ANC

A New Computer

Published on February 24, 2005 By Danny Bassette In Personal Computing

       As mentioned in an earlier blog, my computer died (or to be more technical the operation system hard drive went bad). Well it looks like I've gotten around that problem.
       I got a new computer for my birthday (or at least that was the excuse, even if my birthday is still a few weeks away, although I suspect I could have used any excuse on my parents but that's a completly different story, someone remind me to write that once my computer is happy). Is a pentium 4, 2.8 ghz, 512mb ram, 80gb hard drive. As I'm typing this the hard drive is formating so I can install windows.
       Getting it ready to use was actually a bit of a challenge (and it's not all ready now even). The system came without hard or cd drives. No shipping mistake or anything, this was the way it was ordered. It was cheaper to get a hard drive from the store and reuse a cd from another computer, so that's what was done. Just means I had to open it up and fiddle with things right off the bat.
       The insides of computers have changed some since I was last in them, although the basics are still the same. The case opened up nice, which is always a plus. The inside was nicely laid out too, and instead of screwing in the drives there are these sliding things that lock it in. Same idea for the pci slots in back, instead of screws there is a plastic latch. And the covers that get popped out for new drives have places for screws so you could reattach them. Nothing radical, but some nice little touches all the same.
       Then starts the problems. I'm planning to have four hard drives and one cd writer in this machine, so I know I needed an ata controller. I got that in and was plugging things in when I realized there wasn't enough power plugs for the drives. I can power three devices, so I left two of the hard drives off. Long term I need to find a way to power them, but I figured it would be fine for now, since I want to install windows tonight.
       Next problem shows up when I boot the computer: the lines for the power, reset, and on light are swapped around. Power won't turn on the computer, but reset will. I'm assuming power will reset the computer, but I'm not going to try that right now

It starts into the bootup and can't find the cd drive. Turns out the ata controller isn't working properly. So turn it off, swap the cables around, then reboot and try again. Also fixed the on light wires, I think I know how to fix the power/reset switch but that's a low priority (and might be left just for fun

). This time it works and I can install windows.
       Windows installs fine now, but once it's up and running it claims it can't find the usb, video, raid, pci, and ethernet controller. Ignore that I'm reading this off the screen (video) while using the mouse (usb). So the system is clearly confused.
       Once I get things straightened out I'm sure it will be a fine computer, just going to take a bit to get it there. Most of the problems seem to be a simple case of finding the right driver (I'm sure they are on one of the cd's that is lying around). Although power for the hard drives could be tricky... For now the computer can sit there nekid (I had to take off the panels to get inside it and figure I'll have to go back in tomorrow so for now it's still nekid), and hopefully it will be all happy in a day or two.
       Assuming anyone cares (and even if you don't), I'll update again once things are working better (or have exploded in a giant fireball of death and destruction, er, which I guess means I won't update then).

Comments (Page 2)

Phoon

on Mar 02, 2005

Another case of someone buying a Pentium

Not true Kona.. I have seen similar issues with an AMD Processor system on a motherboard with Raid. The fix is buried REAL deep in the manual but requires that you run a utility from the CD to create a floppy which runs another utility to give windows the proper drivers for the RAID controller.

And they wonder why people buy Macs
People buy Macs when they dont want windows. This person wants Windows. Great answer!

Dr Guy

on Mar 02, 2005

Thanks for the link over here Danny. I was away for a week, so I missed this post, but I am glad to see someone told you about the Power Splitters. Cheap!

I would offer one more bit of advice. Buy another fan for the case. With 4 hard drives, it is sure to heat up, and you can never have too much air flow. All in all, tho, it sounds like you are building a dream machine! You can get the DVD and Hardware decoder as money allows. And dont forget the Mega sound card and nVidia Video adapter!

Have fun with it.

Double Zero

on Mar 02, 2005

Thank you Phoon for the clarification but I fear your opening up a can of worms, some people just will not "broaden their horizons" and I dont mean any particular individual, there are many.

But hey, "to each his own" right?

::sighs::
Zero.

kona0197

on Mar 02, 2005

Never have heard of a problem like this while using a Nvidia Nforce based system...

Thank you Phoon for the clarification but I fear your opening up a can of worms, some people just will not "broaden their horizons" and I dont mean any particular individual, there are many.

I have used Intel before thank you...

Danny Bassette

on Mar 02, 2005

Double Zero: Yep, I am glad to have all my disk space back

Dr. Guy: The case already has three fans, one positioned just for the hard drives, so I don't think I'll need a fourth, but good idea all the same. Don't need a fancy sound card either, so long as it's better then the system speaker thingy I'm happy

I do care more about graphics, although the motherboards built in accelerator seems to be working well enough for my needs. For now I'm happy with what I have, perhaps someday I'll get more things to stick into it, but not today.

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