I want to cannibalize my mother's old computer...

[Té Rowan]

Ahh... that explains a lot. I was thinking bout manuals from mobo manufacturers.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Something came up at home that has my brain on the fritz worse than it usually is, so how/where to download that CPU-Z thing isn't making itself known to me. In part because I didn't see the usual signs of where the download link is.

Every time I get a message about this topic, it startles me. The e-mail heading reads I want to cannibalize my mother .... It is better after I open the message and the boldface goes away.

That's freakin' hilarious. XD

[frice2000]

Directish Download Link: http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/1.58-setup-en.exe

[Cheb]

The closer are the ages of these two systems, the higher is your chance. If they are just just a generation away from each other (around 3 years) then abandon all hope you who enters here.

Let's see. Since 2000, RAM has these generations:
SDRAM (66, 100 or 133 MHz)
DDR
DDR-II
DDR-III
.. and that not counting the notebook versions of these, shorter modules with incompatible sockets (I only met a notebook DDR II).

Inside the same group the memory modules are usually interchangeable. Often with some issues, like one slow module forcing you to bring clock frequency down for all of them, double-channel DDR mode deactivating due to requiring two identical memory modules in specific slots and so on.

Processors have higher chances to have incompatible sockets, as there's another factor at play (Intel vs AMD, each having its own set of standards).
And when the CPUs are compatible they are often similar enough that replacing one with another one isn't worth the effort.
Afair, the most long-lived one was Socket 775 from Intel. Starting with the ancient Pentium IVs and Celerons and ending with the more recent but aging Core 2 Duo.

[PCHeintz72]

Inside the same group the memory modules are usually interchangeable. Often with some issues, like one slow module forcing you to bring clock frequency down for all of them, double-channel DDR mode deactivating due to requiring two identical memory modules in specific slots and so on.

Actually... a lot of MB's only accept a specific *range* of speeds... outside the range and bad things start to happen.

And I have run into notebook DDR3

Processors have higher chances to have incompatible sockets, as there's another factor at play (Intel vs AMD, each having its own set of standards).
And when the CPUs are compatible they are often similar enough that replacing one with another one isn't worth the effort.
Afair, the most long-lived one was Socket 775 from Intel. Starting with the ancient Pentium IVs and Celerons and ending with the more recent but aging Core 2 Duo.

True as far as there being a lot of sockets and even slots out there...

There are of couse litterally hundreds of CPUs out there in the PC compatile world, and it would be almost more accurate to say that for any CPU, it follows their respective family of processors.

As for longest lived or most used... depends on how you figure. For example, I could argue that claim and say it is the 486 socket that would qualify... housing everything from 20mhz through 133 for 486 class, then there were the pentium retrofitters... Almost every CPU maker used the 486 socket for something at one point or another... TI, Cyrix, AMD, Intel, etc...