I had a few self-induced problems, but I jumped into it without reading anything about it first on AT or a site like it. Entirely my own fault. Ended up with an el-cheapo case / psu, the case's sharp edges were to blame for many a cut and the psu died on me. Current machine is much better.
My first build was back in 2000. I put together a budget 400 MHz K6-2 system for my wife's grandmother to replace her old P-133 system, out the whole thing togther, and booted it up only to find that there was a noticable jitter in the picture on my monitor, even on the BIOS and fdisk screens. Checked everything I could think of, but never could get a stable picture that didn't jitter. After I RMA's the board and reinstalled everything, only to find it was STILL doing it, I took the system over to a friend's house to see if he could figure out what was wrong, only to discover that the picture was rock-solid on HIS monitor (and later my wife's grandmother's monitor). Could never figure out what was wrong, since the monitor seemed to like every other video card I hooked it to.
All was fine, until I got a call a few weeks laster that her modem was out. It refused to connect, but when I reinstalled the driver it was all fine. I tried another cheap winmodem and it has issues connecting reliably to her ISP (it kept getting hung, and remained stuck sounding single annoying a high-pitched tone until you hard rebooted the machine. Finally, I got tired of fighting with the cheap $10 modems and bought her an OEM US Robotics controller-based modem out of my own money so she'd finally be able to get online without any hassle (and so I wouldn't have to run out there every week or so to fix whatever had gone wrong with the crappy winmodem). The system is still running without a hitch, although it has now been replaced as her primary machine by a AXP 2000+ based Shuttle XPC I built for her.
My second build was that Christmas, a PIII machine for my family that my uncle and I worked on together. My contribution was a GeForce 2 MX to make the 815E based machine into into a decent gamer. The only problem was that when it was installed, the games would crash a few minutes into playig them. After trying out updated drivers and multiple installs of Win 98, all I had left to try was the dread BIOS flash. First I tried Intel's windows BIOS flash utility, which locked up just as it started the flash (but luckily just before it had started reprogramming the chip). Once I tried it again, this time with a floppy, all was well in the world at last and the GeForce card was happily running MDK2 for hours.
At least until Windows 98 mysteriously began getting corrupted about every other week a few months later. My parents blamed my constant patching of Windows and upgrading of drivers, but for a while I never could really figure out what was wrong. I tried all sorts of combinations of drivers, but nothing ever kept the system running happily for more than a month. I got used to having to run over, format the drive and reinstall Windows. One day for chuckles, I killed and recreated the drive partitions and noticed it too about three tries for the hard drive to pass the integrity tests in fdisk before creating the partitions. After I got the system up and running, I downloaded the Mator drive utilities and discovered that the drive was dying on us, so off to RMA the drive went and things were finally well and good for a few years. That is, until my little brother moved the system into a new case without my assistance and neglected use the standoffs. The traces burned off the board quite nicely, I'm told.
The last major issue I had with a build was when built a Duron system for my wife's aunt and uncle and slapped in a brand new 20GB Western Digital hard drive without bothering to RTFM, which would have told me about the new "single drive" jumper setting they added to the drives in sometime after the 8GB WD drive I put in her grandmother's machine bad been made. I spent a good half an hour trying to discern why the hard drive only seemed to be noticed by the motherboard on every third boot or so, until I got around to actually reading the installation guide.
All was fine, until I got a call a few weeks laster that her modem was out. It refused to connect, but when I reinstalled the driver it was all fine. I tried another cheap winmodem and it has issues connecting reliably to her ISP (it kept getting hung, and remained stuck sounding single annoying a high-pitched tone until you hard rebooted the machine. Finally, I got tired of fighting with the cheap $10 modems and bought her an OEM US Robotics controller-based modem out of my own money so she'd finally be able to get online without any hassle (and so I wouldn't have to run out there every week or so to fix whatever had gone wrong with the crappy winmodem). The system is still running without a hitch, although it has now been replaced as her primary machine by a AXP 2000+ based Shuttle XPC I built for her.
My second build was that Christmas, a PIII machine for my family that my uncle and I worked on together. My contribution was a GeForce 2 MX to make the 815E based machine into into a decent gamer. The only problem was that when it was installed, the games would crash a few minutes into playig them. After trying out updated drivers and multiple installs of Win 98, all I had left to try was the dread BIOS flash. First I tried Intel's windows BIOS flash utility, which locked up just as it started the flash (but luckily just before it had started reprogramming the chip). Once I tried it again, this time with a floppy, all was well in the world at last and the GeForce card was happily running MDK2 for hours.
At least until Windows 98 mysteriously began getting corrupted about every other week a few months later. My parents blamed my constant patching of Windows and upgrading of drivers, but for a while I never could really figure out what was wrong. I tried all sorts of combinations of drivers, but nothing ever kept the system running happily for more than a month. I got used to having to run over, format the drive and reinstall Windows. One day for chuckles, I killed and recreated the drive partitions and noticed it too about three tries for the hard drive to pass the integrity tests in fdisk before creating the partitions. After I got the system up and running, I downloaded the Mator drive utilities and discovered that the drive was dying on us, so off to RMA the drive went and things were finally well and good for a few years. That is, until my little brother moved the system into a new case without my assistance and neglected use the standoffs. The traces burned off the board quite nicely, I'm told.
The last major issue I had with a build was when built a Duron system for my wife's aunt and uncle and slapped in a brand new 20GB Western Digital hard drive without bothering to RTFM, which would have told me about the new "single drive" jumper setting they added to the drives in sometime after the 8GB WD drive I put in her grandmother's machine bad been made. I spent a good half an hour trying to discern why the hard drive only seemed to be noticed by the motherboard on every third boot or so, until I got around to actually reading the installation guide.
