efficent set-up help for poverty stricken college student

[camillo]

My parents are getting ready to leave the state (thank god) and their taking our computer. I work at the computer lab at my school so I really only need a home computer that is capable of the following tasks:

- efficent net speed
- consumer dvd quality playback with dolby digital capability (a/v outs not s-video)
- and thats it!

CHEAP and efficent. your opinions and help are greatly appreciated. Also, if you want to get rid of your system that would meet these standards, please let me know. my guess is that a system like this could be built for approximently $500? the video card could let me use my T.V for a monitor & dvd right?

[MAGIC 8-BALL and THE ELF]

"Your story has touched our hearts ... " - 8-Ball

A Porn Star can afford any system he/she/it desires. - Elf

[Nathan]

Your dreaming, sorry, but what your asking for isn't going to cut it for $500.00.

[reboot]

Nathan, are you kidding?
Find a P166MMX, put in 64meg SDRAM.
Drop $200 on video, and SB16 soundcard.
Speakers? Hook up to TV or stereo.
56k modems only $25
Baby AT case, floppy, and 540 HD (maybe 1 gig).
Win95 OEM $15.
Total cost with DVD CD around $500.

Check ebay for parts, and build it yourself.

[camillo]

thanks for your help

[Nathan]

Hi reboot!

No I was not kidding. I wasn't being rude. Some motherboards are not compatiable with the DVD either. But look what they wrote:

1. efficient net speed. Some of those cheap modems won't logon higher than 26.4. So it amounts to what they meant by "efficient net speed". Maybe 28.8 is fine with them. They didn't say. What if they get a win modem?

2. consumer dvd quality playback with dolby digital capability (a/v outs not s-video). How will that interact with the SB 16?

540 MB hard drive. That'll be full in no time. Sure maybe a gig will do, but being in school has it's temptations too. You've got to find one also. They need to make sure that they get 95 version B or higher too. I don't think version will support DVD, but I'm not sure on that.

I understand what you're saying Reboot and where you're coming from. What I'm saying is there are alot of pitfalls that will make that hard to do. And depending on the motherboard will determine if it's a nightmare or not.

[BBA]

Well, lets see:

Celeron 300a $75
BH6 $100
32M DIMM $40
3G HD $100
I740 Vid card $35
2X DVD and decoder $150
Sound card $10
Modem $45

Total $480

Ok, thats guessing prices from discount shops, maybe a little better at a PC show
The Celery will almost assuredly have to be mail order since show venders will tell you there in short supply, but there not!
Hell, it might even do 450Mhz!

Monitor... Well thats another story!

BBA

[socalgal]

A friend of mine's system is sitting here. He's trying to sell it - I would buy it myself, but I don't want to pay what he's asking for it - $450.

No DVD tho.

PII 233mhz
Asus P2L97 AGP
Award PNP Bios
Maxtor 8.4
32m DIMM
S3ViRGE DX/GX PCI
New Antec PP253X ATX 250w power supply
BTC v90 K56 Flex HSP PNP modem (winmodem)
Sanyo CRD-1332P cdrom
Generic Floppy Disk
Generic Serial Mouse
Standard 101/102 Keyboard
Clean install - Win98
Also has AOL4.0 and IE4.0
(no other software applications)

Like I said, this isn't my system but if you are interested, let me know and I will give you his email address. Los Angeles area.

[Nathan]

Doesn't DVD need 64 MB to run properly? I'm not sure on that either.

Well anyway, I hope he gets what he's looking for. There was a lot of passion on this post.

BBA, I'd say that was close. It was thinking more to the figure of $600.00 plus freight. I'm surprised that a few forget the monitor. You can get a used one for about $50.00 around here. Nothing fancy either. So I don't know how well it will play.

Those of you who have and use DVD, how about giving us your experiences with it.

1. What resolution are you running in? Is it good?

2. What color mode are you running, 256, 16 Bit, etc.

3. Refresh rate, if you know.

4. What kind of video & sound card are you using, how much video ram do you have on the card, and how much ram is in your machine?

5. What kind of DVD are you using?

6. Are you happy or diappointed with it?

7. Was it easy to setup?

This will prove interesting. I'm sure many of us will learn from this.

Thanks!