It's in the mail. I bought a new Celeron 566 CPU processor chip that includes a heat sink and awesome Golden Orb fan, plus an Abit convertor board so the newer chip will fit onto my motherboard. This kit has been pretested and guaranteed to clock at 850 MH. Yippee! Next step is to double my RAM for a total of 256 Meg. Oh boy! Next month will be time to buy that CD-RW drive I've been lusting after for so long. The month after that, a new 3D video card, maybe one of those new GeForce 2 cards with 64 Meg. of video RAM, they're at least $300.

Once I get my new CPU up and running. I need to sell my old processor chip. Contact me if you're interested and make me an offer. Here's the scoop. I currently have an Intel Celeron 300A slot 1 chip with a massive ComputerNerds B-Cooler heat sink and triple fan setup (one fan has rpm sender if your motherboard supports it). This chip has never ran warm, needless to say. I've been using it without a problem for at least 16 months now overclocked at 450 MHz using 2.1 volts. It will run at default voltage, but it's rock steady at 0.1 volt more. It will run at 464 MHz at 2.2 volts, but not perfectly stable all the time. This is a great setup if your motherboard supports the slot 1 Intel CPU chips like most Pentium II chips. This will work on most LX or BX chipset boards. Nothing wrong, just want faster.

Wow, that sure seems like a great set up for you. Congrats! One of these days I would like to be able to add one of those CD/RW drives as well. 600 MB of portable storage (I love it). Good Luck with the new set up. Man, You're gonna love it.

Coconut

Actually BatBoy, you could be bold and try to run the chip on 123Mhz or 133Mhz busspeed... I've heard quite a few success-stories already. Imagine that, a C566 running at over 1Ghz...

I've got Windows 98 and a CD-ROM drive.

Oh, I'll probably play around with it and see what it'll do. I don't have PC133 memory yet and some of the 3-D AGP graphic boards get a little unstable at higher bus speeds, so I don't want to get too carried away. My older Abit BH6 motherboard doesn't have all the clock divider choices for the PCI bus like the newer boards like the Abit BE6 II have. I'll just be happy if it runs stable at 850 MHz.

Anyone know anything about the USB port CD-RW drives. I'm trying to decide on which CD writer to get: EIDE, SCSI, or USB. Also, anybody thinking about upgrading CPU and motherboard on a budget, you might want to check out the new AMD setups. Low cost and lots of speed.

Batboy, Ill be glad to offer up an opinion on USB. Id be interested to see what the other Computer Gurus out in Fieroland think as well.

USB is ok for Scanners, Modems, Digital Cameras, but I wouldnt go for it with a disk drive.

USB devices are inexpensive and relatively easy to hook up because they dont have any brains in them. Basically, USB devices are Host-processor Controlled devices, which means that it uses your CPU for all its crunching because it cant do anything on its own. Recording something to CD from your HD to a USB CD-RW would majorly load your system down.

I tried a USB to Ethernet adaptor and it really dropped my system resources. Since I have a cable modem and my computer is connected to the net 24/7, my system was constantly bogged down. Once I went to a PCI Lan Card, My system resources were only effected while I was using the Cable modem surfing.

Thats my opinion, Id be interested to see if anyone has actually tried a USB CD-RW and what they thought of the experience.

BTW, The above mentioned computer is a mere PII-450 with 128MB Ram.

[This message has been edited by DJRice (edited 06-29-2000).]

Batboy, way to go on the computer! It will be interesting to see what "real-world" gains you see in performance.

Monkeyman, you are way out on the leading edge of technology there having windows 98 AND a cd-rom!!!! You know I'm only kidding because I'm running a regular pentium 233mmx with 32mg ram and a cd-rom. Man, you don't even need TWO fans for that, much less THREE that Batboy is running. I've read the "homeowners" thread. That and the Fiero is where the money ought to be going. I'm a "trailing-edge" technology guy myself. I just bought a new motherboard and a 500mHz celeron because I don't do much but word process and visit here on the internet. Not doing music files or pictures. So in a year or so when 1gHz pentium III's are about $100(!!!!!) my motherboard can handle it and I'll upgrade.

Sorry, no USB experience. Can you get an ISA CD-RW??? (joke)

About USB CD-RW drives, I found out that they don't recommend using any other USB device when you're recording a CD. I don't have any other USB devices right now, but what if I want a mouse or a printer, or a keyboard that uses USB ports? Think maybe I'll stay with an internal EIDE controlled CD-RW. Plextor, HP, and Sony all make nice units that have gotten good reviews and you can sometimes find them on sale for about $200 or so, if you look hard enough.

