Upgrading an old HP 8650c to be able to burn DVDs

[MikeyBK]

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I am trying to upgrade an old HP 8650c to be absle to rip and burn DVDs and am looking for some suggestions and input.
I have already upgraded the memory from 128MBs to 320MBs (320 is max that this motherboard can handle). Installed Windows XP in place of the Win-98. Installed a DVD-RW dual layer. Upgraded to USB 2.0. But now I'm stuck in this stage of indecision and unsure what I should do.

I'm wondering if a processor upgrade from the Celeron 533 mhz Socket 370 PPGA, FSB speed of 67mhz to a Pentium III 1 Ghz Socket 370 FC-PGA, FSB of 133mhz would make enough of a difference to make the system able to rip and burn with only 320MB memory (I've read that some rip and burn with only 256MB memory)? Or should I just upgrade the motherboard to one that I can install at least 512 MBs memory into?

Last question is if an External USB harddrive would be as fast and as efficient as an internal harddrive when it comes to copying and burning?

ANY suggestions and/or advice would be greatly appreciated. Much Thanks.

[foxyshadis]

You probably could more cheaply build/buy a new machine with a low-end sempron 2400+ and a single 512 module ($200 for new low-end cpu,mobo,psu,ram), since retail on old parts is killer, unless you found them cut-rate. You motherboard's terrible ATA and FSB speed is going to be the biggest bottleneck during ripping; otherwise usb hard drives are fast enough for dvd read/writing.

Turning off most of the XP features (especially themes, active desktop, & terminal services), or better running nlite and reinstalling to entirely remove them, helps. It'll act like 2k in that case, and 2k runs great on 256. In fact if you don't need network you can turn off almost every windows service.

[CWR03]

I just bought a Gigabyte GA-K8U and a 3000+ Sempron 64-bit for under $200 at a local store. I found the board online for $49, and a Sempron 2600+ for $62, and the store from which I purchased the components had a 512MB stick of PC3200 RAM (Corsair value series, lifetime warranty) on sale for $24. The same store had a new PC on sale for $179 last week - just the PC, no peripherals, useless for gaming but perfectly suited for internet browsing or burning DVD's. (Ever heard of "Lindows?")

This info is given only to put the cost of upgrading an old PC into perspective.

[MikeyBK]

Thanks for your input foxyshadis and CWR03,
It does seem like it's going to end up not being worth the hassle of trying to upgrade that PC. It was going to cost me only $50 bucks for a new 80Gig harddrive and $40 bucks for the FCPGA processor, but looks like I can't get around installing the fcpga into ppga without an adapter. And the adapter is going to start making it not worth it. And to change the motherboard would cost me $70 bucks and then add another 40-50 for new memory sticks and again it starts to be not worth it.
Would be better to just get a new 'basic' PC for no more than $300 and install the DVD-RW and more memory into that one instead.
I'll probably still install the extra harddrive into the old HP for now and see if it could at least burn at 4X or even 2.4X. Then I could just cannibalize the DVD-RW and the extra harddrive when I get another newer system. This was just a project of mine to try and give one of my daughters a 'burnin' PC without having to buy a new system. But you guys are probably the voices of reason, in that my daughter would rather have a 'simple' but 'newer' system that can be upgraded to match mine (Athlon 3700 1Gig system) or my other daughters (Pentium 4 1Gig Laptop).:D :thanks:

[CWR03]

Any new unit, no matter how low-end, would be more than adequate for burning disks. I use a 5 year old XP+ 1200 MHZ system as a media PC which also has a burner, and it has no trouble with 8X. I've seen similar units on eBay for $50.