By Ford Bond, MOSI Liaison, Tampa PC Users Group
"Sure I have the parts. I can build a computer with spare parts".
Wishful , but, after all, with 15 years of computers and 10 years of upgrading computers, I have boxes of parts. XT parts, 286 parts, 386’s, 486’s, 586’s, Pentiums, etc. There is one box dedicated to abandoned motherboards, another to hard drives. What do I do with an XT hard drive? Well, so much for organization; the other boxes are a jumble of parts. Tens of thousands of dollars invested in parts that are now rendered obsolete. Passed by with cheaper parts and faster parts and tens of thousands of dollars of newer parts. I cringe when I think how much that obsolete memory cost.
Oh well, now is not the time to bemoan the cost of my addictions, but to create a computer. The problem is the word abandoned. Why did I abandon this part or that? They may be dusty, but they look good. Only a few still smell smoky. After all, I now remember which way the cable goes. Why did I put all the parts, including those which were fried, broken and otherwise inoperable into the same boxes. I could have put notes on them even If I couldn’t bear to throw them away. That would be like giving up on children. There must be some future value to these parts. I couldn’t throw them away, not yet anyway. No, not I. Nevertheless, such nostalgia is not getting the computer built.
Oh well, time to assemble parts. I have a motherboard and a WinChip. Great start, but it will only fit into the cases I have with a hammer and drill. Off to the store and $90 dollars for a new case. Oops, I think I better look further. After much searching Jim at MB's says "We have one for $39."
Great! Now for memory; after some looking through the boxes I have two matched 8MB SIMMs, two unmatched 8MB SIMMs and two 4MB SIMMs. If I put the unmatched SIMMs away, I have 24MB. Things are going better. There was reason to keep parts. Small ones anyway; maybe the cases are going to have to go. I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Video cards. OK, what’s that funny slot? Looks like a PCI turned backwards. AG what? Oh! AGP? Now I remember, had one in the Pentium II I built last year. Last year when they were $150. I can hear the sucking sound now. Wonder what they cost now. Oh boy, I can get one for $35 and that includes video out, as well. Now I can bemoan the cost of TruVision and Matrox cards that cost thousands of dollars just to get video out. They now sit lonely and abandoned on shelves in boxes (out of reverence to their cost) because they didn’t like the new chipsets. Maybe one of these days I will rebuild a 386 so that they will work again.
Sound card. Shuffle through the boxes again, and here is a sound blaster and another and another. OK which one of them works? Where oh where have the drivers gone? So many thousands of disks; so little time. OK, drivers located and boards working. Why are they all working? Dim memory says that they worked but were a problem to configure. There must have been some reason for abandoning them. Could it be one set of drivers for three boards? Mysteries will never cease. Chalk it up to middle age dyslexia or early signs of senility.
Hard drives. Now which one shall I choose? Here I have a great selection: MFMs, SCSIs, IGIs— no, that’s genealogy IDEs? Finally, there are two 1.2 GB IDE that look good. Wonder why they are here? I’ll check them out later.
The pile of parts is getting bigger. Is everything here? Time to check it out: case, motherboard, CPU, memory, storage, sound card, and hard drive. Oops, where is the CD, and how can I boot without a floppy drive? Back to the storeroom. Found the 3-1/2 drive and CD but no drivers. Well thank goodness for the Internet. Some time passes, and futile search follows futile search. Why do they make it so hard to find drivers? Is it really a conspiracy to get one to buy new parts rather than find drivers for older CD’s? There are drivers for 12X’s and up but no drivers for my poor little 8X drive. I guess it will remain lonely and abandoned. Back to the shelf and back to the store where I find that CD’s are now only $35 for a 24X. Whoop de do. Why did I spend so much time on the Internet; this is easier than finding a driver.
