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Were you afraid to boot up the first computer you ever built?

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Yes, I was... because I didnt have the money for it anyway... but I bought all the parts... of course I was worried I had something plugged in wrong and that it was going to blow up and wreck everything... 🙂

It was fine though...
 
Originally posted by: djheater
Originally posted by: Bootprint
Nope. But I did discover you can plug a Harddrive power cord backwards. Of course I did still have the power on at the time I plugged it in, and let the magic smoke out of a chip or two.
Click to expand...

Wait.. you forced a molex adapter in backwards with the power on?
Click to expand...


🙂

But I know not to do that anymore, I've learned a lot since the mid '90s. And sucessfully build 6 or so machines.


You don't really need to force it, it'll go in at an angle and enough of the pins make contact.
 
I built my computer 6 months ago and it POSTed on the first try. Then 3 months later it died. After swapping parts for 2 months, it lives again! What sucked the most was that I had a final the day after the computer died and couldn't study for it.
 
more excited than scared. I was scared when I realized it didn't turn on though 😉 Had to flip the switch on the PS
 
I was a little timid... but after pressing that shiny silver button and hearing the soft whirrr of the fans and the gentle spin-up of the SATA hard drive, everything was alllllll good :thumbsup:.
 
Originally posted by: OffTopic
Originally posted by: Train
nope.

Though I did change a few things in my older brothers 286, booted it up and the mobo fried, all the parts(including all the PCI cards and CPU) were all fried. I was under STRICT orders not to TOUCH his computer while he was gone. Lets say I got a nice ass whoopin when he found out. (back then his top of the line 286 was like $1500 easy, maybe $2k)
Click to expand...
shen

I don't recall 286 had PCI.
Click to expand...
bleh, whatever the plug in card slots were called. I didnt touch another computer til I made my own comp in the 700mhz Pentium 3 days.
 
Originally posted by: rgwalt
Not afraid... more worried than anything else. I still worry about every machine I build.

R
Click to expand...

Same here, and I'll bet that I've built a couple of dozen machines in the past 7 years or so.
 
My first built computer booted just fine (since most of the dip switches and such were set to "AUTO"), but on the other hand, Windows 98 had a problem with my system. It took me 4 days of troubleshooting to get win98 to boot (i had all these settings toggled "on" in my bios, and that was complicating the install process).
 
Originally posted by: Train
Originally posted by: OffTopic
Originally posted by: Train
nope.

Though I did change a few things in my older brothers 286, booted it up and the mobo fried, all the parts(including all the PCI cards and CPU) were all fried. I was under STRICT orders not to TOUCH his computer while he was gone. Lets say I got a nice ass whoopin when he found out. (back then his top of the line 286 was like $1500 easy, maybe $2k)
Click to expand...
shen

I don't recall 286 had PCI.
Click to expand...
bleh, whatever the plug in card slots were called. I didnt touch another computer til I made my own comp in the 700mhz Pentium 3 days.
Click to expand...

I believe you're looking for "ISA Slot"
 
Not afraid but I wasn't going to be too surprised if it blew up either. I was doing it completely solo with just some printed info I had copied from the net and wasn't really sure what to expect, so I was more or less prepared for anything.
 
my first rig was some bastard child between 286 and 386 parts, in 1999(?), so I couldn't care less if it blew up or not, I was just bored 😉
 
Originally posted by: Train
nope.

Though I did change a few things in my older brothers 286, booted it up and the mobo fried, all the parts(including all the PCI cards and CPU) were all fried. I was under STRICT orders not to TOUCH his computer while he was gone. Lets say I got a nice ass whoopin when he found out. (back then his top of the line 286 was like $1500 easy, maybe $2k)
Click to expand...

Back in the days when 286's were "top of the line", you couldn't buy one for 2k! $2k is what you can get a midranged computer for nowadays or a highend built one.
 
Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
Originally posted by: Train
nope.

Though I did change a few things in my older brothers 286, booted it up and the mobo fried, all the parts(including all the PCI cards and CPU) were all fried. I was under STRICT orders not to TOUCH his computer while he was gone. Lets say I got a nice ass whoopin when he found out. (back then his top of the line 286 was like $1500 easy, maybe $2k)
Click to expand...

Back in the days when 286's were "top of the line", you couldn't buy one for 2k! $2k is what you can get a midranged computer for nowadays or a highend built one.
Click to expand...

I have a feeling the system he was talking about was most likely a 486, when did this "Incident" happen? If it was a 286 and you got it for $2k it must have been a lower end model.
 
Not really afraid, but this was back in the days of jumpers, many many jumpers. frustration is a better word. Plus the manuals sucked back then (who reads the manual anyway 🙂 )
 
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