Getting Help Building Your Computer

An anonymous reader submitted an excellent story about getting help when assembling a PC from scratch. I'm sure many readers here know how harrowing the experience can be, and will appreciate this entertaining tale of lilliputians helping in this rite of passage.

Comments

Hooray for Pokey

[Anonymous Coward]

Pokey the penguin has a posse

YAH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fist post!

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

I can die now. No need to say it.

fp!

[Anonymous Coward]

fp?!?!?! woot!!!

wish I had these when making my first server.

[Brigadier]

I remember my first server system. I was suppose to be the expert (checkle). it was a gateway 233 (super fast for it's time) I had to install an HP suresture, writable CD, and SCSi hardrive. My first problem was what the hell was i thinking customizing a gateway. I had to cut a notch out of the board to ge the tape to fit. the board didn't recognise the SCSI kudoes to adaptec who not only helped me get it working but also gave me a few extra tips. Then I had to set up pllindrome which was backup software it required IPX what teh heck was IPX, needless to say after one sleepless weekend I got it working. My latest server is a Dell 2500 with a custom linux install.

huh?

[Laplace]

And this is funny because...?

Katie Sierra should get the fucking CHAIR!

[Anonymous Coward]

Katie Sierra is anti-American scum who should be given the death penalty. What she did was worse than David Westerfield, and "freedom of speech" is not freedom to dissent and try to overthrow our Godly government with treasonous t-shirts and an anti-American Anarchy club!

She deserves some West Virginia justice!!!

Re:Harrowing?

[Anonymous Coward]

For most people, there are not enough hours in the day, but they're not Burt Ward. "People will come around our house and say, 'I can't believe how much living is going on here!'" he says with a laugh. That's because the erstwhile Boy Wonder, from the hit 1960s series "Batman," only sleeps three hours daily, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. "When you're up twice as much as other people, it's like having two lives." So what does Ward, 56, do with his extra life? He spends his nights working on projects for his visual effects company named, appropriately, Boy Wonder Visual Effects, which he formed in July 2001, after more than a decade of study and frustration at the lack of roles coming his way. There may not be a lot going on for Ward in front of the camera, but Boy Wonder has worked on more than 20 movies to date (including 2001's "Legally Blonde" and the upcoming action-adventure film "Bulletproof Monk," starring Chow Yun-Fat). "This is a transition to becoming a major player in the visual effects world," Ward says proudly. Ward and his wife, Tracy, 40 (whom he met in 1989 when her father, the late corporate raider Victor Posner, sent her to take over Ward's educational video company; they married in 1990), also rescue abandoned Great Danes. In 1994, after moving from Los Angeles to rural Riverside County, the couple and their daughter, Melody, now 11, learned about the number of Great Danes in the area that needed homes. "With a Great Dane, if you take it to a shelter, it's too big for the cages and people are scared of a big dog even though they're sweet, and they're put to death," he explains. The family's 4,000-square-foot home and five acres of land became a refuge for the dogs; Ward estimates they have found homes for more than 3,500 in eight years. Even with his other pursuits, Ward has not given up acting entirely. In November, he will team up with "Batman" costar Adam West in the CBS movie "Back to the Batcave: The True Adventures of Adam West and Burt Ward," in which the former Caped Crusaders will fight crime once more -- but as themselves. "This is a bigger production than anything we did on 'Batman,'" Ward says. Ward has fond memories of his experience filming the "Batman" series, a period that he chronicled in a 1985 tell-all book, "Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights." "We partied together, we got in messes together," he says of his friendship with West. "It was a lot of fun." What wasn't fun was wearing his Robin outfit. "Those were the python pants -- they nearly squeezed me to death. And the cape strangled me," he says. Almost 40 years after debuting on "Batman," Ward, who is now a grandfather -- his daughter Lisa, 35, from his first marriage, has two kids, Kevin, 10, and Katy, 8 -- is content with the way his life has unfolded. "I'm very, very happy. I have a wonderful family, I have the most wonderful people I work with," he says. "I'm the kid in the candy store."

