Computer upgrade

[bibble]

Currently a friend has a PII 233 and she asked me if I could fix it as it didnt work. The motherboard had blown and so had a the power supply - I found a cheap power supply and a motherboard for about £30 and put them in. Oh only has 32mb of ram. She said she only wanted to use office and the net and run windows 95.

Now she wants to play DVD's aargh. So this a a bit of help needed and advice - without spending loads of money. Can I replace the chip (the board has a slot and socket) and add more memory without having to upgrade the graphics card? I can get hold of a PIII500 which will go in the board, 256mb of ram is easy but will it play DVD's without lots of stutter? The card is a PCI S3 Virge DX (its old). Would a geforce MX do as they are cheap? the sound is ISA does that need a makover too?

thanks id anyone can help.

[Indiana]

I'd try with an old Radeon7x00 board. Should be very cheap and the hardware-decoding really takes most of the pressure off of the CPU.
Might even be possible with the Radeon to get smooth playback with the CPU she has...

[Wombat]

The path of least resistance here is to just make her buy a DVD player for her TV.

[bibble]

wombat - she has a ps2 inthe lounge for dvd's but wants to watch them onher computer. I will mention it though - thanks. The DVD drive can be used in another computer as she plans to get another next year.

Indiana - I will have a look at the 7500's - as they are getting on have the driver gottenstable yet? I am too used to matrox ones just working most of the time.

[Indiana]

I don't have major problems with the Radeon-drivers.
Hell, she is using S3 drivers atm, not even ATIs drivers can be worse than that...

(BTW, a Radeon7200 or even a VE would be enough, they all have the same extensive hardware acceleration for DVD).

[bibble]

ok another question the motherboard now in it is an elitegroup p6 bat me - now in the manual it says SECC2 and socket 370. but only talks about celerons in the socket - can p3's go in the socket or am i missing something here?

to some people this may sound dumb but I dont know


yes will look at other radeons too indiana

[Wombat]

If she really really wants to watch DVDs on the computer (I really don't know why, if she can watch them in the living room), then have her get a Hollywood card, or some other hardware-DVD decoder. I had a room mate who put one in his old P2-233 and was quite happy.