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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Street Walker who wrote (2223)	8/31/1998 8:32:00 PM
From: Len	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14778

Don't know why they charge so much at the stores for them to put it in, it was so simple. Like most things nowadays, they take advantage of the majority of people who are either too scared to venture inside the box, or haven't the time to deal with it. And this is where the profit is, with profit margins on merchandise being as thin as they are. Okay, what's the hard part of building your own? When I opened up my case, it looked like the motherboard was just screwed into the case, then the harddrive and CD Rom were bolted in and hooked to the motherboard, and then the graphics cards. Oh, of coarse the power supply had to be connected. Am I missing something? The only thing I want to avoid is more cuts<g>. You've found it. Keeping from cutting yourself.<g> There are cases you can buy that have all internal edges curled, so no sharp edges are present to slice you up. But even I end up with minor cuts and abrasions when I hurry, or don't take one moment to plan what I'm gonna do next. Also, make sure you buy a case that allows both sides to be removed, or at least slide out. (see next paragraph) And you pretty much have it down as to what's involved. Just let me add that if you start from scratch, it is best to get the floppy, HD and CD installed first. Makes it much easier to get both sides of screws tightened before you screw in the backplate that the mobo is installed on. Make note also of the spacers keeping the mobo from touching any bare metal. There are a couple of brass ones that you screw through the mobo into, and there are a handful of nylon spaces that give the mobo support at the corners and a couple of other points more in the middle of the mobo. This is twofold. First, they again keep the mobo off the bare metal case. Secondly, they keep the mobo from bowing when you push down on cards, RAM, power connectors, etc. Without them, you can suffer hairline cracks in the board's connection highways, which will show up not today, but maybe down the road a few weeks or few months. These are very hard to diagnose, also. Bottom line? Treat the mobo as if it's a baby. Don't go overboard, just be careful. And always remember to discharge the static electricity from your body before you touch ANY component. It only takes 30 volts or so to blow a mobo, video or other card, etc. Touching bare metal will do the trick. Also, read any instructions that come with each component before you do anything. As simple as it sounds, lots of us (me included) will think something is real obvious, and go at it without doing the brief reading necessary, and screw something up, or at least have to tear things down and do something over. You'll also probably have to set a couple of jumpers or switches on whichever mobo you get, but here again, instructions will be provided. Quite simple. Re: the chip and fan.....Chances are, the chip you buy will have a fan attached already. If not, the fan will have instructions. It's a breeze. Same for attaching it to the mobo. P2 chips use a slot instead of a socket, which is quite similar to the cards you've installed. The P2 cartridge just slips right down into the slot, with the outer edges of the cartridge kind of saddling the slot on the mobo. You'll also have instructions to place the chip 'support' on the mobo, using two posts that slip right into two holes already in the the mobo. I don't even use mine, but that's your call. If your box isn't going to be moved around alot, you can do w/o it. But, you might want to go with the support, just to see how it's done. You can easily take it off. Hope all this helps.

To: Street Walker who wrote (2223)	9/1/1998 1:51:00 PM
From: halfscot	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14778

