IDE controllers

[Hogans_Alley]

Need a little help. My PC has two HDs, a CD-ROM and a CD-RW which occupy the Primary and Secondary Master and Slave slots. I wish to add an Iomega Zip 250 which require an IDE connector. My System indicates that my PC has a "VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller". What does that mean. Do I need to install an ATAPI PCI card for the ZIP? Please advice.

Also I got a 1.2 GHz Athlon on an IWill MoBo, 516M RAM. My video is a PNY NVidia GEForce4 Ti4200, 64M. Question:

1.   If I upgrade the mobo and CPU to an Athlon 2200 XP
and its associated RAM, do I have to replace the other componenets?
2.   Using my present system, will it be a significant improvement if I upgrade my video to say an ATI 9500 128M.
3.   Can I use an 8x card on a 4x AGP slot? A 4x card on an 8x AGP slot?

Thanks.

Hogans Alley

[4_Series_Scania]

I think you'll need another card with some more IDE connectors, not expensive, and nor should it be a problem to fit and use. Windows will just keep adding more drive letters as you fit more drives.......

1, You should'nt have to upgrade anything else, at least, not for functionality, you can always upgrade further to gain yet more performance!

2,Take a look at this chart, you'll see your GF4ti 4200 isn't much slower than the Ati 9500, also, From what I read, Nvidia drivers seem a little more stable than their Ati brothers.....

[ATI_7500]

aren't zip-drives connected by the floppydrive cable?

1. look,if your mainboard supports the XP 2200+. you can find information about it on the homepage of the mainboard's manufacturer. you'll certainly need a new cpu-cooler.

2. yup. the 9500pro (recommended,the normal 9500 is too slow) is optimized for direct-x 9 and has a significant better performance than a Ti4200. and it's cheap,too.

scania,the newer ATI drivers (catalyst 3.2 and up) are very stable and fast. believe me...

3. like scamia said before,there'll be no problems.

scania,a bios update has NOTHING to do with the compatibility of a graphics card to a chipset. i've got a 9700pro and a VIA KT266A chipset and they work just fine together.

[4_Series_Scania]

scania,a bios update has NOTHING to do with the compatibility of a graphics card to a chipset. i've got a 9700pro and a VIA KT266A chipset and they work just fine together.

Ok, Ati, I'll believe you! - I'm just posting my experience with a friend and his VIA Chipset mobo (a P4X Sct 478 board,but not the cheap and nasty jetway board mine is!) - We could'nt get his machine to work with the Ati 9000, after retro fitting his Voodoo3 AGP, we went to the VIA website and downloaded a driver update and everything subsequently worked great! - perhaps, his 9000 was'nt seated correctly and finally seated down right once we'd swapped cards about 4 times......  :-/ Oh well, it works now anyway and thats all he's concerned about!
Hogans_Alley, it seemed to me,was  about to waste his money on the 9500 - a pointless upgrade (he did'nt mention pro!)  I'd hate to see any user do that!

Perhaps if he fancies jet engine sound effects whilst playing FS2002, he'd consider a GeForce FX5800?  :P  ;D j/k


On the IDE issue, I hav'nt got a Zip drive, but, I freely admit, I'd assumed it was an IDE item....if not, problem solved it seems!


Paul.

[ATI_7500]

yeah,the old catalyst drivers were crap,but the new ones (3.2 and up) are finally the drivers you expect for your graphics card.