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My IBM 300PL and what Upgrades I should do to it?

thegenerallee86

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What Upgrades should I do to my IBM 300PL with Pentium III 550Mhz, 256MB RAM, 10GB HDD, s3 Trio 3d Onboard Graphics, I've already ordered a SoundBlaster 16 Sound card and SoundBlaster speakers, I plan on using it for DOS Games, Windows 95, 98, XP, and some early 3d Games to whatever else I can play, I also plan on getting obviously better Graphics card that'll support all the games from DOS all the way up to XP that can run with these system specifications?
 
Your requirement spans such a wide range of software that there's really no "one card fits all".

If you had deep pockets, I'd consider a Voodoo2 SLI setup + Matrox G200 or a Voodoo3 3000/3500. Otherwise, maybe a Geforce 2/3/4 or a Radeon 7000-9000 series card.
 
XP will require more RAM for anything approaching decent performance. Even with 768MB of RAM, that 550MHz CPU is gonna feel mighty slow. Jump to a 1GHz CPU if possible.
 
Your requirement spans such a wide range of software that there's really no "one card fits all".

If you had deep pockets, I'd consider a Voodoo2 SLI setup + Matrox G200 or a Voodoo3 3000/3500. Otherwise, maybe a Geforce 2/3/4 or a Radeon 7000-9000 series card.

I'm thinking of going with a Voodoo3 2000 for it, I already bought a SoundBlaster 16 PCI sound card and Creative speakers for it.

XP will require more RAM for anything approaching decent performance. Even with 768MB of RAM, that 550MHz CPU is gonna feel mighty slow. Jump to a 1GHz CPU if possible.

I did have an emachines t1090 that ran XP on 900Mhz Celeron 128MB Ram and Integrated Graphics for my first PC that was new when I bought it and it ran XP Pretty good even with only 128MB of ram. I don't plan on playing anything really for much more then maybe early to mid 2000's maybe.
 
XP will require more RAM for anything approaching decent performance. Even with 768MB of RAM, that 550MHz CPU is gonna feel mighty slow. Jump to a 1GHz CPU if possible.

Do you think 900Mhz will be close enough to 1.0Ghz cause I found an old emachines t1090 with a 900Mhz Celeron?
 
If it'll work, anything higher would be an improvement, of course. But again, if you're doing anything other than basic gaming, you're going to be RAM-starved at 256MB. Max-out the memory, since it's still pretty dirt-cheap right now.
 
What Upgrades should I do to my IBM 300PL with Pentium III 550Mhz, 256MB RAM, 10GB HDD, s3 Trio 3d Onboard Graphics, I've already ordered a SoundBlaster 16 Sound card and SoundBlaster speakers,
First thing is to add more memory, at least 512 MB and even more if possible. You may want to check that the system can handle more than 512 MB without slowdowns.

Second thing is to replace the disk drive with something bigger and faster - preferably flash. This should speed up Windows XP substantially, since common activities (boot/shutdown, starting applications and loading data) will be starved waiting for the disk. Adding memory reduces the load if data has been loaded into cache once, but it is probably good anyway.

If you've got an AGP slot, you might want to add a decent 3D accelerator, such as a Geforce 2, which still had good driver support for Windows 98. Otherwise, PCI variants of some cards exist as well.

Your sound card will not have great compatibility for DOS games in DOS. If your DOS games run well in Windows (either 98 or XP), this is not a concern. Since your system has no ISA slots, there is not much which can be done.

According to Wikipedia, the system supports up to 866 MHz, so you can upgrade the CPU to improve game speed. Depends on the games you target whether that is worth the effort - I personally consider memory and disk upgrades more useful immediately. Keep in mind that a Celeron is a low-speed processor; if I had the choice I would stay away from those.
 
First thing is to add more memory, at least 512 MB and even more if possible. You may want to check that the system can handle more than 512 MB without slowdowns.

Second thing is to replace the disk drive with something bigger and faster - preferably flash. This should speed up Windows XP substantially, since common activities (boot/shutdown, starting applications and loading data) will be starved waiting for the disk. Adding memory reduces the load if data has been loaded into cache once, but it is probably good anyway.

If you've got an AGP slot, you might want to add a decent 3D accelerator, such as a Geforce 2, which still had good driver support for Windows 98. Otherwise, PCI variants of some cards exist as well.

Your sound card will not have great compatibility for DOS games in DOS. If your DOS games run well in Windows (either 98 or XP), this is not a concern. Since your system has no ISA slots, there is not much which can be done.

According to Wikipedia, the system supports up to 866 MHz, so you can upgrade the CPU to improve game speed. Depends on the games you target whether that is worth the effort - I personally consider memory and disk upgrades more useful immediately. Keep in mind that a Celeron is a low-speed processor; if I had the choice I would stay away from those.
I am going to upgrade it to a pentium III at 1.1Ghz SL5QW because I have read here it will work and also upgrade the ram to full 512MB and I've already replaced the fan for the cpu because it sounded like the bearings were going bad cause it sounded like a jet plane!
 
Just did the upgrade to the emachines with the PIII SL5QW 1.1Ghz and it turned on but no Bios screen and fans turned on and HDD light came on for a 10 or 20 seconds and then both power light and HDD light went out but fan still going so I don't know what else to do?
 
I ended up buying a IBM NetVista MT-M 8303-NUE off of ebay with a Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512MB 266Mhz PC2100 DDR1 Ram, and I already upgraded my Ram to the full 2GB it supports and also ordered off ebay an Jaton 3dforce 6200 512MB Low Profile AGP card and this will be my Windows XP rig for 2000 to 2008 XP Games and My IBM 300PL will be my Windows 98 Gaming rig for up to yr 2000! I think that will be the best bet what do you think?
 
If you can find a Tualatin Slocket adapter, that will give your CPU a big boost. It has to be an adapter designed for use with a Tualatin, though. A generic slocket adapter won't work. There were only two companies that made them to my knowledge. One was Upgradeware and the other was Powerleap. I actually have two of the Upgradeware ones installed in different machines with 1.4ghz chips in them. One caveat, if you want to use a chip with 100mhz fsb, the motherboard has to support it, otherwise you have to match the CPU that you put in the adapter with the fsb speed of your motherboard. If your motherboard doesn't support 100mhz fsb, the chip will run far lower than the rated speed and the BIOS may not identify it correctly.
 
I ended up buying a IBM NetVista MT-M 8303-NUE off of ebay with a Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512MB 266Mhz PC2100 DDR1 Ram, and I already upgraded my Ram to the full 2GB it supports and also ordered off ebay an Jaton 3dforce 6200 512MB Low Profile AGP card and this will be my Windows XP rig for 2000 to 2008 XP Games and My IBM 300PL will be my Windows 98 Gaming rig for up to yr 2000! I think that will be the best bet what do you think?

Better watch the capacitors in both the power supply and motherboard. IBM machines of that vintage were notorious for capacitor failure due to the capacitor plague.
 
Just did the upgrade to the emachines with the PIII SL5QW 1.1Ghz and it turned on but no Bios screen and fans turned on and HDD light came on for a 10 or 20 seconds and then both power light and HDD light went out but fan still going so I don't know what else to do?

Your IBM might have a white list for the CPUs it can run with. I've had issues with SL5QW on Supermicro P6SBA and Intel SE440BX-2 (both boards run any other Coppermine without issues), so I ended up using it on Chaintech 6BTM0 with a BIOS modded for Tualatin support.

Same will probably go for Tualatin upgrades (I don't have any experience with them, just an educated guess).
 
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