Was a nightmare. I was up all night trying to figure it out and didnt know about Anandtech at that time. Turned out to the power switch connection to the mobo from the case.
where's the option for "I put together an old compaq and the motherboard was engineered by SATAN" ?
I swear, if I have to touch another compaq again..../twitch
Oh yes. That was great. I had three cases (each with motherboard), one CPU, plenty of RAM, and a hard drive. After flashing the BIOS multiple times on all the motherboards (not easy, since they don't let you access the BIOS to change anything without either 2 boot floppies or the "setup partition"), I finally got one to "work"
Among its quirks I discovered that it was VERY picky about what drives went where. Sometimes it would refuse to boot unless my CDROM was pri master and HDD sec master, then later it refused to boot until I changed it back. Sometimes it wouldn't boot from hard drive, or even a known good boot floppy..."NTLDR is missing". I know what this error message usually means, but Compaq seems to have a different idea.
Finally I got it working OK, and I made sure NEVER to touch the hardware in that thing again (until I finally got to throw it away! happy day...)
Most temperamental computer ever.
I swear, if I have to touch another compaq again..../twitch
Oh yes. That was great. I had three cases (each with motherboard), one CPU, plenty of RAM, and a hard drive. After flashing the BIOS multiple times on all the motherboards (not easy, since they don't let you access the BIOS to change anything without either 2 boot floppies or the "setup partition"), I finally got one to "work"
Among its quirks I discovered that it was VERY picky about what drives went where. Sometimes it would refuse to boot unless my CDROM was pri master and HDD sec master, then later it refused to boot until I changed it back. Sometimes it wouldn't boot from hard drive, or even a known good boot floppy..."NTLDR is missing". I know what this error message usually means, but Compaq seems to have a different idea.
Finally I got it working OK, and I made sure NEVER to touch the hardware in that thing again (until I finally got to throw it away! happy day...)
Most temperamental computer ever.
My first and second , K6-166,K6-233 went smooth intel/chipsets . The third build K62-300 was major frustration on a CaliforniaGraphics/Via SuperS7 MBD POS... 4 th Build Cel300a was ok except that I went through 2 Abit BH6 MBD's , 5th cel366@550 Abit BX62 went real good. 6th P3 700@933 /Asus CUSL another good build. 7th XP2400/A7N8XD very smooth...
My first build was a Heathkit H-88 back in late '79 early '80. Rolling your own was a lot more "fun" than it is now. I had to solder a lot of the components onto the PCBs, assemble the chassis parts, etc. But when I did the "smoke test", it booted just fine to its ROM BASIC. It wasn't a lot of fun until I modified a GE cassette recorder to read and store larger programs. You whippersnappers don't know what you're missing... 
.bh.
.bh.
My first build was only last month. WOOHOO! . Everything went fine. I was freakin scared though about messing something up, but it all came together. The only slight hitch was that i accidently installed the power switch wrong, so at first I freaked out. Not good for a newb. Other than that, it was one of the most rewarding experiances of my life.
. Everything went fine. I was freakin scared though about messing something up, but it all came together. The only slight hitch was that i accidently installed the power switch wrong, so at first I freaked out. Not good for a newb. Other than that, it was one of the most rewarding experiances of my life.
Installing the AMD CPU heatsink was stressful-not because it was hard, but because I had read so many warnings about it! Turned out it was a piece of cake.
Only other thing I messed up was failing to enable L2 cach in the BIOS.
Oh, and I had a hard time getting all the LED and fan monitor leads on right-the Asus manual was a bit confusing, at least to me.
All worked out in the end, though, and I would never consider buying a pre-built system anymore.
Only other thing I messed up was failing to enable L2 cach in the BIOS.
Oh, and I had a hard time getting all the LED and fan monitor leads on right-the Asus manual was a bit confusing, at least to me.
All worked out in the end, though, and I would never consider buying a pre-built system anymore.
First build was a P200mmx. Man, comp's were SO much harder to build then, and it didnt help I got some cheap and nasty "Pine" motherboard, not to mention I was recycling quite a lot of stuff from a crappy IBM Aptiva. Probably what helped least is I really had no clue what I was doing when I started, but although it took me a while and I needed a little help from -IIRC- here, THG forums and a friend's dad eventually it all came together and actually was quite a decent and reliable PC, all things considered. Nothing broke, nothing lost, nothing RMA etc etc...
For your amusement, me being a retard:
- I didnt even realise I'd need a video card at first because the Aptiva's was onboard and I assumed all PC's were like that. LOL
- I spent a whole day convinced my (US Robotics 28.8) modem was broke, because I kept plugging phoneline into the joystick port.
For your amusement, me being a retard:
- I didnt even realise I'd need a video card at first because the Aptiva's was onboard and I assumed all PC's were like that. LOL
- I spent a whole day convinced my (US Robotics 28.8) modem was broke, because I kept plugging phoneline into the joystick port.
nitromullet
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2004
- 9,031
- 36
- 91
My first hardware install build without a major hitch, but I more than made up for that with my first Linux install.
Cerb
Elite Member
- Aug 26, 2000
- 17,484
- 33
- 86
I don't have strong hands, nor that steady. The only core I damaged from HSF installation was in a fit of anger afterf trying to get a Thunderbird that was defective to work for a couple of days--all but tearing the HSF off the socket. I don't see how most people damage them.
Retail clips are now three-prong, as well. Personally, I'm sticking with Thermalright, though. That clip is a dream.
How many hours did that Windows install take?
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