Re: Building a PC

On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 20:46:24 -0800, Craig Koller
<cwkoller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> chose to bless us with the following
wisdom:

>Built a PC around an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo today. It was a project
>initiated four months ago by my father-in-law for my 11-year-old son,
>whereby they acquired the pieces one by one at Fry's - first the case,
>then the mobo - but they needed some help toward the end when they
>realized they really had to cobble together a working machine.
>
>The Mac guy steps in.
>
>After a quick stop at pricewatch.com, I realized newegg had all the
>components I'd need to complete this machine at a good price.

NewEgg Rules! 8)

> With the
>budget of $600 for the remaining components, I picked up an Athlon
>3200+ CPU, a gig of Corsair RAM, a 250GB WD SATA drive, a Sapphire
>X800GT 256MB card (shoulda gotten the GTO, I know), a DVD writer and a
>few other accessories. Came to $601 before tax and shipping.
>
>I also had to pick up a copy of Winders, so given my current college
>status (been an EMBA student for the past year) I got the academic
>upgrade from Insight for $79.

I get mine for $10 through IU. I get Office for the same price. 8)

>
>My son did the actual installation under my and my father-in-law's
>supervision and all was pretty simple with the main components. There
>is something kinda cool about watching a kid's face light up when the
>RAM snaps into the socket just right, or the heat sink clicks into
>place.
>
>I wanted to be systematic about everything, but the ASUS mobo manual
>really didn't make it easy.

ASUS actually has some of the better mobo manuals. My BioStar mobo
manual had a jumper setting backwards of how it actually worked on the
board. That was a fun one to figure out!

>The Sapphire directions, the AMD
>directions, they were all pretty cryptic. The capper was when I
>realized my father-in-law didn't have a manual for the case he bought
>from Fry's. It had an Alien on the top of the fan grill but I doubt
>this thing is from Alienware. Much too flimsy.

You can get those alien grills at a lot of places.

>
>So connecting the external connectors, etc. to the mobo was a lesson in
>patience and deductive reasoning.

Usually the plugs are labelled and the mobo manual has a layout for
the pins.

>Wanting my son to have the honor of
>flipping the switch for the first time, we stood back as he pushed the
>button...
>
>...and nothing. I reexamined the diagram and moved the jumpers.
>
>Nothing. One more time.
>
>Click, pop, whirr. OK... but no monitor. Damn.
>
>Stupid me. Forgot the second power connector. The square one that goes
>near the CPU. One more time.
>
>Monitor. Blinky lights. Good.
>
>Looking at the Setup screen, I notice the SATA hard drive isn't showing
>up. The XP CD spins up and I let it go, figuring it'll bark when no
>drive shows up. Instead I get a cryptic mis-installed error message.

Is the SATA controller shut off in the BIOS by some chance? Some mobos
ship with them that way.


>
>Shut down. Pull the SATA power cable and plug in the "classic" power
>connector (confusing that these things have both).

Actually it provides flexibility. And it keeps you from having to run
out and get another part that you forgot. 8)

>
>For the next hour I proceed to stall at the "PCI Devices List" no
>matter what I do. Reset the CMOS, swap cables, even plug in an old ATA
>drive from a Win98 box nearby. Nothing.

Did you try updating the BIOS?

>
>Then I yank out one of the 512 DDR modules and this works with the old
>ATA drive (20 Gigs strong) but not with the SATA drive. But by this
>time, time's running out so I opt for a storage-crippled machine just
>to get up and running with promises to swap in the big drive once Dad
>has time to get to it.

Did you have the RAM in the same color slots? Both in (usually) either
the blue or the black slots? You should.

>
>So Windows installs without much problem. With a few fits and starts we
>get it on the net. Looking in the hardware control panel, I'm greeted
>with about a dozen yellow question marks and proceed to load and or
>download all the drivers for this beast.

They should have been on the CD that came with the mobo.

>
>Total time to first videogame joy? About eight hours. This includes a
>few breaks, but it was probably six solid hours of reading, plugging,
>unplugging, etc. Things have definitely changed since my last ATX
>machine, and they haven't gotten much better. Granted, I'm no genius at
>this stuff, and I may have gotten RAM that wasn't listed on the ASUS
>PDF, but also it appears that flashing the BIOS may fix this problem.
>We'll see tomorrow.

Read the instructions on the ASUS download site. You need to update
the chipset drivers first.

>
>So yeah, my son and I bonded over a Windows PC. But a Dell sure would
>have been easier.

Do you want easy or a strong bond with your son? 8)

> In the meantime my wife's iMac G5 has been invisibly
>free of any troubleshooting attention. While we were muscling our way
>through all this, she and my seven-year-old finished a DVD of compiled
>iMovies for the year.
>
>She thinks our struggle is cute until I tell her I'm swapping this
>thing for her Mac. She points to the linen closet where the blankets
>and pillows are... you know I was just kidding, right?
>
>Happy New Year CSMA.

Happy New Year to you and yours.




--
"The next time you hear an alarming speech about
"global warming" on Earth Day, just remember that the
first Earth Day featured alarms about the danger of a
new ice age."

Thomas Sowell
.