My Name is Stray...

HELLO READERS!

I have come to that time in my life when I face myself in the mirror and finally have to admit:

Hi. I'm Stray. And I am a Computer Nerd.

I used to want to be a Train driver. then I was going to be An Astronaut. A BBC Cameraman. A Motorcycle Racer! A Rock Legend!! A. Radiographer! (Hang on...I actually did that last one...)

But My name is Stray. And I am a Computer Nerd.

I am trying to build a PC out of bits left over from previous upgrades, bits bought off eBay and other odds and sods.


And this is My Story.


The aim is to get a new, higher spec PC on the cheap.

This would enable me to do my acounts much more efficiently. Nothing to do with wanting to play Halflife 2 and Doom 3 without having to go and make a cup of tea while waiting for the game to load.

Certainly not.


Here'a what I've done so far;

I scrounged a big case from the Nuclear Medicine imagining system at work following a recent upgrade. They didn't want it, honest!


Cost: NOTHING. Result! Rather like this one:

I have taken the motherboard out along with the Jazz Drive (too many notes), graphics cards, SCSI cards out etc. This required a SCREWDRIVER. Luckily I already had one so I don't have to add this to the cost. Phew!



I installed a Gigabyte 7vm400AM-RZ with a AMD Athlon XP2800 processor bought off Ebay for .£47 + £9.50 P+P. So that it wouldn't forget that it was supposed to be a computer, as opposed to a speedboat or a hairdryer, I also installed 512 MB of Crucial memory bought off eBay for £18.01 + £5.85 P+P. Also a 300W power supply (eBay £2.00 + £4.50 P+P) . All this required a SCREWDRIVER too, but to keep the cost down, I used the same one I had already used for the taking bits out bit.

Sexy mother(board)

I actually bought this about 6 months ago, but Mrs Photon said I wasn't allowed to put the PC together until the hall and landing were wallpapered. Who the hell does she think she's talking to? I'm a MAN. And I'm from the NORTH. Do you think I'm going to be told whst to do?

Anyway now that I've wallpapered the hall and landing I can put the PC together.

I had left the original 9GB hard drive in and connected this to the motherboard. All seemed well; connected up to the front panel, the reset buttons and power buttons work OK but the LEDs don’t. Loaded up an old version of Windows 98 from the a previous PC and it loaded and seem to run OK.

So, seeing as the second hand MB seemed OK, I spent some more money.

Blimey!

From Dabs.com I bought an OEM version of Win XP and a Samsung 250GB HDD for £100.44 (free delivery) and another 512MB Ram from eBay for £19+£1 P+P.

Hard drive. What you looking at?

The Plan is to load up WinXP, then transplant the graphics card, sound card, DVD burner, 120 GB HDD from my current Compaq PC, maybe the CD burner currently in the Tiny or another DVD ROM drive (from the Compaq or the original Tiny) and have a shit hot PC for minmal cost. If it all hangs together I might even treat myself to a LCD monitor. And I have some half decent Yamaha PC speakers upstairs in the loft.

However the HDD came without any leads.

Bother.

Bought a power/data lead for the HDD yesterday from maplins (£2.50) and today. with some excitement set about loading Windows XP.

First I installed the hard drive, fitted the lead. Started the PC and it boots from the CD, goes through loading a load of stuff from the CD, but then when it starts to load Windows it tells me it can’t detect a HDD and goes no further.

Bugger.

By going into Setup at bootup I have tried to establish that it is set up for a SATA HDD (the original was an IDE) but it doesn’t seem to be detected in the BIOS either. SATA is a newer and supposedly better standard for HDDs than the older IDE.

I have updated the BIOS via floppy with a download from the Gigabyte website, and this has made no difference. I have put the jumper on the HDD which limits the data rate to 1.5 GBs. I have tried a different spur from the power supply. I have detached and reattached the SATA cable. I have tried it on the SATA 1 connection in the motherboard intead of the SATA0.

I can’t tell whether the HDD is getting a power supply: I can feel slight vibration from it but this could be from the system or CPU fan via the case. Or maybe I'm just a little excited.

It could be a faulty data/power lead. This would be the simplest option and the cheapest, so I will try and change it at Maplins. Otherwise there seems to be a problem. It could be a faulty HDD but I have no way of testing this.

If I can’t get it working, another option is to backup photo and audio from the 120GB HDD currently in the Compaq and transplant it to the new box. Load XP on to that and then maybe get hold of a s/h IDE drive from eBay?

But I really should get the SATA one working if possible; it is a highly recommended drive and should perform much better than a IDE one.

So the plan: replace the power/data cable

Scour techy bulletin boards for ideas.

Cost so far: £209.79

NOTE: from the MB manual I read: “it is recommended to use SATA 1.5 GB/s hard drives”, so maybe I need to leave the jumper on. I should check that I am putting it in the right position! Note: The jumper in question is not one of those woolly things you used to get for Christmas but a tiny connector which fits on the HDD and chenges the way it is recognised by the computer.

Also should I try and clear CMOS to default values via the CMOS jumper? See Page 33 of the manual.

Try Ctrl and F1 in BIOS to see if there are any other options

Check Bios version: looking at the manual maybe this didn’t upgrade correctly.

See page 89 of manual re setting up RAID; could this be relevant to recognising a SATA disc, although elsewhere you get the impression that it should be detected automatically. Press TAB on boot up and see what happens!