I have a Dell Dimension 500, bought in 2000. No CD burner, and I need one: digital photos are eating up space on my hard drive. Bought an external burner but it wasn't compatible with less than Win 98SE. USb 1.1 are too slow. Any suggestions?

This site has burners for less than $25 shipped. I have bought from them, and recommend them.

http://stores.ebay.com/PC-Cargo

Or install USB 2.0 PCI card for about $20 on eBay. How much RAM do you have.

Hi! I have 127MB of RAM, with 57% free. How difficult would installing the USB 2.0 PCI card be? Do I have to call the family geek to do it?
I did check out the ebay store site you listed; they only had one external burner listed, with minimum of Win 98SE. I'll keep checking on ebay for an older burner compatible with my OS.

This could be a tough one Mare, as windows does not support anything less then 98SE..... if not ebay try amazon, or something like a craigslist or someone looking to get rid of old parts


good luck

I guess I misread your post. I was recommending the internal CDRW, Sorry.
As far as installation, a + head screw driver and 45 mins of your time and you are up and running.
I would bump you RAM up to 256mb, if not 512mb, it will make a very noticable preformance increase. Unless you are using RDram it is fairly cheap. Best bang for the buck to improve you computer's preformance.

>Sigh.< I guess my ol' computer is just starting to be too much of a dinosaur.
I guess I really should install Windows 2000 and ditch Win 98 just so that I can get compatible programs.
But I'm back to my Catch 22: not much hard drive space to install an upgraded OS.
Well, I have an idea for a low-tech solution: buy a stack of floppies, copy my dig photo files to them and then clean them off my computer. Download a couple of suggested programs from this site to clean up my CP (I know I have Malware on it, it slows down and does truly goofy stuff) Once it is truly cleaned up install Windows 2000 OS and then buy an External CD burner that is compatible with it.
Is a big pain to change OS? Whaddaya think of my idea?
Or should I just bite the bullet and get a new PC?

Is this a notebook computer or a desktop? A clean install is fairly straight forward. You should not have a problem I oved all my '9x machines to W2k Pro last year , did not have one problem. They is one concern. Some of the older win modem, never had W2k, XP drivers written for them.

Check this Site for a good External CDRW:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005V14...glance&n=172282

If you scroll down to the reviews, you will see there is an Iomega USB patch for Win98.

As far as the USB 2.0 card, it is very cheap, and easy to install.

There are stores near me (Toronto) that sell Adaptec 6 Port USB 2.0 Cards for $12.99 Cdn.

Just plug it in to your motherboard and secure with one screw.

You may even be able to use the burner you bought if you install the patch and the 2.0 card.

Good luck.