Back to the pile of parts. Now there are enough parts, and it’s time to check out the motherboard and CPU. Experience tells me that rather than put it together and turn on the power, it’s time to read the manual. At least when no one is looking I can read the manual. Chip in place. Time to check the jumpers. Where is the magnifying glass? Bus settings OK. CPU multiplier setting’s OK; CMOS, OK; CPU voltage OK, SIMMS voltage is set for 5 volts instead of 3.3 volt. Back to the manual. No explanation of SIMMS voltage. OK ,call a teckie. SIMMS voltages usually have a default setting of 3.3 volts. So I change the voltage setting. Now that the board setup is confirmed, it’s time to put the parts together and turn it on.
Screen comes on, video card checks out. Memory checks out. Hit the delete button for setup. On to BIOS. Hmm, let’s check out the hard drive with IDE detection. Oh well, nothing is there. Try another hard drive and repeat process. Success!! Second hard drive checks out OK. BIOS features OK. Turn off power management (personal thing). Save settings. We’re on our way. Let’s see what 95 does. Time to reboot and reboot and reboot. Isn’t 95 fun? Finally, 95 is happy with the computer. Nuf work for the day.
Back in the salt mines it’s now time to try again. Power on. The screen is black. Where’s the video? Last thing I need is a hardware failure? Pull the AGP card and plug in a new video card. Thankfully, a PCI video card was lurking in the stack of spare parts, proud to show that it worked when a new fangled AGP Card didn’t. Now the video works. Back to the computer store. Hope it’s still under warranty. Looks like it’s time to replace the video card. Thankfully, it doesn’t work on their computer either and they replace the board. Once again I fulfill my role as quality control for the import market. Back to the motherboard (drawing board or future). Plug in the video card and every thing works including Windows95.
That was too easy. The hard drive already had Windows95 installed and some people had problems loading Windows95. OK, now, let’s start over and load Windows95 from the beginning. Let’s make sure that we have all the software, drivers and tools. First create a boot disk in Windows Explorer. Next, copy FDISK.exe, Format.com, Edit.com, edit.hlp, mscdex.exe, sys.com, autoexec.bat, and config.sys files to this floppy disk. Edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys files so that the CD ROM Drivers are directed to the A:\ drive. Make sure we have a Windows95 disk, CD ROM Drivers and boot disk. Now we are ready to start. Boot the computer. Now there are two choices: 1. Boot as normal and begin pressing the F8 key until you are given the choice of ways to start the computer, then choose command prompt; or, alternately, 2. Boot from the floppy. From the a:\ prompt, type FDISK. Choose "delete partitions" and wipe out the existing partitions. Reboot the computer with the floppy and type FDISK again; now, go to the command "create a new DOS partition" and create a new dos primary partition. Next, format the hard drive, remembering not to put a system on the hard drive or the OEM Windows95 will not load. Reload the CD ROM drivers. Start Windows95.
After reloading Windows95, everything seems OK. Computer is spunky and has not crashed. Install clean and easy. Only glitch was the SIMMs voltage jumpers and it would have worked either way. Hardest thing was to find parts that worked and the appropriate drivers for them. As a bonus, now the parts are better organized, and best of all the computer works smoothly. Now to load Office 97 and test the program. Oops, Windows Office 97 is an upgrade and will not install. Time to find the Office 95 disks. As usual, Microsoft is providing entertainment and pain in installing programs.
Programs load smoothly. Time to run benchmarks. Then I can test my patience by putting both a network card and a modem in the computer. Finally, I will turn it over to Bambi and James to see if they can confuse it.
That it set up simply is a tribute to the WinChip CPU and the Trinity ATX with AGP motherboard by Tyan. Having worked with Tyan boards in the past, this was not a surprise. It is pleasant that the CPU followed suit. Once the parts were assembled and tested, this combination of chip and motherboard has been the easiest to set up in the last 100 plus computers I have built or supervised building. Also, a tribute to all those spare parts which contributed to the project, well sort of. Spare parts and $100 plus motherboard and CPU isn’t bad for a 200 MHz computer. Using current wholesale prices the computer could be built for under $400 plus software. Probably cost more in time to find and check out all the spare parts but it does appeal to my Scottish ancestors, or were they my wife’s ancestors. Have to load the genealogy program and check it out. u