Hey all,

I have someone I'd like to help out and not quite sure what I could do for her. I know her OLD Dim 8200 is fairly crappy by all of OUR standards. But it still seems good enough for her.

My question to you all is: should I have her upgrade her ram, which is that old expense doggone RAMBUS stuff. Way overpriced, but look at the whole deal here with beefing up her machine. 2.26 ain't all bad for a cpu, granted it is before the efficient operation chips of today, but still, not too bad. 80GB hd too. :)

I would swear I put in standard SDRAM chips in a Dim 8200 that came across my bench a few months ago and it worked, but I could be mistaken. please clarify. checking with the specs on crucial.com's ram configger, it is RAMBUS ONLY. The best price I can find anywhere is around $70 or so for another 512MB for her on ebay or twice that from online retailers.

I know a new replacement machine is not an affordable option right now for her. Shame I didn't buy two of my machines. I finally took the plunge to the dark side of least resistance and stopped building my own for myself, and just bought a dell dim 5150. Been a mighty great machine for over a year now. I can't match the performance for a measly $400 shipped WITH a 19" flat panel Ultra Sharp. Shoulda bought two or three and sold 'em. But soon enough I think their Inspiron desktop line will be in the same cheap deal place where Dims were.

Thanks for any feedback, and sorry for the verbosity!
Chuck

so anyway, what do you think I should do? get the ram for her? or urge her to wait, and gimp by until she can afford a new one?

If she's willing to pay $70 plus shipping for more ram go for it.
You can't use SDram.

You must check out what she has installed now - e.g. in a friend's computer Intel brand mboard, D850MV, with this ram he must have two identical modules in two specific slots, or pairs of identical modules in all 4 slots of not necessariy the same sizes in each bank, and if two slots don't have ram in them, the other two slots have "dummy" Continuity modules that must be installed in the remaining slots.
In other words, if she has pair of modules, not one, you need two 256mb modules, not one 512mb one.

perhaps the thing to do is buy a used motherboard on ebay that can take DDR ram and then buy some used DDR ram. Not sure what the motherboard would cost you, but DDR ram is really cheap.
I am guessing the cpu is a type that can be fitted in a mobo that takes ddr ram.
Probably would need to do a repair instal of XP to get it up and running.

There is differing RAMBUS Modules, though believe you need PC800, and always must be installed ,usually, identical pairs and most MoBo's can take 2 pairs.

Therefore you should have 2x128 and another 2x128 would be a cheaper solution which should be just enough to run XP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAM

It's definately the same situation as the Intel D850MV. You need at least two modules of the same size.
See this:
http://www.memorygiant.com/content/...

She may have 4 64mb modules, or 2 128mb and 2 continuity modules.

If you can find used ones, go for that.
For a pair of 512mb, $70 x 2 is a good deal.

Kingston, Corsair - no listing for Dimension 8200 (or 8100, or 8250).

Crucial - a 512 module only - you would need two.
"Do I have to install matching pairs?
A: Yes."

Memory Giant - lots of choices:
http://www.memorygiant.com/search/d...
They say SOME 8200 models can use 1066mhz ram too. If you use the specific model number or similar on the label on the outside of the case to search for parts on the Dell site, you may be able to confirm whether that applies to hers.

I agree with the others...you cannot use SDR-SDRAM or DDR-SDRAM, only RDRAM. And it must be installed in matched pairs.

http://www.rdram4less.com/

A good link jam.

"But it still seems good enough for her."

If she's happy with it, why do you want to improve the system? If all she does is surf the Net, anything you do will probably not improve things.

Hey all again, bear with me here for a sec. I know it's hard not to sound cocky in a tech forum stating personal level of knowledge, but being a tech of 12 years or so now, I gathered of all the details mentioned thus far. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THAT AS CRITICISM.

I am NOT arrogantly saying yeah, I already know all that, but the most basic form of research I did first on crucial.com for a dim 8200 revealed that the rammies need to be in identical pairs. And all the ecc info and other specs too. I really like their config tool. Pretty handy.

As the deals go along on ebay, it is hovering around $100+/- currently, or $76 on pricewatch for a PAIR of 256's = 512 boost to her machine.

Cliff, I'd love to change our her m/b, but it isn't an option as she lives in PA and I am in Montana, and those stinkin' things weigh a ton. I am waiting to see just what she is willing to spend or do for this machine. I really can't imagine having such an underpowered machine myself for 6 years and being content with it. But that's coming from a tech standpoint, not a basic home user.

Jam, you rock! what a great deal right off the bat on rdram on the site you listed. sweeet. Have you ever dealt with this company before?

A BIG thank you to all who posted. Your help and input is very appreciated. Now I just have to wait to hear back from her about what she's willing to do. :)

Chuck

"...she lives in PA and I am in Montana..."

I'm a bit north of you in Alberta myself (Edmonton).
In that case, she could open up her case and find out whether it has 4 modules with chips on them (4 64mb) , or two with chips and two without (2 128mb), and tell you what she found.

'we' might think it's easy to open the case and look but I know plenty of people who would not even be able to open the case let alone have a clue what they were looking at inside, and then they'd probably stick their hand in there and pull a cable off or something and then it wont work and they will not have a clue what they did wrong.
It's not always that easy

I'll just have her download my little PC Helpware (formerly VNC Single Click) file and run that so I can remote to her and then I'll just run the Crucial.com's "Scan My System" utility so I can see not only WHAT is in her system but also WHERE the Chips are installed. That is, which slots they are in. ;)

Thanks again, :)
Chuck
I'm not sure why it's been so hard for me to get her to do that, but I think her time is a premium and not easily available for 'puter stuff.

I think aegis made a good point. $50-$70 may not be lot of money, but then again, if all she does is very light computing & maybe some emailing; she may not notice any difference in the system's day-to-day tasks with her type of PC usage, despite the money invested in the RDRAM memory upgrade.

You'd be surprised what free maintenance tasks can accomplish.

0. Empty the Recycle Bin very often.

1. Delete .tmp files. Before running CHKDSK, SCANDISK or DEFRAG, delete all *.tmp files that have been created prior to the current day.

2. Delete files that begin with a tilde. When cleaning the system of garbage files, check for any files beginning with a tilde (~). Make sure all your applications, such as word-processing, spreadsheet, and graphics programs, are closed first, since sometimes the temporary file you are currently viewing uses a tilde. If the applications are closed, the tilde files can be deleted.

3. Delete old .zip files. Users tend to unzip the files but then leave the zipped file on their computer.

4. Delete .chk files, and switch the swap file. For those with permanent swap files, it is sometimes a good idea to set the swap file back to temporary and then permanent again. This cleans out any garbage (and therefore any possible corruption).

5. Run CCLEANER, SCANDISK, CHKDSK, and DEFRAG the machine. You can also use Task Scheduler to automate some of this task for future runs.

6. Check browser history and cache files. Check that the user history files and Internet cache settings are set properly (cache size). Delete the cache files and history files then reset the history files to no more than three days unless the user specifically needs to store that information longer. By freeing up the cache, downloads from the Web actually speed up since there is more space available to store the temporary files.

7. Update your AV and Spyware tools and scan for scumware and other malicious codes periodically.

8. Update drivers as needed. Make sure you have installed the latest drivers for printers, modems, sound cards, video cards, and other devices.

9. Since she only has 256MB of RAM, you can also consider increasing her pagefile to say 1024MB .... after all she's got 80GB HDD space.

Goodluck.