sure the computer reads the RAM. Does he just need to find any 256MB 168-Pin DIMM PC133 SDRAM, or are there other things he should worry about?
Question #2: I've never fooled around on a computer this old before, but I've heard that some old computers will not recognize newer hard drives over a certain capacity. Is this true? If so, what is the largest hard drive he could buy and still have it work?
Those are the only questions I have. Thanks in advance to anyone who is wiser in the ways of computer building than I am. Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
As long as you make sure you get pc133 RAM you'll be fine there. The hard drive shouldn't cause too much trouble. The major limiting factor for hard drives is the OS. Anything with NTFS can handle as much as you can possibly throw at it. You *may* have problems getting above 64gigs, but I doubt you will. Still, I wouldn't go any bigger than 80 gigs, since one of those is worth about as much as the whole rest of the computer at this point.
edit: You may also have some trouble *finding* SDRAM at an electronics store that isn't used. I'd expect that it will be fairly expensive from a retail outlet as well, since it's almost to the point that the majority of computers that use it are disposed of or in third world countries.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Right on. I think I'll just talk him into ordering the RAM online, and maybe putting off the hard drive upgrade until he gets something a little nicer to put it in. Thanks for the help. Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
As far as the hard drive goes, make sure to check which interface it uses. Most new computers use SATA, which first came out around 2003. So if your computer is older than that, you should make sure of that before ordering a hard drive. Here's the Wikipedia page, if that sort of thing helps.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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