More stupid computer progress drivel

[miko2]

Let's see... got home, installed the hard drive. I stripped one or two of the screws, they stripped very easily, or maybe I'm not using the proper screws? Hard to say, all I know is I got three screws in, one of them held for sure, another mostly held, the third is probably stripped but I left it in and the hard drive feels secured. Problem one solved.

Jumpers... I realized I not only had the manual, but a nifty sticker diagraming the motherboard that I could place on my computer... I put it on the bottom, so if you lay the computer down to work on it (as I'm doing) you can easily read it. I also saw that the jumpers were identified on the motherboard as well, so it was easy to figure out where the speaker jumper went (for example) and the plugs all have little arrows that (I certainly assume) point to where pin #1 goes. So I have the speakers, start button, start led, and hard drive/ide led hooked up.

Next I figured out where the front USB port plugs hooked up. This was slightly confusing, since there was a four-pin plug, plus a single ground plug, but one of the pins in the four-pin plug is already a ground, and the pins on the mobo contained five pins on one (room for the second ground) but only four pins on the other. Well, since the main plug has a ground, I guess the extra ground isn't that important.

My next problem was trying to figure out where the sound plugs went... I had a bunch of single plugs grouped together, including left ear, right ear, mic, ground, that sort of thing... but I couldn't for the life of me figure out where they could plug into the motherboard. Finally I realized that I didn't actually have any sound/mic slots in the front of the case, so these wires didn't attach to anything on that end, either. They serve no purpose, and I don't need to plug them into anything, which is good because it seems I couldn't if I wanted to.

Okay! We're rolling now! Got the power plugged in, and the back fan. So far as I can tell, I'm down to hooking up the drives and slaving them correctly, and then putting in my neon light. But the drives are tricky... my cool yellow rounded ide cable doesn't stretch from the floppy to the cd-r drive. I don't really know if the cd-r drive is slaved correctly, either... I'd assume so. Don't I want the primary ide to go to the floppy first, or does it matter? Can I even slave a floppy drive? It doesn't appear to have jumpers. Can I put the hard drive and the floppy on one cable, and the cd-r on the other? because that would make it easy, the hard drive and floppy are next to each other. And I really need a second rounded pretty-color IDE cable. The one I have is an ATA100/133 ide cable... I don't really know what that is, but I notice that the flat ide cable that came with the mother board has one pin hole filled in, and so it can attach to my hard drive but not my floppy or the cd-r which are not missing a pin in the middle. So I guess that's just for hard drives then? The extra-long blue rounded ide cable I bought for my full tower also has a pin hole in the center filled in, and it's just an ATA100 cable, so is that the difference?

Probably I'll need to move the cd-r down a bay or three to make things easier. I have it in the top bay because that's where cd-r and cd-rw drives always seem to be. ^_^

Oh well, it's 3:35 am so maybe I'll stop here for now. ^_^

In other news... Lord of the Rings dvd is out. ^_^ I haven't watched mine yet, obviously, been too busy tonight.

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Addendum...

Okay, I moved the cd-r drive down three bays. All the drives are right next to each other now.

I realized that the floppy has a smaller cable, and it's own connection to the motherboard. I figured out why one end is designed slightly differently (also with one pin hole filled), to keep you from plugging the wrong end into the floppy.

I got my yellow ide cable hooked up, with the cd-r as the slave and the hard drive as the master. I hope the cd-r jumpers are hooked up right.

I connected all the power cords. I got my flashing neon light hooked up to the power too.

I think it's all ready to turn on, but I'm a little afraid to do that. ^_^ Maybe I should wait for Mike to inspect it first? But I'm pretty sure I got everything hooked up right.

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Addendum Addendum

I decided to plug it in and start it up.

I realize now that I shouldn't have plugged everything in before trying to start it... more things to troubleshoot or go wrong. And apparently the cd-r should be connected to the secondary ide slot, rather than slaved to the same cable as the hard drive? In any case, nothing was happening so I disconnected the cd-r, and now at least something's happening... several times it didn't even do a memory check... a couple more times it got past the memory check, then stopped... one time it attempted to boot and then asked for a system disk, so that's what it's supposed to do, but I'm not sure why it didn't do that on the first try. So now I get to trouble shoot, and read a lot of online stuff to help me do that... and also probably ask Mike for help, on a day that he's not working. ^_^

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Addendum Addendum Addendum

Tried a couple more times, it seems to want to boot every time now. I think that's a good sign... hopefully no real problems here. I need a seperate cable for my cd-r drive, and then I can think about installing stuff? Or do I need to do anything like partition the hard drive?

What I need to do is go to bed. ^_^