Computer-Rebuild Weekend

Computer-Rebuild Weekend. I finally bit the bullet and bought all the parts needed to rebuild my destroyed computer. The motherboard I got is an excellent Asus model with lots of good stuff built-in to replace various fried components. The CPU is just a bit faster than my previous one (XP 2200+ vs. XP1700+) and I ended up with another brand of video card, but with the same GeForce4 Ti 4200 chipset I had before. I bought two 256MB PC2700 DDR RAM modules. The old ones were PC2100, so there’s another slight speedup. I’ve only bought one 80GB HD so far, but those are getting real cheap and I’ll get more storage space soon. Craziest of all, is that I also bought a DVD burner! More on this as I get more experience with it. (I also need to update the hardware page with all these new parts.)

The weekend was spent not only putting my new system together, but also putting both Holly’s system and the HTPC into different cases. Previously, in the futile hope that a new power supply was all I would need to get my computer back up and running, I had purchased a new case and power supply from Fry’s. The case was a nice-looking bronze case (pictured here) and it had a quiet power supply, so it became the new home of the HTPC. It’s not nearly as conspicuous next to the rest of the home theater equipment as the old beige case was (new photos coming soon).

After transferring the guts of the HTPC into this new case, there were still a few jobs left to do. Andrew was at a sleepover with a friend, so it was time for some father-daughter geek-out bonding. Holly was very happy to help in moving the HTPC’s old, loud power supply to my PC’s case. She enjoyed that screwdriver work so much that we decided it would be a good time to get rid of her junky old PC case and move her PC guts into the old HTPC case. She did all the work of removing her power supply and installing it in the new-to-her case. I had to do the motherboard transfer, but she helped install the hard drives, floppy drive, and CD-ROM. Basically, every screw in her PC, she put in herself. She did an excellent job!