Street Walker: Because of you and others on this great thread I just finished building my own computer this weekend and I'm no geek (vbg) by any stretch of the imagination. It has been a very frustrating, albeit very rewarding experience. My previous system was a P133 w/64MB of RAM and my new system is a Celeron 266 overclocked to 400 . . . and it screams when compared to my old system. Background: I use my computer primarily for my work but also use it for personal and entertainment, read games, purposes. I found my old computer starting to get long in the tooth after it seemed so much faster than my old 386. I started out wanting a better video card after I loaded Pro Pinball and found it wouldn't run on my system. My knowledge of computers was minimal so I started reading a lot, beginning with this thread. I learned of the newer AGP cards and decided to order the new Matrox Mystique G200 since it seemed you got so much performance for the money, not realizing you had to plug it into a mobo w/AGP port. It was at this point I decided to build my own computer from the ground up. After visiting a few of my local vendors, Best Buy and Fry's, I decided to buy most of my components over the net, or at least find places in my local area over the net, where the best prices were offered for the components I wanted. Components and prices: Abit BH6 mobo. $119.00 Celeron 266-Retail in box w/fan. $112.00 including tax, since I bought it in Ca., and freight. Should have waited longer. Five days later it was about $20 less. 64MB PC100 SDRAM non ECC, no EEPROM. $93.00. Lifetime warranty. Anecdotally I felt the longer the warranty the higher the quality but just guessing here. Very confusing trying to determine whether to ECC or not, EEPROM, etc. Maxtor Diamond Max 5.7 GB HD $175.00 (One of few purchases at a store) Matrox Millenium G200 OEM $118.00 Couldn't yet get the Mystique so went w/Millenium instead. Monster Sound M80 $59.00 w/$20.00 rebate. Enlight ATX mid-tower 250W PS, extra cooling fan. $65.00 Everything else I transferred over from my old computer. Assembly was much easier than I envisioned-just plug everything in and turn it on-although I was much more cautious than it sounds and went very slowly. The Enlight case was a pleasure to work with. I love the slide in/out cages and drive mounts. Three areas of frustration: Getting the HD properly set up,issues w/the BIOS recognizing my CD as a second master, and getting the BIOS to recognize my fax modem. Before shutting down my old computer I used DiskClone to copy my old HD onto my new Maxtor HD. DiskClone supposedly formats the new HD but I discovered later this to not be the case. I forget the problem I was having but I called Maxtor technical support and they were extremely helpful in helping me get the new HD partitioned and formatted to where I could then use DiskClone to copy my old HD onto my new HD. Using DiskClone allowed me to copy over my entire 750 MB of data in just a few minutes. I set up the CD with its own IDE port so it wouldn't interfere with the HD's performance and vice versa. I expected the mobo's BIOS to recognize this as such. When I turned on the computer and went into BIOS and used the default settings, as recommended, and asked it to recognize the CD it wouldn't do so-at least like it would the HD. I went through every combination imaginable but when I saved the configuration and booted up it always displayed a message that it couldn't recognize the second master drive. Funny because I could go ahead and boot up and use the CD anyway. What was more confounding was Windows 98 not properly installing my U.S. Robotics 56K modem. It would see it and say it was properly working but when I tried to call out Windows would tell me the modem wasn't working, etc. I kept going into Device Manager and finally determined there were IRQ and COM port conflicts which I couldn't resolve by assigning new, unused, ones. I was at my wits end by now and well into Sunday when I decided to experiment with the BIOS. I disabled the USB ports on the mobo, since I wasn't using them anyway, and I disabled one of the two serial ports. I deduced the serial port was the one for the mouse which was right next to one not being used so I disable that one. Well when I rebooted this time everything worked. The CD was recognized as the secondary master and the fax/modem was automatically assigned to the proper locations. I don't know exactly what I did to get it working but I wasn't complaining. Once I got all my drivers installed and my peripherals working I started playing with overclocking the CPU. This turned out to be a breeze with the BH6. I took a chance ordering the Celeron knowing I may not get the one with the newer stepping that supposedly allowed easier and more stable overclocking,. I supposedly stood a much better chance of getting the newer stepping with the boxed version, hence I ordered the boxed. Sure enough I got the stepping 0 instead of stepping 1 and, sure enough, I couldn't get it to run at 400 MHz . . . that is until I turned up the voltage to 2.2 volts. I read one post on this thread referring to turning up the voltage to 2.3 volts and I did too and it worked but I thought less is more in this case so I tried it at 2.2 volts and it works great. I'm not too concerned about the heat. If it pukes...well I've only spent about $100 for a CPU that performs like one for hundreds more and the newer 300A seems to have even more potential while leaving it at 2.0 volts. I have not yet had even one lockup or any problem associated with running at this speed or voltage. When I run Forsaken at 800X600 with the highest texture mapping, etc. it says I'm at 76 FPS-not bad! Sorry for the long post. I thought you might like to hear the experience of one who not too many years ago was scared to death to even turn on a computer much less build one. halfscot