Description:
Corey Sandler, in his Upgrade Your Own PC acknowledges an inescapable truth that many aspiring hardware hackers will find more than a little grim: What you find inside your computer's case likely will be significantly different from what appears in any set of instructions. With that out of the way, Sandler proceeds to explain how to perform a whole slew of useful hardware upgrades on a test-bed machine--a Pentium 133 with insufficient memory, a too-small hard drive, an old-fashioned video card, and a slow CD-ROM drive. By the book's end, the once-humble box has a 10 GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive, a Zip drive for removable storage, 128 MB of RAM, a better video card, and a host of other improvements. The machine is absolutely suited to running Windows 98 or Windows Me when the surgery is done. As you'd expect, Sandler documents the whole process with words, photographs, and a few line drawings. The photos look "pixilated" and kind of bland--publishers of computer books aren't used to including photos in their publications--but they do the job of clarifying the procedures Sandler undertook on the test-bed machine. The text is of decent quality, too, and you'll be able to use Sandler's presentation as a guide if you're willing to experiment a bit and apply common sense to the specific machine you're upgrading. If you want details on many different hardware devices (especially older models), look at Upgrading and Repairing PCs. If performance is what you're after, look at Tom's Hardware Guide. --David Wall Topics covered: The mechanics of opening up a computer's case, spotting hardware that needs to be upgraded, and replacing it with more capable equipment. Sections address IDE hard drive replacement; memory addition and replacement; CD-ROM and DVD-ROM installation; video card replacement; and other upgrades suitable for late-1990s home machines.
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