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Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

For most people, there are not enough hours in the day, but they're not Burt Ward. "People will come around our house and say, 'I can't believe how much living is going on here!'" he says with a laugh. That's because the erstwhile Boy Wonder, from the hit 1960s series "Batman," only sleeps three hours daily, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. "When you're up twice as much as other people, it's like having two lives." So what does Ward, 56, do with his extra life? He spends his nights working on projects for his visual effects company named, appropriately, Boy Wonder Visual Effects, which he formed in July 2001, after more than a decade of study and frustration at the lack of roles coming his way. There may not be a lot going on for Ward in front of the camera, but Boy Wonder has worked on more than 20 movies to date (including 2001's "Legally Blonde" and the upcoming action-adventure film "Bulletproof Monk," starring Chow Yun-Fat). "This is a transition to becoming a major player in the visual effects world," Ward says proudly. Ward and his wife, Tracy, 40 (whom he met in 1989 when her father, the late corporate raider Victor Posner, sent her to take over Ward's educational video company; they married in 1990), also rescue abandoned Great Danes. In 1994, after moving from Los Angeles to rural Riverside County, the couple and their daughter, Melody, now 11, learned about the number of Great Danes in the area that needed homes. "With a Great Dane, if you take it to a shelter, it's too big for the cages and people are scared of a big dog even though they're sweet, and they're put to death," he explains. The family's 4,000-square-foot home and five acres of land became a refuge for the dogs; Ward estimates they have found homes for more than 3,500 in eight years. Even with his other pursuits, Ward has not given up acting entirely. In November, he will team up with "Batman" costar Adam West in the CBS movie "Back to the Batcave: The True Adventures of Adam West and Burt Ward," in which the former Caped Crusaders will fight crime once more -- but as themselves. "This is a bigger production than anything we did on 'Batman,'" Ward says. Ward has fond memories of his experience filming the "Batman" series, a period that he chronicled in a 1985 tell-all book, "Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights." "We partied together, we got in messes together," he says of his friendship with West. "It was a lot of fun." What wasn't fun was wearing his Robin outfit. "Those were the python pants -- they nearly squeezed me to death. And the cape strangled me," he says. Almost 40 years after debuting on "Batman," Ward, who is now a grandfather -- his daughter Lisa, 35, from his first marriage, has two kids, Kevin, 10, and Katy, 8 -- is content with the way his life has unfolded. "I'm very, very happy. I have a wonderful family, I have the most wonderful people I work with," he says. "I'm the kid in the candy store."

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Oh yeah, harrowing.

[Moderation abuser]

I feared for my life...

this stupid crap is on the front page?

[YasserTowelhead]

what the hell is this shit? a pc is made up of things that can only be put in the right fucking places. how hard is it to assemble one. this story is fucking gay.

go to google newsgroups

[Billly Gates]

Find out about hardware reliability first. I got burned trying to build an athlon system. Some AMD chipsets are unreliable or incompatible with certian pheripherals. (rumour has it that a defective transformer was used on some VIA chipsets) First generation athlon owners still can't use nvidia cards without some serious reliablity problems regardless of the os. The bad transformer does not like the spike in power that geforce cards use. Both companies blame each other for the bug.

Also check brand name relibility. Some reliable brands occasionaly have duds but you can rest assure that the chances of getting burned are smaller. MY athlon abit motherboard for example can't run reliable with not only geforce cards under linux, but its incompatible with sound blaster lives, certain ATI cards, and even netgear nics! If you put in a neatgear nic, the machine won't even post! Yes I have a 400 watt powersupply. This really pissed me off.

Try to buy only intel unless you know what you are doing(mod me down if you like but I am just giving you me experience with them). Try to avoid motherboards that try to spueeze new excessive overclocking features. Excessive overclocking can make a system hot and unstable. Also look at the chipsets. Intel, has the most reliable chipsets while SIS and VIA are at the bottom. Also avoid chaintek, soyo, Epox, and shuttle motherboards. Soyo recently has been getting alot of heat and use to be an excellent motherboard maker but things have changed due to a %50 failure rate reported by some slashdot readers.

The good motherboards are Asus, Intel, Twain, and gigabit. Stick to well known parts and also check the newgroups or search under groups under google and google will search the newsgroups for you. Also look into purchasing a slightly older motherboard that still supports your cpu and ram. Because of the race with Intel/AMD, motherboard makers are racing out with half baked bios's in their latest boards that are filled with bugs. You can buy the latest and greatest but do not be supprised if you have to flash it several times. Write down the name of the motherboard model and the terms unreliable or problems and count and read the amount of hits you get.

Also moving parts break first so please buy a great fans and cooling supplies. Cheap ones are very noisy and will overheat your system when they break.

And I retire

[ealar dlanvuli]

I'm going to make a karma whore account, I really find miself disinterested quite often anymore, sorry.

~ealar