Death to Heretics!

[Centurion40]

40Cents,
If you decide not to revive your old rig, you can put together a nice budget gaming rig for not many $ these days. For example, this package has everything you need (except OS) for less than $500. Video card is onboard but will run older games and you can always pop in a better card at some point in the future.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.789250

Interesting.  I've already ordered this one (with 4 gig instead of 2) and no OS (which saves me a bit over $100 off of the price).  I'm gonna use XP as I already have the disk and product key.

http://www.robotnik.com/robotnik-amd-athlon-ii-x2-system.html

[Shelldrake]

40Cents,
If you decide not to revive your old rig, you can put together a nice budget gaming rig for not many $ these days. For example, this package has everything you need (except OS) for less than $500. Video card is onboard but will run older games and you can always pop in a better card at some point in the future.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.789250

Interesting.  I've already ordered this one (with 4 gig instead of 2) and no OS (which saves me a bit over $100 off of the price).  I'm gonna use XP as I already have the disk and product key.

http://www.robotnik.com/robotnik-amd-athlon-ii-x2-system.html

Congrats. The rig you ordered should be fine for anything that isn't too graphics intensive. I recommend using your old video card instead of onboard video since chances are it is more powerful than a HD 3000. The only potential issue I see is that the 450W PSU will limit any future graphics upgrade.

This would be a nice upgrade using the $ you saved on the OS :)

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=612912&CatId=7005

[Centurion40]

I'm not sure what the vid card is on my old rig.  All I can say for certain is that I had to replace the original last year when it went toasty.  PC Medic installed a used replacement- because they had nothing else new that would work with my old pc (or so they said).  My old rig was never quite the same with the used vid card... so I'd be loathe to poach it for the new rig!

[Nefaro]

His old card and mobo was probably an AGPx4 or x8.   They stopped making those awhile back. 

Fortunately, these days, all regular-sized motherboards come with a PCI-Express slot for the latest vid cards.   So you can just purchase your own and pop it in, if your power supply will support it, and not have to worry about whether your motherboard even has a video card slot at all (as in years past).

[Nefaro]

Good idea.  I've actually discussed this with my local tech shop.  The downside is that they said that I won't be able to play my games off of it, like I could when it was the actual hd.

There is nothing that is password protected on the old hd, it's the "family" pc.

Yeah, I was one of those techs in a tech shop for a number of years.  ;)

Once you get whatever you need off that old hard drive, pick up a new compatible hard drive sometime (SATA or IDE compared to what your external HDD enclosure supports) and put it in there for use in backing up your game installers, serial numbers, and whatever else (music, porn, snuff films).   

Just know that the more you use any piece of computer hardware, the lower it's life expectancy becomes.  So eventually a motherboard, or hard drive, will die.  Circle of life, man.   But that external one will last a helluva lot longer if you only turn it on when you need to backup or install to/from it.  :)

[Centurion40]

Good tips!  Snuff films!  Goddam!!!  :o