Buying a complete system of basic parts from Fry's and the swapmeet has more than a touch insanity to it, but I did and here is how it is going.
N2U400 and Sempron boxed 2600+ cpu $80
Kingston ValueRam PC3200 512mb $60 (eek, its been returned, just noticed)
Maxtor ATA133 160 GB $70
Ati Radeon 9200 128 mb $45 (from FS/Trade forum)
400 watt P4 black case with front usb and sound $18 (swapmeet)
CDrom, floppy, and misc from spare parts.
Case is darn flimsy, and motherboard tray was riveted in, plus the hardware plastic bag had a cut so all parts gone except 5 screws, two of which were in the power supply, and I had to take it apart to get them out. First try mounting the motherboard was total snafu due to lack of parts and sense on my part. I found some standoffs, but tried case screws in three and messed up the threads, ending me up at Frys asking a stocking guy about how to do it. $4 bag of 10 cents worth of screws etc later, I found the fine thread screws the Frys guy suggested did indeed work fine. Rest of assembly went ok.
ECS manual says it will boot from USB CDROM, it won't, plus it very explicitly showed how to wire the floppy cable backwards, and those two items ate some serious time. Fortunately I have plenty of experience wiring a floppy backwards (light stays on, no action), so a bit of testing on a spare floppy drive and I wired it correctly. Failure to boot from my external USB CDRW was new to me, so I explored several dead ends before grabbing a spare CD drive and sitting it on top of the case. Maxtor CD formated the hard drive fine, but insisted I limit partition to 137, install xp and service packs, then run it again from windows to get the full 160 gb.
XP pro is installing right now, so mostly waiting, writing this. I expect I need to do a bios update, mine is like 10/2003, and the sempron is being seen as a 1100 athlon, with 100/200 FSB. More later
****************** Lesson so far, inspect items at purchase for return/missing parts.
N2U400 and Sempron boxed 2600+ cpu $80
Kingston ValueRam PC3200 512mb $60 (eek, its been returned, just noticed)
Maxtor ATA133 160 GB $70
Ati Radeon 9200 128 mb $45 (from FS/Trade forum)
400 watt P4 black case with front usb and sound $18 (swapmeet)
CDrom, floppy, and misc from spare parts.
Case is darn flimsy, and motherboard tray was riveted in, plus the hardware plastic bag had a cut so all parts gone except 5 screws, two of which were in the power supply, and I had to take it apart to get them out. First try mounting the motherboard was total snafu due to lack of parts and sense on my part. I found some standoffs, but tried case screws in three and messed up the threads, ending me up at Frys asking a stocking guy about how to do it. $4 bag of 10 cents worth of screws etc later, I found the fine thread screws the Frys guy suggested did indeed work fine. Rest of assembly went ok.
ECS manual says it will boot from USB CDROM, it won't, plus it very explicitly showed how to wire the floppy cable backwards, and those two items ate some serious time. Fortunately I have plenty of experience wiring a floppy backwards (light stays on, no action), so a bit of testing on a spare floppy drive and I wired it correctly. Failure to boot from my external USB CDRW was new to me, so I explored several dead ends before grabbing a spare CD drive and sitting it on top of the case. Maxtor CD formated the hard drive fine, but insisted I limit partition to 137, install xp and service packs, then run it again from windows to get the full 160 gb.
XP pro is installing right now, so mostly waiting, writing this. I expect I need to do a bios update, mine is like 10/2003, and the sempron is being seen as a 1100 athlon, with 100/200 FSB. More later
****************** Lesson so far, inspect items at purchase for return/missing parts.
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