I have a 200MMX, 2.1GB HD, 32MB RAM. Should I install Win 95 or 98?

[theplanb]

Get Win98n lite (and no, I've never used it) and some serious ram (128 would do). As for the SDRAM compatibility, you should check out whether your mobo supports them. Especially check your chipset.
When I bought 2x128MB PC133 sdram, the guy in the shop said it won't work. And he refused to sell it to me! He said he tried the rams on a few socket7 pentium board and they usually don't work.
My machine has a socket7 board with Ali aladdin4 chipset supporting unbuffered 3.3V SDRAM. The chipset can cache some 500mb rams and my board only supports upto 256. So check how much rams are cacheble with your mobo And try not to go over that.
The manual on my mobo didn't specifically said it only supports PC66 ones. So I gambled, and they work perfectly. And the bios even supports some SDRAM CAS letency and timing which is nice since the poor rams must be running at 66MHz tops. I bought this system about..3-4 years ago, so it was end of line product. I don't know about 7 years old ones though..
Good luck
I heard that you souldn't mix drams with sdram (you prolly know).

 

[Brats]

Here's another vote for Win98, it just doesn't make sense IMHO to go with 95. I'm running Win98 on my wife's P200MMX (albeit, with 64MB RAM) and I put it on a P166/32M system for my mom. In the case of the P166, the 32MB is a problem running Earthlink (go figure, all other apps including MS Office run fine, but Earthlink 5.0 is a memory hog).

Which apps you want to run are really the consideration for RAM, the OS is less so.

 

[TripleJ]

Smart me had a closer look at the mobo and found out that the computer is actually 2 years younger than I thought. It says it was made in 1997. It's a bit hard to find out what the mobo will support because it was manufactured by IBM. It's a SIS 5597 chipset based mobo. I had a look at SIS's site and it said that ABIT made a board with this chipset called the LD5 and LD5M. So, on ABIT's(crap, search-enginless) site I can't find anything on it. I can't find anything on the RAM limitations at the IBM site either. In fact, it just makes it more confusing because they say that you can do this and you can do that but you can't do this or that if you are going to do this and if you are going to do this then it might affect that etc etc etc. AARRGGGHHHH! OEM computers are a pain in the rear.

Do you think it would be safe to install a PC133 128MB stick to see how it goes? It looks as though it will work. I'm just afraid I might fry the stick or something.

One of the problems I'm facing at the moment is that the Recovery disk doesn't want to work. I don't know why, but I think it might be the CD-ROM I installed to replaced the old broken one. The old one was a Sony and the newer one is a Lite-On, which doesn't seem to work properly. And it's hardly been used. Anyway, if I reformat and then can't get the CD-ROM to load the OS onto the computer, I'm up the creek. I'd have to get new parts to see which is the stuffed component, so I may as well get a new computer to save the hassle. Talk about frustrating. I know, I'll try my Sony drive on the folks computer and see what happens. Thanks, and I'll post again soon with my latest conundrum.

 

[TripleJ]

It was the crappy Lite-On CD-ROM drive after all. I connected my new Sony CDU4811 and it went perfect. That's for the Recovery disk. I'll have a look at 98Lite once I've got this computer reinstalled OK. Thanks. Oh, and don't buy a crap CD-ROM drive, the guy at the store ripped me off big time. I got the drive mid-way through last year so it's a bit hard to return it now. That guy didn't know anything. He said that I shouldn't get a Duron because they were 'cheapies' and a friend of his had two that didn't work. His friend obviously didn't know how to get around a computer too well. What a loser, he tried to sell me a Celeron instead. Anyway, enough ranting and raving, I'm off to finish this install. Thanks.

 

[5mudge]

I'm with you on not buying cheap CD-ROM drives. It's better to sacrifice some speed for a name-brand unit than gamble on the latest 56x generic unit.

Was this for an IBM Aptiva? - I had the same box at home but sold it to a cousin over a year ago. I had bumped the CD-ROM up to 40x - the original Sony was rated at 16x, and I bumped the drive up to 6.4Gb from 3.2Gb. There's a daughterboard in the way such that upgrading RAM is a pain in the butt, and RAM was expensive at the time, so I left it at 32Mb.

For being propreitary, they are rugged machines with a nice case. Here in the office, we have an identical unit with a 166MMX chip which has been running WinNT flawlessly for over three years.

 

[TripleJ]

Yeah, it's an IBM Aptiva 2140-LQ6 to be exact.

I put the PC133 128MB stick in and it now runs heaps better. It opens word and excel etc really quickly now and doesn't go to the HD as much also. My parents are quite impressed so they've got me to get a 128MB stick tomorrow. The only minor problem is that it counts up the memory during startup, so when it had 32MB it wasn't too bad but now it's quadrupled the time of counting. I'm not sure if/how I can disable it(I can press escape and it'll stop but it's not too great doing it each time the computer starts). Does anyone know?

The CD-ROM issue is getting pretty strange. I was able to run the recovery disk on the Sony CDU4811 but then the OS couldn't recognise it so it didn't show up in My Computer. The Device Manager said the Primary IDE controller wasn't working properly. So I connected back up the Lite-On drive and it was recognised . That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

Yep,they are pretty good machines. I'm not a big fan of fans, so to speak, and this case has only one slow fan so it hardly makes any noise compared to my FOP32-1. I have been meaning to reinstall everything for a while but other things have got in the way. It's been over a year and a half since the last reinstall and I've been uninstalling some major programs and mucking around with some stuff and it got really flakey(Hung over 4 times today!). But now it's running good.

It's had some major problems recently like a washed out screen and the hangs but I'm not sure what was causing it. Hopefully it was just something to do with my stuffing around so I wont need new parts. Fingers crossed.

 

[5mudge]

Glad to hear of your success - the cousin who now owns that IBM Aptiva does my wife's hair, so maybe I'll barter parts and labor to do a RAM upgrade so my wife can get her hair done a few times....