New Machine

So, I got the new computer components.

Motherboard, CPU, ram.

I planned ahead and was still worried, as always.

So, the worries of course were that the RAM would not work properly, that I would break the CPU when I placed the HSF on it, that I would short something/everything.

As it turned out, putting the HSF on the cpu was a strain involving sweat a flathead screwdriver and a bit of praying. So far so good.

I removed my old motherboard, inserted the new one. That involved a bit of force to get it seated correctly.

I had to move the CDROM and CDRW down in order to have them reach the with the IDE cable.

Plugged everything in and hit the power.

It ran through the POST, and recognized the RAM. And popped into the BIOS. Recognized the HDD and the CPU. I also noticed that the BIOS was flashed already, which saved me having to attempt something else that might go wrong.

And as Win2K starts to boot... I get a blue screen with a fatal stop error.

After a bit of checking, it turns out that I had failed to consider that the controller for the HDD wouldn't be the same on the new motherboard.

Thus follow a great many attempts to do as little as possible to get it to work properly. Needless to say, none of those things worked.

So, I pulled out my old motherboard, rested it on some ESD placed on the edge of my case and haphazardly connected the old video card, IDE cable, power, mouse, keyboard... and realized that I needed to be able to power it on! Which meant trying to stretch the little cable that connects to the motherboard to the other motherboard... it didn't quite reach. So I had to hold the old motherboard diagonally and connect it, then boot.

And the old machine wouldn't boot. After a couple of worries, I noticed that the RAM hadn't seated properly since I had been trying to put it in without a solid surface underneath. Fixed that.

After some fiddling, fixed what I needed and unplugged it all and set to plugging in the new motherboard.

Noticed that the prongs on IDE slot were bent, had to try and fiddle with getting the cable on properly without breaking them.

Got that and it booted!

Woot!

So it works now, speed is good.
No disasters, a little bit of blood spilt.

I can't get my old video resolution of 1192x### due to the drivers I am using. Thinking of switching to another set because I tend to find 1280x1024 a little small.

Have to run some things in OpenGL instead of Direct3D. But it works.

Let the games begin.

Posted by hugin at Junio 22, 2003 05:10 PM