I guess it's all a matter of money. If you have the cash you can play, and if you don't you get to watch everyone else play. We're still trying to pay off this computer. (3 more payments and it's MINE!!) I'd love to have a killer setup like bbs, but I can't even afford to pay for the improvements to the house/garage we want or stuff for the Grape Ape (which, at this point, might just get sold--another long, boring story). Someday...

You probably wouldnt have much trouble out of a USB mouse or printer. In fact, printers have no brains any more anyway. Thats why you can find a 600x600 dpi inkjet for $75 or less nowadays. When you hit print and then go on to another task, if you load your computer down, you will hear the printer slow down and allow more of the CPU time to be devoted to the other operations and when you are not working on something else, it will devote the resources back to the printer.

I might have overstated the problem anyway, because with your kind of speed and 256 megs of Ram, i think the computer will be waiting on you.....

Lets put things into prespective.
I'm typing this on a Pentium 75
(Go Packard Bell!!!)

Computer upgrade update: I just got my brand spanking new CD-RW installed. I've lusted after CD writers for quite a while. Got a cheapie HP CD-Writer Plus 8250i for a couple hundred bucks. I got a notice that my new Celeron CPU is at the post office, I'll pick it up in the morning. Hopeful by tomorrow evening, I'll be running at 850 MHz.

I guess that I have a case of "computer envy"! 850mhz sounds sweet considering my computer is a Pent.Pro 200. But, it still does everything I need. . . for now anyway!
The machine:
Dual Pent Pro 200
128 Meg ECC ram
10 gig HDD
3dfx 16 meg video
Philips CDRW (I love it!)

I'm using
HP Pavilion 6535

came with
8 gig hard drive
64 megs ram
466 celeron

added
HP 9110 CD-RW
different sound card
call waiting modem (don't buy one it hoovers)
another 32 megs ram
another 8 gig hard drive
video editing board
HP 5100 scanner
HP deskjet 722c printer

Hey kids! Got my computer back together again and it's running great. Installed my new 566 Celeron, convertor card (Abit Slotket), and Golden Orb cooler tonight.

I bought this combo from Sunshine Star (see URL below) and they told me the 566 CPU chips are tested for 72 hours at 850 MHz before they are shipped. I got my upgrade kit in exactly one week from the time I ordered it. Sunshine Star has almost unbeatable prices for us cheap overclocking folks.

Anyway, I installed everything, fired up the computer and it ran flawless at 850 MHz as promised...yippee! I ran the Unreal demo loop for several minutes, no problem. I ran Wintune to get some benchmarks. Wow, lots better than my old CPU.

Just for kicks, I rebooted and set the bus speed at 112 MHz. I was running at 100 MHz bus speed prior to this (8.5 clock multiplier X 100 MHz = 850 MHz). It posted and then loaded Windows...HOLY GUANO...953 MHz from a 566 chip. I'm using 1.65 core voltage which is default on the P-III, although default on the 566 is actually 1.5 volts. However, the Celeron chip Coppermine is the same as the P-III Coppermine, except for the cache. I'm happy, I got a great deal!

http://www.sunshinestar.com/

I ran Wintune and then played Fighter Ace II online for an hour with my new Celeron CPU overclocked at 950 MHz and experience no problems.

I decided to go the next step, 124 MHz bus speed (there's nothing in between on my motherboard). My computer posted 1050 MHz, but locked up before it could load Windows. It did the same thing even when I bumped up the voltage to 1.75.

Time to give up and quit before I do some damage. My PC100 CAS 2 RAM memory might be giving out at 124 MHz, or maybe the 566 CPU chip just plain isn't stable above 1 GMz. Maybe a new Abit BE6 II motherboard and 256 meg of good PC133 memory...

<putting on my best Scottish accent>

"She can'na take much more of it Captain... Any more and shell fly apart!"

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Dillon - Titusville, FL
Black '87 SE V6
"Matched Perfect and Staggered Special"

Batboy, do you know which week your processor is? Or do most 566 overclock so easy to 850? I'm thinking of replacing my C366@550 for a C566@850...

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Cliff, I now wish that I'd wrote the numbers down off the chip before putting the thermal grease and heatsink on. I'd rather not pull it off right now...hehehe. I have heard that nearly all Celeron 566 chips can be overclocked and that most will run stable at 850 MHz, especially if you increase voltage to 1.65 (same as P-III Coppermine). Mileage may vary, but I'm hearing maybe over 90% success rates. Go for it Cliff, it's a bargain. The Celeron 600 is not as easy to run at 100 MHz bus speed. I love my new Golden Orb cooler, it works great.

[This message has been edited by batboy (edited 07-08-2000).]

