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  1. #1
    guest_the gaffer
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    nearly two years ive had this pc and now a mate tells me its not the spec i thought it was, im a bit slow when it comes to computers, when i bought it it was advertised as 128mb ram with at least 10 gb hard drive, i wont for legal reasons say which major retailer i purchased from,but whilst at my house the other day my mate looked at it and informed me its only 112mb ram which he says seems an unusual amount of ram, and it only has a 9.30gb hard drive, could i have complained if it was still under guarantee ?,obviously too late now, but please be aware folks if your unsure get some one who knows a bit about the job to teach you ,or alternatively ask the fantastic folk at oldversion.com, it really is the place to be.

  2. #2
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    Originally posted by guest_the gaffer@Nov 28 2003, 01:56 PM
    advertised as 128mb ram with at least 10 gb hard drive, .......... house the other day my mate looked at it and informed me its only 112mb ram which he says seems an unusual amount of ram, and it only has a 9.30gb hard drive,
    sound like it could be correct as advertised.
    Does the video card use shared memory, or does it have its own video memory on its card? If the video adapter is built onto the motherboard. it is most likely using that missing 16megs.
    Check on your video adapter to see if you can see how much ram on the video card/adapter. it may also be possible under Compaq computers to adjust the amount of RAM for the Video display, so that you can increase or decrease the shared ram.
    Shared Ram is part of the main system memory. as there is no actual video memory, it just uses main memory for the video display

    for the hard drive, alot of HD manufacturers count 1meg as 1,024kbytes. and not 1meg = 1,000kbytes. so if you were to divide the 10gigs by 1,024, you end up with 9.76Gigs. If you consider the size, the filesystem used to format which can leave alittle unformatted space as unallocated, and yes, you can very easily find that missing bit. Since you using FAT32 and an 8k Cluster size, which has about a typical 10% wasted space between 8 and 16GB HD's

    also. as far as i know, there were no IDE hard drives in 9.3gigs, just 10gigs, there were some SCSI HD's in 9.1gigs. and i am pretty sure you do not have a SCSI HD in your PC.

  3. #3
    guest_the gaffer
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    Originally posted by locustfurnace+Nov 28 2003, 01:43 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (locustfurnace @ Nov 28 2003, 01:43 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--guest_the gaffer@Nov 28 2003, 01:56 PM
    advertised as 128mb ram with at least 10 gb hard drive, .......... house the other day my mate looked at it and informed me its only 112mb ram which he says seems an unusual amount of ram, and it only has a 9.30gb hard drive,
    sound like it could be correct as advertised.
    Does the video card use shared memory, or does it have its own video memory on its card? If the video adapter is built onto the motherboard. it is most likely using that missing 16megs.
    Check on your video adapter to see if you can see how much ram on the video card/adapter. it may also be possible under Compaq computers to adjust the amount of RAM for the Video display, so that you can increase or decrease the shared ram.
    Shared Ram is part of the main system memory. as there is no actual video memory, it just uses main memory for the video display

    for the hard drive, alot of HD manufacturers count 1meg as 1,024kbytes. and not 1meg = 1,000kbytes. so if you were to divide the 10gigs by 1,024, you end up with 9.76Gigs. If you consider the size, the filesystem used to format which can leave alittle unformatted space as unallocated, and yes, you can very easily find that missing bit.

    also. as far as i know, there were no IDE hard drives in 9.30gigs,just 10gigs, there were some SCSI HD&#39;s in 9.1gigs. and i am pretty sure you do not have a SCSI HD in your PC. [/b][/quote]
    many thanks once again, i understand now, i guess the video adapter must be built onto the main board as you said , as its not a tower and is smaller than most desk top pcs, its actually called a book pc on the manual that came with it,ive studied the book this afternoon and it gives very detailed instructions on how to add more ram anyway, there is a spare slot for an extra one,so i guess that will be my next project, all the best for your help and guidence

