Over the last few months, I've been recommending various ways to upgrade an older system. I thought it might be interesting if I talked about a system I've recently upgraded and tied in some of the upgrades used to earlier articles. It's different, but it just may work...

The victim system was an IBM PS/1 2155A-24C. Apparently this was a rather popular system in its day, and it's a solid, well built machine. It's a 486/33SX, 8MB, 253MB HD, VLB Cirrus Logic (integrated into the motherboard). In short, it had a lot of potential for expandability. The machine was desperately in need of some upgrading, since it couldn't adequately handle a lot of software being thrown at it by its owner. So, determined to keep the cost as low as I could, I set out to bring it up to speed.

The first purchase I made was memory. Another 8MB brought it up to speed in that department (at least for the next few months anyway). The difference made by this alone was dramatic. No more swapping to disk when loading applications, which made the system seem much faster.

Next, I bought the Pentium 83 Overdrive chip for the system (after being advised by Intel that it would work in this system). I popped the chip in and turned it on. Nothing. Checked the seating of the chip and more nothing. Called Intel, they told me to call IBM. Called IBM, and I was told I needed a new BIOS, which they shipped out free of charge.

Of all the upgrades I've ever done, the difference made by this one was the most dramatic. The system seemed as if it were screaming afterwards. Graphics displayed faster, videos played smoother, and the system was much more responsive overall. If you've got a system that can take this upgrade, and you've been putting it off, don't. It's absolutely fantastic.

Next to be attacked was the video system. The installed chipset was a Cirrus Logic 5428. Not a bad video system, but it only had 512K of video memory. I would have rather upgraded the whole video system, but there were no VLB slots (it's connected to the VESA bus on the motherboard). Since any upgraded video card I installed would be an ISA card, I decided to just purchase another 512K of video memory to upgrade the system to 1MB. I really think that this is the weakest point of the system now, but it should do for a while. At least it can do 800x600 at 65K colors now, so it's tolerable. And the addition of the Pentium Overdrive chip made screen updates and redraws much faster than they were. Video is fantastic now.

With a 250MB hard drive, storage had been a problem for quite a while (as you can probably imagine). So I popped a 1.2GB hard drive in, and cloned the hard drive from the 250MB to the new one. Sounds simple, but not so. It turns out that the BIOS IBM had sent couldn't handle such a big HD (hey, IBM, when you upgraded the BIOS on this thing to handle the Pentium Overdrive, couldn't you have slipped this in?) so I had to use the Ontrac software included with the system. This worked fine once everything was set up properly.

With the new hard drive and processor, the system definitely took on a new personality. Any swapping that had to be done seemed hundreds of times faster now. The load time for Microsoft Word 6 dropped nearly in half. Saving files was nearly instantaneous.

The Cost:

8MB RAM - $59 (Best Buy)
1.2GB HD - $199 (Best Buy)
Pentium 83 - $199 (Best Buy)
512k Video Memory - $49 (CompUSA)

Total Cost - $506 (Not including tax)

I know at this point some of you are screaming, "$506! For a hundred or so more you could have built a whole new computer, and it would have been faster!" You're absolutely right, but remember, the memory and hard drive can be used in a system in the future, and the Overdrive can possibly be sold. So at least half of the money can be thought of as a safe investment (usable in a future system).

Second, the system is fast enough for now. It may not be a screamer, but the system can keep up with just about any application. And when it comes time to upgrade this system, there should be a whole new generation of chips out (either MMX or Pentium Pros, take your pick) which would make any new system built today lag behind. So you could think of this as a "delaying" upgrade, since it's delaying the inevitable major system upgrade.

And more importantly, to the owner, it's the same computer. Same box, same look, same big blue IBM logo on the front cover. And to some people, that's very important.

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