It's Alive!!!

[handslive]

For some time, I've been wanting to upgrade purplejavatroll's tired, old P3-733MHz. Recently, puppytown offered to sell me a nearly unused P4 motherboard (different saga happenin' there) and I decided this was my excuse to get started.

So, I took the motherboard and waited until a sufficient layer of dust had accumulated (and I had a Saturday free to hit the parts store). I made myself a list of things I knew I would need and headed down to BCom (yeah, yeah, better deals elsewhere -- they're close). List was (sort of from memory):

• P4 CPU
• 512 MB RAM -- somewhat slower than optimal so I can steal it for my system when I also buy puppytown's old memory
• Hard drive -- at least a 60 GB
• ATX case

So, I've got a P4 2.4 GHz with 512 MB and an 80 GB drive. Oh, and I almost forgot to get a CD drive, so I decided purplejavatroll needed a CD-RW.

I'm stocked and ready and even the sales guy is pretending to drool over what the resulting system will look like.

I get home and start assembling stuff. Hmmm, the CPU cooling unit is comprised of a retention "bracket" (plastic) which snaps into the motherboard. The heat sink and fan is a single unit which includes a special clip-on clamp that clips to the bracket and snugs the heat sink down to the CPU. There's lots of ways of doing this (as I've since discovered). The cooling unit came from Intel as part of the CPU package. The bracket came with the motherboard.

Unfortunately, one little corner of the bracket was broken, possibly in transit. This means the clip-on can only clip to three of the corners. I pack everything up and head back to BCom hoping that they'll be able to:

• sell replacements
• have a spare kicking around from a previous board that smoked
• sell a completely different cooling unit that doesn't require this bracket (or comes with its own)

You know you're in trouble when the sales guy takes one look at the bracket and, before your mouth has even opened, says, "Shit! Bummer, man!" Their tech support guy was no better: "Maybe you could write to ECS for a replacement?"

I went home and called hellspark, but he didn't have any ideas. I also called (W) who did have some ideas. He called around and sent me to a nearby parts place, but it turned out that lots of people use the phrase "retention bracket" to mean different parts of the assemply. This guy helpfully suggested buying a more expensive cooling unit that would screw down to the board, but (W) pointed out that the new heat sink would probably cost as much as a replacement board.

Then (W) talked to (R), who is a total fiend about hardware, even if he denies it. To my surprise, (R) phoned later in the evening and offered to look at it over the Tuesday holiday. So we arranged for me to come over the following morning.

As it turns out, (R) had never seen an assembly like mine before either. He was gamely telling me I would have to find some other solution when he got the idea of using some wire to "replace" the broken corner of the bracket. Some work with the needle-nose pliers, a little eye-balling of the bracket dimensions, a snippet of plastic tubing shrink-wrapped with a 300 W commercial air dryer (insulation for the wire since it's going to be in contact with the mother board) and suddenly I've got a slightly hacked bracket.

We applied thermal grease to the CPU, clamped the heat sink & fan down, borrowed a PCI video card to plug it into a monitor, and powered it up. The fan was quiet and stable and the CPU climbed up to around 35 C (very reasonable). I thanked him profusely, left him with his family, and headed back home.

I assembled the case and -- no case fan. Ah, well, it was only running at 35 C outside the case. My case with the Athlon XP 1500+ is seldom below 40 C. The case, mind you, not the CPU, which is always hotter.

So I plugged everything in and started the Win98SE install (can't convince her to go with XP yet) with the new PC plugged into my keyboard, mouse and monitor. I did a load of dishes and watched a Highlander episode rerun while the 80 GB drive formatted. (oof) But what's this? No drivers for the on-board LAN or audio? Referring to the manual reveals that there should be a CD, which I don't have. Note that the list above also did not include a floppy drive. When was the last time I needed a floppy drive?

So I shuffle cases around to get my box setup where her old box is (I need the CD-RW from my box), download drivers and burn them to CD. Oops. Win98 doesn't have an unzip utility. Take the CD back and burn WinZip onto it. Install the drivers. Yay!

Then we get down to serious install madness. I don't install everything purplejavatroll has on the old machine. Lots of out-of-date stuff. Games we never play anymore. Old versions of Netscape. Two previous installs of Win98 (no really).

I've now got everything critical installed tonight and she's using it to send e-mail as I speak. It boots faster than any PC I've used. I don't even get time to see the memory check and startup before it's at the Windows splash screen and then (blip) it's up. I feel slow now. :-)

Remaining items:

• install flatbed scanner drivers and software
• install datapad drivers and software

Uh, and play test Morrowind for proper drool quotient with GeForce 4 installed on this thing. :-)

Comments

[puppytown.livejournal.com]

Eek! I probably have that CD somewhere at home. :( So sorry! I can sell you the RAM sometime after we come back from Australia!

[handslive.livejournal.com]

Not a big deal at all. I think it makes an amusing story for one thing. In any case, I had the opportunity to check the box before I took it and confirm that everything was inside (and motherboards have been coming with CDs for some time just to support specific chipsets, AGP drivers, etc.). I should know better.

And I got it working, so happy ending. The CD will be handy (might have AGP specific drivers or monitoring software) and I can get it when you get back.