Originally Posted by dukes909
can I make this a decent road bike by replacing most of the components?
Philosophically, you can't MAKE it a decent road bike; by appearances, it already is.
Practically, upgrading won't make sense unless you get great deals and do the work yourself.
If you just gotta have a modern bike, you can probably find one for $400-500 (ebay?) that will be better performing than this bike with $400-500 worth of upgrades.
Like others have said, enjoy it for what it is, fix what's broken and nothing else.