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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC )
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To: Street Walker who wrote (1407)6/19/1998 2:24:00 AM
From: Zeuspaul  Read Replies (5) of 14778
 
The Compaq Alteration

This is not my dream machine but I had to do something. I am sharing my backup computer with my wife, kid and his girlfriend. I have to wait in line.

I opted for locally available components to expedite the process. Building this machine will be good practice for my not to distant BX SCSI machine.

Components now in hand.

Antec KS 188 full tower case with 300 watt PS. ($129) Both side panels come off ( need to take out a couple of screws). There is a mainboard mount that slides out. One puts it on the desk and then mounts the motherboard and video card. There are a lot of screws and none are identified. No instructions.

Iwill XA 100 super socket seven mainboard AGP slot, 4 PCI and two ISA. The board uses an Aladin ? chipset. It is the only board that uses this chipset in Anand's current super seven boards.

It seems as though reviewers get special treatment. The package Anand received is not the same as the one I received. He indicated that there was a manual. I got a quick reference guide. It might work for a pro but not for me. The quick reference guide refers to the manual on the CDROM and suggests that you put it in your CDROM drive to read it! I would be rather peeved right now if I did not have a second computer for reading the manual.

I chose the Iwill mobo for a couple of reasons. 1) It was the only super seven board that Fry's had. 2) The bios does what I want it to do. Fry's had a copy of the manual. I was able to read it before I purchased the board. I read several manuals of the available boards. Most boards with the Award bios did not indicate an option for selecting various IDE drives as boot drives. The Iwill board has AMI bios and offers a large selection of boot options.

Matrox Productiva G100 8 MB AGP video card I wanted AGP as it saves a PCI slot. I could not turn down an 8 MB video card from Matrox for $89. I bought faith in driver support and high resolution 2D graphics. This card will drive 21 in monitors to 1600 x 1200 at 16 mil colors.

Turtle Beach Daytona PCI sound card $59 It was the only PCI sound card in stock. Someone mentioned Turtle beach cards were good for voice recognition.

Diamond Supra Express modem $120 I was going to buy US Robotics because of the name. I read the boxes and the US Robotics cards did not have universal support. The Diamond card supports 56k ITU standard (V.90) and K56flex. Since One of my ISP's uses Kflex and the other X2 the universal support of the Diamond card will benefit me.

Upgrade assembly in progress. It will not resemble a Compaq anymore.



  Pentium 200 MMX                 have from Compaq
  Iwill XA 100                    $129
  IBM 6.4 GB Deskstar 8           $214
  32 MB RAM                       have will add more if works)
  Antec KS 188 full tower         $129
  Diamond Supra Express           $120
  Matrox G100 8 MB AGP             $89
  CDROM floppy mouse keyboard     have from Compaq
  software                        have own collection
  Turtle Beach PCI sound           $59
                                   _______
          
                           total   $740


Zeuspaul

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