New computer!


I built our newest computer last night. It’s so nice to have a fast machine again. I still don’t have my laptop back. I’ll sure be glad when I do, but in the mean time now, I’ve got a decent machine to use!

Perhaps I’ll get some kind of posting of pictures done.

As for what I built, it was a starter kit which consisted of a case, fan, motherboard [for an AMD Athlon], floppy drive, and ethernet, usb, serial, power,etc. those little things. It came with built in sound and a small video card. And a keyboard and mouse.

I had to put in the rest of it, purchased separately. So we got a CDRW a few months back, for the old computer since the CD ROM died suddenly. The CDRW was slated to go into the new machine when we got it built. So then we had to get Memory, a Processor, a hard drive, modem, and whatever else we wanted.

I ended up having to use my old video card, from the old machine. We’ll get a better one some time. But the thing was –the video card wouldn’t work. No matter what I did. The old one I tried it, and it worked instantly.

But then I had trouble installing the OS. Ended up the mouse connection was the problem. I took that off the computer, and plugged in a USB mouse I have for the laptop. Everything installed smoothly after that. But that wasn’t until the third attempt to get it going, with something differnet flagging as the problem each time. Ugh.

So today was the day for the SP1 download and all those updates. Fun, fun, fun. Actually, it’s not so bad. The machine is fast and happy. So am I therefore, happy, that is.

The processor is an Athlon XP 2100+, and we have 512 of DDR 2100 Memory, a tiny 40 Gig hard drive (our old one was a 6 gig) oh, and no sound. The thing just won’t make any sounds. I’ll have to snag my sound card from the old machine now too. Well, we had planned on rebuilding that computer, but now it’s not so much worth it. Figures. The video card and sound card were good for the late 90’s. They’d work fine in a lesser computer, though good, as we intended to make that one. So we’ll have to shell out some money for this new computer, to replace these non-intended items.

Ah, the beauty of a starter kit. It gets you started, sure, that’s it. Next time we are doing this whole thing ourselves. Well, I put it together, Frank buys the stuff.

But hey, I like it. It’s not the fanciest case on earth, but it’s big enough, mid-size tower can hold quite a bit more, and it’s pretty in it’s own way. Just can’t compare it to any other case.

So I need to round up somemore software and get it loaded. Bye!


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