  4. #4
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    Originally posted by guest_the gaffer@Nov 28 2003, 03:23 PM
    its actually called a book pc on the manual that came with it,ive studied the book this afternoon and it gives very detailed instructions on how to add more ram anyway,
    your welcome, before you add any more RAM, make sure to check what type of RAM can be used in the system, and what is presently installed, since it wont always be the same as the manual, such as, the board may support SDRAM 100Mhz & 133Mhz, and you might already have 100Mhz installed, So if you buy 133Mhz speed, you can mix it, but you wont get the speed performance of the 133mhz, which may or may not be cheaper.
    make sure on how much you can install for the overall total, as well as how much each slot can handle.
    Since the total amount may be 256Megs, and each slot may only support 128Megs.
    Dont worry about going beyond 512megs of RAM, as Windows is not particularly designed to take advantage of anymore then 512. For systems that go beyond 512, they were mostly meant for servers, which can handle memory of that amount. Windows is designed as a desktop PC, not a server.
    Win2k and Xp may handle memory better today than the previous versions, But there is not really much benefits going beyond.
    Better performance can be also had with current system, and a properly configured OS, such as tuning the vcache, block-size, virtual memory...

  5. #5
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    Originally posted by locustfurnace+Nov 28 2003, 03:03 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (locustfurnace @ Nov 28 2003, 03:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--guest_the gaffer@Nov 28 2003, 03:23 PM
    its actually called a book pc on the manual that came with it,ive studied the book this afternoon and it gives very detailed instructions on how to add more ram anyway,
    your welcome, before you add any more RAM, make sure to check what type of RAM can be used in the system, and what is presently installed, since it wont always be the same as the manual, such as, the board may support SDRAM 100Mhz & 133Mhz, and you might already have 100Mhz installed, So if you buy 133Mhz speed, you can mix it, but you wont get the speed performance of the 133mhz, which may or may not be cheaper.
    make sure on how much you can install for the overall total, as well as how much each slot can handle.
    Since the total amount may be 256Megs, and each slot may only support 128Megs.
    Dont worry about going beyond 512megs of RAM, as Windows is not particularly designed to take advantage of anymore then 512. For systems that go beyond 512, they were mostly meant for servers, which can handle memory of that amount. Windows is designed as a desktop PC, not a server.
    Win2k and Xp may handle memory better today than the previous versions, But there is not really much benefits going beyond.
    Better performance can be also had with current system, and a properly configured OS, such as tuning the vcache, block-size, virtual memory... [/b][/quote]
    the pc is fitted with pc100 mhz , and the manual says that each of the two dimm slots can handle anything from 16mb upto 512mb giving a maximum system capacity of upto 1024mb, although im only looking at adding another 128 just to make it a little quicker, the one already fitted is a 168 pin sd ram but a friend says i should be careful as he had some spares and when we looked the one in my pc is shorter , meaning it doesnt stand so high up from the board as the ones he has spare from various machines, and if its any taller than the one already fitted it wont go under the drive cage that holds the cd rom drive, perhaps when i shop for one ile take the original with me for a comparison,hopefully i wont have a problem getting one, thanks once again,

  6. #6
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    you might have to make sure to take with you the manual to do a cross referrence, it could be that the system is using notebook memory, low-profile memory or even specially designed memory for that PC.
    you might want to do a little pre-shopping on the web. I will guess you&#39;re in Australia, as the prices would differ, but it is something you can atleast check into.
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/

  7. #7
    guest_the gaffer
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    Originally posted by locustfurnace@Nov 28 2003, 10:51 PM
    you might have to make sure to take with you the manual to do a cross referrence, it could be that the system is using notebook memory, low-profile memory or even specially designed memory for that PC.
    you might want to do a little pre-shopping on the web. I will guess you&#39;re in Australia, as the prices would differ, but it is something you can atleast check into.
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/
    my actual location is the uk, and lucky in our area there are loads of computer shops, ie, pc world 6 miles from me and at least 9 other computer suppliers within that same range, so i guess i should be ok for assistance on that part, i always think its a good idea to check with more than one source before i buy something anyway, just to see if there advice matches, as it should really do if they are both being honest, many thanks again,

  8. #8
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    Originally posted by guest_the gaffer@Nov 29 2003, 06:10 AM
    my actual location is the uk,....
    yea, since some shops can vary greatly, so it also good to shop around. currently pricing on RAM is extremely cheap though, as are computers.


 

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