I am looking for one of these systems for my 3 year old son for his 4th birthday. He is realy smart and loves my computer and the ones at pre-school. If anyone has one available reasonably priced and will ship to my address please let me know. Or if you have a computer that would suit him and is cheap. I know there are alot of kids computers out there, and I know kids grow up fast so I dont want to go spend hundreds of dollars on a new one that he will out-grow and need a better one. Please let me know. My e-mail address is Dolphin_pooh24@yahoo.com. As for the hot wheels system it does not have to have the steering wheel and such. Just the basic stuff to run it. So he won't have to wait till we buy other stuff to make it work. Thank you!
Trisha
Dolphin_pooh24@yahoo.com
Want to buy Hot Wheels Computer System!
July 5, 2006 - 11:04pm
#1
Want to buy Hot Wheels Computer System!
Thanks everyone. I now have a complete hot wheels computer for my son with steering wheel. He loves it. Now I am just looking for the original paperwork that came with it. The instructions and the diagram paper. If anyone has these, and wants to get rid of them or will make copies of them for me, plese let me know. Also the flames that go with the keyboard. Also, does anyone know what you can upgrade these systems to? I have upgraded it to 256megs of ram but that is the highest it can hold. So I was wondering what is the highest processor and HD you can put in one with that little ram? Thanks so much! My e-mail is Dolphin_pooh24@yahoo.com
To be honest with you, that computer is pretty darned old, and as far as PC upgrades - you could upgrade the processor to the fastest available for the socket... but with 256MB of ram, you still wouldn't be able to get a whole lot done in a timely fashion if you are using Windows XP.
Since you seem to be interested in the "historic" value of this system, or at least trying to keep all of its original parts, I would recomend swapping in a new motherboard.
As far as I recall the "hot wheels" and "barbie" machines were just standard PCs at the time, and their cases are just fancied up Micro atx cases. It might make more sense to just purchase a "bare-bones" motherboard-cpu bundle and swap it into that case, as the cost for a new board and processor would probably be even less than tracking down all the bits you could find to max out the old system board. However, the performance gains of a new board versus upgrading what you have would be phenomenal.
Its the old cost vs. performance argument.
For example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138024
$80.00 gets you a new Biostar board, with a Celeron D 315 (thats a 2.26GHz P4 core) The board supports up to 2 gigs of ram, has on board video (which i assume your board does as well) but it also has an AGP port to add a better vid card if needed, 3 PCI slots, ATA 100 and SATA 150 drive busses (i assume your board is ATA 33 or ATA66) - this means MUCH better hard drive performance over what youve got, Onboard ethernet card, 4 USB 2.0 ports (which your board def. doesnt have), and is a standard Micro ATX form factor.
Yeah, the link i posted for you would NOT be a high end server or a Video editing workstation... but as far as where you are now with the hot wheels machine, this would probably be a whole lot more cost effective than trying to max out your current board.
You would spend far more than that on cards and processor upgrades, and still have a TON of old school limitations.
If you just swap out the board with something like in this link you WOULD have to buy new ram as well... but that is also dirt cheap (found 512MB sticks for less than $50.00 at newegg, and ram can be had even cheaper other places)...
heck, another $30.00 gives you a 16x Dual Layer DVD burner.
after a board, ram and a dvd drive - thats less than $200.00 SHIPPED to your house for a totally new, pretty darn kick ass machine, house in that ultra cool hot wheels case.
and if you wanted to preserve the "integrity" of the orig. hot wheels system, you could just pout the orig. board in a box and store it. - swap it back in when you want to.
Anyway, sorry for being long winded, but that is what i would suggest.
/Bill
EDIT: Also, you asked what the largest HD your machine could take would be... not entirely sure, but I would think that it is safe to assume that the motherboard in there now will only recognize 127gigs or smaller... so, even if you put a 300gig drive in there it will only recognize and format 127 gigs of it
There's a Hot Wheels system thread Here. Please use that thread for further discussion.
And of course, if you have the documentation etc. SaphireDragon is searching for, please make contact by the email address listed above.