Major System Remodeling Questions

[drakkenwulf]

Hey all, got a couple questions for ya. By brother's HP AMD K6-2 system has taken a serious turn for the worse, and he's gotten a good deal on a P3 667EB, VA11 mobo, 64megs pc133 ram, sound card, and atx tower. Now the question here is this, I hear the VA11 while supporting UDMA/ATA 66 should work with an older udma/ata 33 (I think) HD (the one from the AMD) until he can afford to upgrade his HD. Now in setting all of this up, is it like, put everything together (new mobo, ram, cpu and sound card, and old HD, Voodoo, and modem) and the system will be "okay" (as in functioning well)? Or am I going to need to format his existing HD and treat everything as though it's new out of the box, like a scratch build? Keeping the HD intact and as the bootable (for at least the time being) is desired, and well I can't find anyone who's done this degree of upgrade who can tell me if there's anything in particular to watch out for. If anyone out there can be of any help it would be greatly appreciated ( I won't beable to check the configuration with his particular HD, graphics, modem for a couple weeks, but I'm going to check it with my own (similar HD, graphics, and modem) in the next day or two, to make sure the individual parts all work, and if there are any general conflicts. Any suggestions. Any special order I should put everything together in to make sure things work? (I've only scratch built mine, a pII 400, and Ive done smaller upgrades here and there, but not all of this at once, and not from one extreme to another like this.)

--Thanks in advance--

[SoopaStar]

It *should* work. He may need drivers and stuff from teh CDrom that comes with the mobo, but i have done stuff like that many times.
Paul

edit:
Also, the best thing to do I think would be to boot up normally, let it find all the devices and then boot up into safe mode teh 2nd time and remove the old stuff that still may be a 'ghost' device left over.

[This message has been edited by SoopaStar (edited 07-19-2000).]

[howste]

I've moved hard drives from computer to computer on many occasions without having any problems or having to reformat. I've read on Sysopt about others who haven't been so lucky though. I'd go ahead and try it first, and if it doesn't work, you can always reformat & start over. It's probably a good idea to boot into safe mode and remove any motherboard related drivers first though. And yes, the UDMA/ATA 33 drive will work with an UDMA/ATA 66 port.

As far as the order of things, first put it together and boot with just the bare minimum components installed. The HD, CD, floppy, memory, CPU, and video card should be all you need. It should recognize the new motherboard & onboard components, and prompt you to install the drivers. This is why you need the CD. If everything goes well with that, then add the other components one at a time. By doing it one at a time, the source of any problems encountered can quickly be identified. If you've already built one from scratch it shouldn't be tough at all.

Good luck http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Steve