Over the past month or so alot has happened to my humbe little Athlon 800. Since giving mom the PIII 733 (Bob), the Athlon 800(Friskett) has been my main machine. It started out with 256MB of ram, 52x CDRW and that's about it. Here are my little additions:
1. Mad Dog 4.1 Sound Card: At first I thought I was just gonna use my laptop 24/7 and use Friskett as a file-server. I found out that a) when you're on a computer 15+ hours a day, you need a pretty big screen. My laptop is perfect for mobile computing, but at home it's nice to have something bigger. b) you don't want to keep a laptop on 24/7 without letting it sleep. I ended up hooking Friskett up to my old 15" CRT that i use for a TV. (Looking for a 17" LCD soon). Well I got tired of Friskett not being able to play any sound, and I found a sound card for cheap (if the rebate gets here already).
2. Zonet Firewire/USB 2.0 Combo Card: One of Maggie's xmas gifts to me. Got it so I could use the Iomega USB 2.0 burner that Kuya BJ left me. At this point Friskett had no optical drives. Unfortunately it seemst that I left the drive in Fresno, sooo...
3. NEC 3500A DL DVD+-RW: Another of Maggie's xmas gifts to me. Been burning DVD's since I got it. Works awesomely. Computer is kinda slow to burn movies though, but it gets the job done.
4. Athlon 1.4GHZ upgrade: John gave me some of his old spare parts. I got 2 SDRAM sticks and 2 DDR266 sticks. So far only one of the SDRAM sticks work. But the real story is the Athlon 1.4. It uses a 266mhz FSB, unforetunately my motherboard only supports the 1.4 with a 200mhz FSB. I replaced the 800 with the 1.4. Tried to boot, and mess with the multiplier settings. Long story short, best I could do is 1.2Ghz with a 200mhz FSB on a 12x multiplier. In contrast this proc was made to run at 1.4GHZ on a 266mhz FSB on a 10.5 multiplier. So far it's been stable, let's hope it stays that way.
So almost instantly my humble little 800 has become a very respectable 1.2Ghz athlon. Only complaint is the new Heatsink/Fan is LOUD. It's a pretty high-pitched whine too. Ohh well, for a 400mhz difference I'll take it.
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