Last night (way too late), I assembled my first computer from scratch. Despite a near superstitious dread that I would fry some crucial component along the way (or have one glitch out on me right out of the box and not be able to figure out which one), after much work and having the joy of looking over six different manuals at the same time, my new computer (now nicknamed "Monolith") successfully Power On Self-Tested on the first try.
I still need to install hard drive, optical drive, and operating system, but I've done all of that before.
I know there are undoubtedly members of the forum who do this kind of thing on a near-daily basis. But this is my first solo computer from scratch, and I'm just feeling excessively pleased with myself.
[ December 11, 2008, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: Sterling ]
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
:grabs a pitchfork and torch:
(cngrats, dude!)
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
Good work!
Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :
Awesome!
Posted by BandoCommando (Member # 7746) on :
Congrats!
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Now comes the fun part: getting all your hardware drivers and software installed.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
As the changed title suggests, it works... Mostly.
Actually, it works great. I installed my first SATA hard drive with little difficulty, a Blu-Ray compatable DVD drive, and a big honkin' GeForce 280 video card. I partitioned the drive for dual boot, and it's now running Vista 64 and Windows XP on the different partitions... And there my troubles began.
The ASUS mobo has built-in sound; rather good built-in sound, theoreticaly, in 7.1. The case has two connectors, one for HD audio, and the other for "legacy" AC'97 sound, and the BIOS allows the audio to be set for either...
Windows XP only recognizes the presence of an audio device if it's set for AC'97. Vista only recognizes it if it's set for HD Audio.
Crumbcake.
This wouldn't be a huge deal... And perhaps isn't a huge deal, so long as I primarily use one or the other. But reaching into the case to change connectors every time I boot to the other OS is a bit more of a hassle than I had envisioned.
And unfortunately, that huge video card I mentioned blocks one of the only two PCI on the mobo. I rather need one PCI slot for a WiFi card, so just plugging in a cheap sound card with drivers recognized by both OSs isn't really an option... I suppose I can compromise and do either WiFi or sound through USB, but that's really not ideal.
Sent a message to ASUS; hopefully they'll get back to me before too long.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
You've got the latest drivers for the mobo installed?
I also had a problem with Vista x64 and sound: my x-fi platinum card wasn't supported. But I haven't checked for something like 9 or 10 months and it looks like the drivers are now available. Yippee.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
Heh heh... Okay, now I'm confused.
Pleased!... Kind of... But confused.
Went looking on ASUS's site for a more up-to-date driver with alleged Vista 64 compatability; found one, downloaded it to a flash drive, and put it on the new computer's desktop.
Uninstalled the existing driver from the Vista boot in preparation for installing the new one, and restarted the computer when asked to in the process of uninstalling.
...And when it came back up: "High Definition Audio device detected." "Your new hardware is installed and ready to use."
...This is before I installed the new driver, mind you.
But hey, both OSs now have sound, and I'm not going to touch anything!
I just wish it didn't feel somewhat like "Don't look at it crosswise! It might stop working if you don't believe in it!"
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)