You may think getting a PCI card is redundant...but not very many, if any "good" motherboards have ISA slots anymore.
You have to care about temps....an AMD chip will fry in less than 2 seconds, without a heatsink installed. Many newbies, to computer building, fried their chip, because they wanted to see if the system would turn on...without taking the time in installing the heatsink first
Remember, that Windows 98 only recognizes 512megs of ram. So if you don't plan on going to the Win2000 kernel. you can go ahead in get non-ECC memory. (512megs is kind of the determining point of going ECC) ECC and non-ECC ram don't work together. So if you ever go over 512 megs, and use non ECC Ram, you may experience more lockups. The more ram you have, the more likely something will go wrong, The ECC is a chip that is a Error Control Chip. But ECC memory is slower than non-ECC memory. Guess what I'm trying to say is, if you never upgrade from Win98, you shouldn't have any problems. If you ever go with XP or 2000, and buy more ram....your either need to buy the non ECC memory, and keep your old stick of 512, or your going to have to sell the old non-Ecc memory, and buy a whole new set of ECC memory.
(unless I'm wrong about them not working together.....I think I heard that they don't work together....) Hmm, then again....if I was in that situation....I would just buy the non-ECC type, and gamble with the lock-ups.
There is another option, in memory choices, called Registered. Registered is the opposite of non-buffered. Registered is another chip, on the stick, that cures memory lock-ups at the cost of speed. Most people just buy the Non-buffered. The only time you would want Registered is if you were running a server. And, ECC....you have to make sure that the motherboard supports it. ECC is recommended, if you have more than 512megs of RAM.
My Dad just informed me that he want's a computer for work....
I think I'm going to buy most of the stuff at Newegg.com.
Total is 1,003.71 American. (includes shipping to Texas)
Soyo K7V Dragon+
1900XP Athlon
(2) IBM 40gig Ultra 100's 7200rpm
Crucial 256DDR PC2100 2.5case Unbuffered Dimm
Teac 3 1/4 Floppy
Plextor 16x10x40x
MS-8855, MSI G2Ti Pro-T (a Geforce2 Pro Card)
Vantec CCK-6035D (a copper heatsink with a delta fan)
Microsoft 114key with 10 hot keys
Microsoft Intelli Mouse Optical
I'm buying the case locally, probably 120 dollars or so.
and his company is providing a DSL modem. He's going to need a monitor...I'll buy that locally, too. 300dollars or so. As far as a Soundcard...he doesn't really need one....but the Soyo Dragon comes with a built in 6-channel Sound chip, anyway.
I'm almost tempted in giving him my 1.2 266FSB AThlon w/ MSIk7t-turbo. For this newer setup....He's getting a better price than I did, 8 months ago....and a faster system to boot.
[edited] 65 2001-12-13 05:17