I got everything except the sound card and speakers on Friday, so I spent friday night assembling it all and installing Windows XP. It went surprisingly smoothly, with a few exceptions.
The first problem was that I used the wrong screws to install the motherboard into the case. The directions said use the “philips head screws” but of course all the screws are philips head, so which ones? I tried some until I found ones that fit, and went with those. Of course, when I got to the hard drive installation, it said to use the “special screws” (who writes these instructions?) and it turned out that those were the ones that I had used on the motherboard, so I had to take them all out. Once I did that, it was smooth sailing.
The computer actually turned on first try, so I was pleased. Everything appeared to be working, until I tried the front USB ports and the card reader, which also connects to the motherboard’s USB connectors. I wasn’t getting any errors, but windows was ignoring both devices. I tried installing the USB bracket that came with the motherboard, and has lights that indicate if it is working or not, and it said things were fine, but still no response from windows. Finally I took out all the connectors for the USB (12 of them) and plugged just the drive in, and that worked fine. So I carefully reinstalled the the 10 pins for the front panel USB ports, and it worked fine after that. Apparently I had mis-installed at least one of the jumpers, and it disabled the entire USB system.
In any case, it all works well, and so I was happy
In other news, the Monitor came today, and took just a few minutes to set it up. It looks really nice, and other than having to setup the screen a bit to fit correctly, it works well.
In major annoyances, Buy.com still hasn’t shipped my sound card and speakers. They’re both on order apparently. It would have been nice if they had let me know before I sent them email asking where my stuff was. There’s no estimate at all on when they will get there either. I’m a bit annoyed, but it isn’t the end of the world. I’m waiting ot activate windows until I have the sound card installed though, so it has the correct configuration set. Windows can get upset if you change the hardware after installing windows. Hopefully it will all come soon, and I can finish putting everything together.
I’m pretty pleased with the performance overall, it starts up really quickly, and installs programs in no time. I haven’t done anything taxing on it so far, but things look good.
I took pictures along the way, but haven’t played with them yet so I can’t put them up here. I will at some point though.
You’re still a geek 🙂