The joy of rolling your own...

[Ray Minich]

About a month ago I was given a non-functioning E-Machine desktop PC.

Motherboard had a Intel Celeron D325 CPU, ands 256 mB DDR memory stick.

Tried another power supply, no joy.
Tried various other ploys, no joy, dead unit.

Purchased new Celeron D325 CPU ($37) from OutletPC, waited week for delivery.
Intalled new CPU, no joy.

Ordered new Biostar 945GC-M4 motherboard from OutletPC ($60) to match the new CPU.
Waited week for delivery. Assembled new components...
Uh-oh. New motherboard has 24 pin power supply connector (all my spares are 20 pin),
and the DDR memory stick from the original motherboard doesn't fit.

Off to Staples. Bought new 430 watt power supply ($90), new 500 gB
SATA drive ($70), and two PNY DDR2 1gB memory sticks ($75).

Back to shop. Assembled all the goodies, using the new Celeron CPU from OutletPC.
Nothing works. Keyboard flashes at post but no video from on board VGA port.

Attached speaker to board speaker pins.
Installed PCI video card to look for video.

Now I get POST video and a beep, but everything stalls after POST.

Tried everything, reset BIOS, swap Ram sticks, use one ram stick instead of two,
reseated CPU, reseated power connections, to no avail.
Board would misbehave differently each time. Did this over a weekend.

Noticed that PNY had no direct callout for a DDR2 Simm to the Biostar motherboard. Suspected I had the wrong memory. Ordered Crucial memory spec'd by Biostar for the motherboard from Outlet PC ($65). Waited week. Returned PNY memory to Staples.

Memory arrives, still no joy. Poor time to quit smoking.

I gave up...
Ordered new CPU, Motherboard, memory combo package from Outlet PC ($150).

Finally called Biostar and got an RMA for the motherboard.

So, I figured, as long as the board is going back to Biostar, why not try the
original CPU from the dead board. If the chip fries the board it's a problem they
can fix.

The board fired up, and now has a new install of WinXP SP3 running nicely.
And I have a new combo package on order.

I did find out that if you are trying to install XP on a SATA drive you need to
install from at least a WinXP SP2 install, (slipstreaming SP2 onto an XP install disk is
relatively easy) else the SATA drive can't be found.

[Richard Shatz]

Ray,
I used to live in Williamsport, PA.
Now I know what people in Bradford do for fun.
I just bought an Acer laptop at Staples.
320 gig HD
4 gig ram
Athlon 2.2 gig dual core processor
Wireless card
A bunch of other stuff
Under $400
Lots of joy considering my first windows 95 computer cost almost $4k

[Dave Potter]

Interesting saga.

I looked for a question....any question. Didn't find one. So, the assumption is that you're just playing around with legacy hardware/software.

Have fun...(?)

My closets/drawers/yada, yada are filled up with "legacy" stuff that will never see service again. Hard as it is, we eventually have to bite the bullet and let the legacy stuff go.

Let it go, Ray. It's not worth the struggle.

[Ray Minich]

My friend has a "Bernoulli Box". Now that's legacy.

Mid 1984;

Purchased IBM PC XT with 256k on mobo, 384k on AST 6 pak plus card, 10 mB HDD, 360K FDD, MDA card and monitor, CGA card and monitor, Epson 80 column printer, and a (mouse) tablet.

Intended for use as CAD system.

$5950.00