Flashing Bios

Hello all at MG,
Well I think it is time to flash my bios. I am running 98SE. I have a HP 6638 desktop with a Trigem Cognac MB, Phoenix BIOS 4.0. The CPU is a Celeron Socket 370 that runs at 533 MHz and my research states with a BIOS update it will run at 733 MHz (the highest Celeron with a 66 MHz). I don't know but I believe this is quite a significant improvement. I am scared to attempt this, flashing BIOS, without a little suport from a Geek. So should I pay for this
upgrade $29.95 or try doing it for free, because I like free, and I can afford free. I am trying to upgrade now, about time huh? I will install a new 40 or 80 GB HDD but I do not know if I can use a 7200RPM or do I have to stay with a Maxtor 5600 RPM which is what I have now, only 15.35 GB. Also should I partition this new HDD C: D:...?. I have approx 13GB of free space out of the 15 but my system resources are lowered dramatically if I install three or four learning CDs for my little boy. Why is this when I have 13GB of free space on the HDD? Also I have an edition of XP Pro that I got from school but I have had luck with 98SE. Is it wise to install this new OS, would you?
I have 192 MB of memory now that I put in a stick of 128MB SDRAM. I am installing a soundblaster 5.1 sound card, a NIC card and next I will put in a video card that will take up my last PCI slot. So if one of you Geeks will inform me about all this I will be grateful.
Thanks all,
bluesteinm

 

I wouldn't recommend the BIOS upgrade at all. Flashing the bios would simply be updating it, meaning it could then accept a 733MHZ chip, it does not mean your chip would change to a 733MHZ chip. You could attempt to over clock the 533MHZ chip to 733MHZ, but doing this would most likely break your CPU, or simply cause the computer to not function untill you set it back to 533MHZ.

As for the HD, it won't be a problem. You can use a 7200RPM HD. The rotation speed of the HD is something only the HD itself is concerned with, the computer doesn't have to do anything diffrent to use a 7200RPM drive.

As for windows XP, it's a nice OS it crashes less, and it would run on your computer. However, it does use more resources then 98 does. So it would be slower, on the other hand it would be more compatible with newer software and HW coming out today. So really it's up to you. The computer would be slower with windows XP, but it shouldn't be much slower if you optimize it a bit after installing. I'd personally install it, but if windows 98 is working for you there isn't really much reason for you to upgrade the older computer with it.

 

also keep in mind, a 7200 rpm hard drive tends to run hotter than the other one, and since those hp's sometimes don't have a case fan, the inside could get hot. maybe you could also look into getting a hard drive cooler or something

 

I doubt that you need to add hard drive storage capacity to accommodate your son's learning CDs. It's not likely that any of them will need more than 5MB, and you've still got 13,000MB to play with.

How you partition an added drive will depend on your needs and preferences, as well as on the size of the added drive and the filesystem you'll use on that drive. I'd be guessing if I offered an opinion as to how you should partition an added drive.

One factor I would consider: with a partition size under 8GB, Win98SE's FAT32 filesystem will create a 4KB allocation unit. Above that, the allocation unit will be at least 8KB. The allocation unit is the smallest amount of space that can be allocated to a file. A 1KB file will therefore take up a full allocation unit's worth of space. The smaller allocation unit leads to more efficient use of the hard drive's space -- but with the size of today's drives, that may not be much of an issue.

Also: system resources have nothing to do with available free space on your hard drive(s). System resources refer to a fixed-size area of memory used by the operating system to keep track of open files, graphic images on your screen, and a host of other things that Win98SE needs to keep track of.

In Win98SE, those resources are not generous, and are drawn down by every program that you open -- especially those that open a lot of child windows or create a lot of graphic objects. Most of those resources are freed up when you close the program -- but not always.

Upgrading to WinXP will ease that crunch somewhat. Adding hard drive space will have no impact on system resources.

 

Thanks for all the great info about flashing the bios.
Now I have another queston. I have just seen on ebay socket 370 processors, running @ 1000MHz @ 1 gig. The one I have is a 533MHz
Can I use one of these to speed up my machine. If it is a 370 socket mobo
will all 370 socket processors work? I beleive I will install XP. I want to know
when I install a second HDD can I just install the XP on it and still keep
98 on the original HDD. A duel OS? That would be great. I have works
on the 98 with a spreadsheet and all the little extras that I do not have on this XP pro. I guess because I had gotten it from school the OS didn't come
with a program like word and powerpoint... just wordpad. I would like to keep the works on my machine and XP as a second OS

 

In theory you can run any socket 370 processors, but you'll have to check your manual to make sure. Usually a bios update would make it possible to use the higher clocked chips. Although in that case check the documentation about the bios upgrade to make sure. You should be OK, but it's always best to check it out.

As for XP, yes you can install it as a dual boot system. It's very simple actually, the windows XP installer will ask if you want to dual boot(Not in those words, I think it might just say install to another location or something like that). But if you pick the option it will dual boot it for you and install a boot menu so that when you boot up it offers a choice between windows XP and windows 98.

 

Coco has suggested that you probably can -- but I doubt that you'll see a huge difference in the performance of your system.

It's been my experience that just doubling the speed of the processor (which is what you'll be doing) creates a performance difference that isn't much greater than barely noticeable. CPU speed is only one of many factors that determine the overall performance of a machine. If other factors (such as hard drive access time and transfer speed, memory access time and transfer speed, PCI bus speed, etc.) remain unchanged, they will throttle the effect of the faster processor.

If you can do the upgrade without spending a lot of money, go for it -- but don't expect a great deal from it.