Built a desktop
Sunday, 22. October 2006, 03:43:19
As a typical, stereotype female, I often get freaked out about any mechanic operations. Even though I’ve forced myself to operate electronics with great fears after I studied in Motion Pictures and Video for a while, reading menus is still killing me. There is no difference between reading in English and Chinese. I should thank my ex-spoiled-teenage boss, Brad back in 2003 to 2005. Without his harsh demands (humiliating sometimes), I would never come this far.
To tell this long story short, after 17-year-old Brad upgraded my position from a shredder lady to an IT assistant (assisting him, the IT director at an insurance company); I started to open up troubled computer desktops and tested them. Luckily, those ones I fixed were more than what I destroyed. At that moment, I didn’t know anything about IT trouble shooting. I did what I was asked to. In July 2004, I built up the courage to put together a desktop after fixing several old switch button connections on the company’s desktops.
My husband purchased a new computer for his music mixing purpose. I asked him to give me his old computer’s BOX and old giant monitor. Of course, most of old and slow components must go. We keep the old fashion CD-Rom and floppy drive. It was completely from scratch.
We spent about $1,100 on www.newegg.com Good thing is Newegg still keeps my purchase records. Otherwise, I wouldn’t remember what I put together with. N supervised me to put all stuff together on one Saturday afternoon. I was very excited but worried if it would work. We did hold my composed desktop to P, N’s buddy for final help. The machine was working. Power was on. However, there was a conflict on installing Windows XP. P fixed it.
Oh, forgot to mention. I did drop my delicate processor during the composing work. Tons of needles were bent. P pulled them straight by a pair of tiny pliers. P and N thought I was too brave to compose my own desktop. This desktop crashed several times afterwards until we installed the licensed Win XP. I also discovered the 160 GB hard drive was divided into two partitions before it arrived. Now, I run all of programs in the smaller F: drive and work C: drive as the storage one. Since then, this baby is a love.
I’ve learned that it is not too important how fancy your flat monitor and desktop looks like. The memory sticks, hard drive size, processor speed, mother board, DVD burner, sound card, video card…are what we need to pay more attention. My husband’s old 90’s fat screen works fine to me, although it might release more radiation to harm our health and vision.
This afternoon, I cracked my baby desktop open and dusted it off. I've kept this hobby since I was the IT assistant. There is no strong evidence saying dust affects the performance of a computer though. Looking at the structure inside of my desktop reminds me a lot of fun. 
Below is a summary of my computer:
The components I bought two years ago for this computer:
To tell this long story short, after 17-year-old Brad upgraded my position from a shredder lady to an IT assistant (assisting him, the IT director at an insurance company); I started to open up troubled computer desktops and tested them. Luckily, those ones I fixed were more than what I destroyed. At that moment, I didn’t know anything about IT trouble shooting. I did what I was asked to. In July 2004, I built up the courage to put together a desktop after fixing several old switch button connections on the company’s desktops.
My husband purchased a new computer for his music mixing purpose. I asked him to give me his old computer’s BOX and old giant monitor. Of course, most of old and slow components must go. We keep the old fashion CD-Rom and floppy drive. It was completely from scratch.
We spent about $1,100 on www.newegg.com Good thing is Newegg still keeps my purchase records. Otherwise, I wouldn’t remember what I put together with. N supervised me to put all stuff together on one Saturday afternoon. I was very excited but worried if it would work. We did hold my composed desktop to P, N’s buddy for final help. The machine was working. Power was on. However, there was a conflict on installing Windows XP. P fixed it.
Oh, forgot to mention. I did drop my delicate processor during the composing work. Tons of needles were bent. P pulled them straight by a pair of tiny pliers. P and N thought I was too brave to compose my own desktop. This desktop crashed several times afterwards until we installed the licensed Win XP. I also discovered the 160 GB hard drive was divided into two partitions before it arrived. Now, I run all of programs in the smaller F: drive and work C: drive as the storage one. Since then, this baby is a love.
I’ve learned that it is not too important how fancy your flat monitor and desktop looks like. The memory sticks, hard drive size, processor speed, mother board, DVD burner, sound card, video card…are what we need to pay more attention. My husband’s old 90’s fat screen works fine to me, although it might release more radiation to harm our health and vision.
This afternoon, I cracked my baby desktop open and dusted it off. I've kept this hobby since I was the IT assistant. There is no strong evidence saying dust affects the performance of a computer though. Looking at the structure inside of my desktop reminds me a lot of fun. Below is a summary of my computer:
- 1 160 GB hard drive
- 1 CD-Rom drive
- 1 readable and writable DVD drive
- Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.20 GHz speed
- 1 GB of Ram (2 memory sticks)
The components I bought two years ago for this computer:
- Intel Box D865 Perl Socket 478 Intel 865PE ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail $83.50
- Iogear IEEE 1394 3-port PCI Card Model GIC 1394 – Retail $ 46.00
- Powmax PSDE480 ATX 480W Power Supply- Retail $24.50
- GeIL Platinuem 1 GB (2 X 512 MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 533 Memory Model GL1G4200DC – Retail $292.00
- Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 HDS722516VLSA80 160 GB 7200 RDM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive – OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) $98.50
- Optorite DVD Burner – Retail $66.00
- Intel Pentium 4 3.2 Nothwood 3.2 GHz Socket 478 Processor – Retail $277.00
- GECUBE GC-R9200L 128 MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card –Retail $45
- Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 PCI Sound Card – OEM $28.99
- Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 Mbps PCI EtherFast Network Adapter-Retail $15.00
- XTERASYS XR-1105 + 10/100 Mbps 1 WAN 4 LAN Broadband Cable/DSL Router – Retail $ 23.49 (This one is not working very well for us. Once a while, our DSL gets disconnected for no reason. It must be this cheap router’s problem.)
- A4Tech iWheel Works 3D Wireless Keyboard and mouse NT$1299 (about $40) shipped from Taiwan (for Zhuyin Chinese typing)
- A microphone NT $150 ($5)
- Logitech Webcam $29.99
- HP 1315 all-in-one printer & scanner $99.99
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