The Duron is a 'Socket A' CPU, so without upgrading the motherboard, the fastest you can go is an Athlon XP 3200+. I think had one of those in my previous machine, and LFS played ok.

Well it really depends on the motherboard as not all Socket A motherboards support up to the 3200 CPU. If it came with a 1.2 GHz CPU, then I don't have much hope for it, it might only support up to Athlon 1.4 GHz. It *might* support Athlon XP CPUs, but you'd have to check the motherboard's specifications. Even then it might only support up to Athlon XP 2100 (I'm speaking from experience here, I've had such a motherboard in the past).

If it was me i would just look about for something like i have, it aint by any means the best PC in the world for gaming, far from it, but it will cope with most games i like playing with a pleasing amount of graphical detail while remaining playable, and it will be a lot better than your current machine is.

This PC cost me £35 as it was, and all i added was another 512mb of RAM which i already had, and the GFX card, which i kept from my old machine.

Its not great, but it does the job reasonably well, i still suffer from the t1 drops with LFS if its a busy track, but thats life i guess.

I have a pentium 4, 2.53ghz processor on a medion socket478 motherboard (so you may be able to get a p4 @3.2ghz if you can find one) 1gb RAM, and the same GFX card as you have already got (if it isnt cooked)

It is probably not the most economical way of doing it, as this stuff is still outdated technology nowadays, so for money spent, a new or nearly new PC will be better and more upto daye, and also a lot faster, but if youre on a tight budget and only want to spend a few bucks whilst having something thats reasonably playable, this may well be the way to go.

Thanks guys...after reading these posts I've decided I won't spend anymore on this computer. I'm going to save up for either a completely new PC or just a DDR2 motherboard...meanwhile, I'm going to try to bring my gfx card back to life or get one out of nowhere because I'm missing simracing more than ever now :weeping:

Good idea

Also consider some recentinexpensive motherboard with integrated Graphics with either AMD or Intel platform.

I'm not aware of the current DDR2/DDR3 prices. Just think about it: an inexpensive current Phenom II X2 on a 785G/890G/880G - based mainboard would get you back on the track with LFS easily (without fancy AA/AF-settings, for sure).
You could then relax and start to build up on that base again. Old IDE drives can be used on by so little as an additional interface card like some older crappy highpoint-based pseudo-raid controllers (which were merely bare ide controllers with fancy software tricks).
Advise: don't rush things and check you case/power-supply assenmbly for any obvious damage before taking another step forward. Might find something went wrong there prior to your card biting the dust.

Cheers

Oh..I think I forgot this thread but I have other news.

Well, after trying some other gfx cards, the result was nothing. Nothing worked. And then after some other looks at it, somehow the motherboard was the one who wore the wooden jacket instead of the ATi card.
Because of that, I'm posting to you from a netbook. This thing runs LFS quite nicely (if you check my stats I've last raced less than a week ago) but using the keyboard when you're used to the G25's FB is no fun at all.

The good thing about this is that I can start saving up some money for a proper motherboard instead of spending a shitload of it on upgrading an old one which wouldn't give you many improvements.

So with that said, does anyone have any advice about a good motherboard?

Cheers