Yet another topic about M68xx upgrades...

Let's do this the logical way. There are a lot of upgrades which will improve performance, and a lot of tweaks. The most obvious people think of is faster and bigger. Anything faster in the computer will improve run-time performance, including a faster hard drive (since virtual memory involves caching unused memory to the hard drive, and retrieving it when necessary). A faster hard drive will also improve boot up speed of all programs, including your OS of choice. Despite what most people will say, more memory does not have as significant of a performance increase as one might think. Usually, the only performance increase will come in the operating system hitting the hard drive less often, which is significant, but for games, this situation is usually rare enough. More memory will improve your multitasking abilities, however. As for what you should get, personally, it all depends on how much you are willing to pay.

Also, if you don't want to pay for an extremely fast drive, you can buy a 5400 RPM (or even leave the 4200 RPM drive in), and repartition your drive, optimizing it for performance sake. The first partition closest to the center of your drive should be reserved for your virtual memory, or swap partition. The rest of your drive should be used for anything else. Since the center tracks of the drive are the fastest, your virtual memory will load faster than normal, increasing your performance. Just a thought.

I personally suggest for overall system performance if you use windows to go with the HD first. The reason being is Windoze poor memory management. It uses the swap file heavily when you still have plenty of physical memory left. They only time you will really benefit from the additional RAM is if you are running a huge memory intensive app. that is actually utilizing more than 512MB of memory. Otherwise, the extra memory is just sitting there being pretty .

As for the external enclosure, you will be fine to wipe it after putting it in the enclosure. Windoze will basically just detect it as another drive, and you will complete access to it as if it were an internal.

Upgrades:
I've done both upgrades both help in completely different ways.
a HD helps load times and boot times.
more ram helps programs run faster once they are loaded. Both upgrades slightly lower your run time on batteries.

I would reccommend both upgrades to most users. The more you load data, the better the diskdrive will seem. If you load programs seldom, skip the faster HD. If you only run minor applications skip the ram upgrade.
I am extremely happy with both. I work with images and I program. So I am constantly loading data (lots of IO) plus the programs I use benifit greatly from the added ram.
In fact, for imaging I would reccommend going to the full 2 GB if you can swing the cash. I do not regret either upgrade, the HD upgrade made the a much bigger impact on a superfical level. The ram made everything work better in a more subtle, but more meaningful level.


External enclosure:
format the HD the HD once you no longer need the data on it. ie: mount the new HD, use the restore disks to get the OS and such installed. Go to windowsupdate.com and get all the patches. Then hook up your old HD and copy over your files. Then format the drive.


ps:
Thunder, quit your baggin' on Windows. Do some research on just how much better it is then Linux and Mac OS before you bother complaining about the best of the breed. The more you honestly dig into it, the more impressive the work the lads in Redmond have done will seem.

Sorry if it offended you, and I use Windows as my primary OS. But, it is a fact that the way it manages memory is poor for an advanced user. The work the guys in Redmond is very commendable. No other OS can come close to comparing to it's user friendliness. I guess I should have posted how good other aspects are to keep it from sounded like a crack on Windows.

I agree with Thunder, memory management with XP is pretty bad (but it is a LOT better than 9x). Quick example. I'm running CachemanXP memory monitor on my desktop. I started with 256MB RAM, once all was loaded and windows was ready I'd have some 80-90 MB of free RAM. I threw in an additional 512MB, and now when all's loaded and done I'll usually have 480MB free

Now my opinion.. Let's see, if I were to get one of these I'd be using it for programming/graphic design/3D modeling and rendering. The 512MB that comes in this machine is nice, but I'd increase it myself. I don't use much hard drive space (heck my desktop's got an 80GB, I've had it for six months now, and I still have 40GB free), and, as you could imagine from those types of programs, I'd already be waiting a while so the slower drive wouldn't phase me any.

However, for what you're looking for, as others have stated I'd go with a faster HDD. You'd probably be better off dealing with the bottlenecking of the drive before increasing memory.

I am also thinking about upgrading my M6809. I am looking at the 80GB 5400rpm Hitachi Travelstar. I have two questions. One, will there be a noticable difference between the 5400rpm drive and the 7200rpm drive? Would it be worth it to wait for a 7200rpm 80GB drive? I am posting in this thread instead of starting a new one because these questions are along the same subject as the thread.

Jordan

There is a noticeab le difference between the 5400 and 7200 RPM drives, but not as much as the difference between the 4200 and 5400. If you need the 80GB, go for it, but keep in mind you can always use your current drive in an enclosure.

Also mmelzer, as much I hate to say it (I love newegg), zipzoomfly.com has the drive for a little cheaper. $180.50 2nd day shipping for the 7k60 60GB. And the price difference between the 7k60 60GB and 5k80 80GB is not enough to sneeze at. It is only $7.50 at zipzoomfly and $7.01 difference at newegg. That being said, I may spend the extra $8.50 to just buy my next 7k60 from newegg due to the excellent service I get from them week in and week out.

Best Buy doesn't include a warranty. The machine comes with a 1yr manufacturer's warranty though.

Yikes. Just...yikes.

Windows XP is not truly a Microsoft production. Windows NT started out life as IBM's OS/2, and at it's core, still has a lot of IBM code. That's the only reason why Windows NT based operating systems are any good at all. So, the "work the lads in Redmond have done will seem" far less impressive, knowing that the core kernel of Windows XP started out as OS/2.

Interesting source: http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2History.html

There are much more intensive looks at Windows NT and OS/2. I just wish people would do research before they get upset over their favorite OS. Truth: Microsoft owns rights to many operating systems other than Windows, including MacOS, Xenix (a UNIX clone), and OS/2. Why would they need that if the boys and girls at Redmond were working so very hard? And isn't it strange that Windows is about 3-5 years behind in technology than other operating systems?

EDIT: Oh, and personal experience. I use Overnet to download programs; mostly ISOs of Linux, or the occasional game which I've cracked or destroyed over the years. After downloading a 600+ MB file, in Windows my system drops to a crawl, even after Overnet has finished checking and verifying the file. In Linux, you don't notice a performance hit at all. And that's with Linux being on the slower drive. Linux is on a 6 GB, 33 MB/s, 5400 RPM drive. Windows is on a 60 GB, 100 MB/s, 7200 RPM drive. Now that's very bad for Windows XP SP1.

Part of the reason why Linux is so much better at virtual memory has to do with how it swaps memory. Windows makes a swap file, and if you know anything about how Windows handles files, you'd know that (for the sake of complexity) fragmentation is a huge issue to worry about. Even the swap file gets fragmented, which works slower than defragmented files. Linux uses it's own partition for memory swapping, and doesn't have to worry about more files being transfered to the drive, or how corrupted your partition already is. On boot up, that partition is blank!

Correct, not unless you buy the BB PSP