Thanks, that did help. The first three numbers of the serial number is the manufacturing date. So it's a 2000 week 24 chip.

BTW, love the cooler! How much did you pay for that?

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Cliff, I bought this as a kit from Sunshine Star (look for their URL in one of my earlier posts). The CPU, converter, and cooler together were $150 US plus $10 US shipping. The invoice breaks the kit down like this: $120 for the Intel 566 Celeron II chip guaranteed to run 850 MHz, $15 for the Golden Orb cooler, and $15 for the Abit SlotKET III converter board (needed to mount a 370 chip to a slot 1 motherboard). I don't know if they do international shipments. Good luck... Celerons and Durons overclock and rock!!!

[This message has been edited by batboy (edited 07-08-2000).]

BB--Cliff could send you the money, you could buy the hardware, then send it to him.

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Dave-
Grape Ape ('85GT)

All this speed and I still crawl when I'm surfing the web. "...and I wait, and I wait, that's what I hate, and I hate my frickin' ISP..." a new kick ass Todd Rundgren song.

Supposedly there will be a cable modem coming to my town within the next 6 months. I know it's supposed to be faster, but seems like I read that there are some security problems with it? Can anyone elaborate?

And is it worth $40US/month (compared to the $17.xx/month I currently spend for a dial up modem connection)??

------------------
Dave-
Grape Ape ('85GT)

Ahh, Cable Modems....where do I begin?

As far as security goes, they are not any less secure than a dial-up connection. However, the difference is that when your computer is powered on, you are connected to the internet. The chances of someone wandering thru some of the many "security holes" in Windows goes up quite a bit. Its not likely that someome would delete or corrupt any of your files, but hackers love to get control of PCs all over the world and tell them to 'hit' a certain website all at once. That is a denial of service attack. A website is flooded with so many hits at one time that no one can get on to it. You may remember that happening to Etrade, yahoo, and others earlier this year.

There are some simple software packages that will protect your computer. ZoneAlarm, Norton Internet Security, & Norton Personal Firewall to name just a few.

If you spend time on the net, a cable modem is definitely worth the money.

Also, I think that ogre discussed Internet Security much more in depth in this forum some time ago. You may go back and pull that up for more information.

------------------
Dillon - Titusville, FL
Black '87 SE V6
"Matched Perfect and Staggered Special"

I'm on cable and when it works it's great. Unfortunately, my ISP has been voted "worst ISP of the year" - again. There's no alternative for cable where I live, so I guess I'm stuck with them. I could go back to ISDN but since we pay our phone-costs by the second (on top of your internet subscription) that's not really an alternative. My phone-bill used to be around $200 per month...

But like I said, when it works it's great.

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Hi Monkeyman,

Have you checked into any of the free dial-up internet service providers? If they have a local telephone number in your area, you can put the $17/month towards the house or Fiero. If you want some names, I can give them to you. Sorry if you already know all about this and have reasons for not using one.

Here in my neck of the woods, USB CDR's are WAY more expensive. From personal experience, i prefer IDE, i had a scuzzyII drive and dumped it for an Acer IDE RW drive....my blank cd expense has dropped almost 50%...hey, now that i think about it...i'm not throwing away ruined disks anymore
Kevin

My P-133, non-MMX just feels so... so... inadequate. <sniff>
(Especially when there are dual 866 Xeon machines in our office.)

[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 07-11-2000).]

Cable is roughly 100 times faster than a 28.8 modem. My dial-up connection averages 3.3 k/s whereas a cable connection can easily average 300-400 k/s and as high as 800 k/s. It depends how many people in your neighborhood are subscribed. A certain bandwidth is assigned to an area and everyone in that area has to share the bandwidth. So the more people that are hooked up, the slower the connection.

I would love a cable modem but it is not available in my area yet. I average about 5 minutes per megabyte of download, where a cable modem would take about 3 seconds!!!

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"Born free....taxed to death."

Batboy, couldn't find that cooler on their website...

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Batboy, when I first saw that photo, for a second I thought it was a K&N filter.. LOL.....

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http://www.fieroproject.com

[This message has been edited by DaRkLoRD (edited 07-11-2000).]

Cliff, the cooler is not mentioned by name and there is no pic on the website, but when I was on the phone with them asking questions before ordering, they told me it was a Golden Orb cooler, and that's what I got. Plenty of other vendors sell that same cooler individually. I'm not sure if Sunshine Star sells them separately or not. The pic in the earlier post is my own photo I took of my CPU and cooler installed in my computer.

Bugsy, I know I was talking about getting an USB CD-RW early on, but I decided against it after learning more. The HP CD-Writer Plus that I got instead is IDE controlled.