Using parts from old puters to rebuild...

[rivrbyte]

I'm thinking about rebuilding with parts from these computers. I was told that either the DELL 4300,or the HP XL918 would be the one. I already have a new computer, but wanted to have a backup.

These are my choices......

*DELL 4300 / Intel P4 845 Chipset/IDE /40GB
*DELL XL918/ 1.0 CEL/ Intel 810 chipset/ 30GB
*HP Pavillion 8250/ 266MHz/ 4GB hard Drive /440LX chipset
*Compaq 5011CL /1.2 Cel. /80gb Ultra HD/ 256sdrm PC100.

As long as the hard drives are DMA IDE, does it matter if they are Ultra, as long as they are ATA100, and could I maybe put two hard drives together?.....The Compaq's 80Gb Ultra DMA and the Dell's 4300's 40 GB hard drive?

If I keep either the DELL 4300 or the HP XL918, would I have to do anything at all to the mobo to support both? Maybe find the highest Power supply from these units and use that one? or all I have to do is put the hard drives together slave/master,add the max memory of 512 of PC133,and install WinXP, and hope for the best?


OR should I just recycle them all? Thanks!

[MaDef]

Use the Dell 4300, it's the faster chipset, also the most recent hardware. ata100 and udma100 are the same. The differences come in the speed, an ata66 and an ata100 drive can both run on the same system without problems, but the ata66 drive is slower, if you put both drives on the same ide channel, then both drives run at the ata66 speed.

It will do fine as a backup computer, or even as a lan server for media or games. (although the max memory of 512mb might be a bit limiting).