I am hoping to speed up my PC by installing a faster IDE Controller -- my system (see below) came with an ATA-33, various posts have recco'd I go to a an ATA-100 for speed. A few Questions:
- Will this approach work?
- Will it speed up the system?
- See below -- will my 2-for-1 swap out of existing PCI cards work (Ethernet card + 1394 card replaced by one combo card)?
- If I install an IDE Controller (ATA-100) in the newly open spot, do I just disconnect the IDE Cable from the mother board and connect to the card? Anything else necessary?
- It appears as if the existing IDE Cable won't reach any IDE slot, so do I just buy a longer one at Comp USA or something? (It is currently connected to 2 drives (orig 14 gig + one 80 gig I installed a few years back)?
More Info:- SYSTEM: Dell XPW T-500 (Pentium III 500 MHz) with 768 MB RAM (just maxed it out)
- PCI Slot situation: All PCI Slots are full so...I intend to swap out the Ethernet card and the 1394 / firewire card and replace with ONE combo card (which will also include USB 2.0) thus freeing up one slot