Building a PC

[AlanL]

Allen

I'm still in the process of finalizing the shopping list. Hope to order soon.

[Deep Sea]

Oh man! I can't stand the suspense.

BTW: Whatever you get I'm for it. It's all good.

BTW: What do you plan to do with it? Are you a gamer? An application developer? Spreadsheed Addict? Dossier Keeper? Or just like power and speed?

[AlanL]

Well here is what happened.

Instead of building myself I found a company that had all of the components I had spec'd that would build it all and the price looked good. Well it came as promised but could never get the dxxxx thing working right. After 3 days of trouble shooting with the service provider and poor response from company, I decided to return the whole thing.

Spec'd out a high end Dell with everything I wanted. It arrived and has worked flawlessly. 2.4 ghz p4 with 533 mhz front side bus/512k L2 cache, 120 meg hd, 512 rdram, 9700 pro radeon graphic card 128 MB, dvd rom, dvd/rw 4x + cd/rw and 18.1 flat screen.

Still want to build one, but no rush to do so now.

My friend is building one with a clear lucite case with 2 black lights and lighted fans and power supply. All cables will be UV sensitive. Should look very cool. He will overclock past the 3ghz level if possible. Should be one hot machine.

[Deep Sea]

Once in awhile you get a bad one. It depends upon who you get them from. I got two barebones units (case with mounted motherboard) in a row from the same company last summer, built my spare parts on them, and both would not load the drivers off the disk. The salesperson jumped up and down over the phone when I told him I was returning them and told him I didn't want a hassle. Called the credit card company up and they took care of it for me -- without a hassle. Seems those pcs both had viruses on their installation/driver CDs. If I knew it then I would have made a pair of CD swaps.

You did the right thing by returning the goods. Personally, anything I get by mail I spend no more than a day with it then it goes back.

DELL is #1 right now in home PCs fully put together. You'll have fun with it.

My friend is building one with a clear lucite case

I've got a case on order to replace my server on wheels. It's called Tequila Sunrise.

[gmattson]

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of win2000 and re-install win98?

I have an old digital camera with a connection that was built for win98. I can get the connection to work with lots of messing around with 2000, but since I have another computer (and screen thanks to Al M.) I figure to reinstall win98 to the old computer and be able to get another year or so out of my digital camera.

But win2000 won't allow any changes to the operating system. I might be able to set up a partition and load win98 to it... is this a possibility?

[Deep Sea]

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of win2000 and re-install win98?

Somehow it should be how to rid XP and replace it with 2000.

I've been in similar circumstances, George. What I do when I get to where I think you are is reformat the disk and then reload the OS of choice, and be done with it. I don't care too much for dual booting but after you wipe out your hard drive, give it a shot.

[gmattson]

How do I wipe out the drives?

[Deep Sea]

When you put the Windows 98 CD in the CD ROM, and the installer starts up, it begs the questions on configuring your hard drives -- partitioning, formatting, file system to use, etc.

[gmattson]

My old computer quit on me. Died! Won't even light up.

Not sure what happened. I ended up getting a new digital camera. A sony Cyber-shot 2.0 megapixels. Ever hear of it Al?

[Guest]

My old computer quit on me. Died! Won't even light up.

can I have it?

You have install two drives on one machine and have each one with a different OS. Check out Romtec's Trios:

http://www.romtecusa.com/

just pick the drive you want to boot to and power cycle the machine. It's like having 2 machines in one. I want to get one for my second PC so I can put a Linux drive on it.

[Deep Sea]

What are you looking for in terms of an old machine, Tony? For yourself or are you putting parts together and then selling them?

Romtec's Trios is nice. Micro Center has them and I read the box. I recommend it.

[Guest]

I'm just looking for a Pentium or AMD PC with basics for my kids room. She needs a machine of her own to download viruses while she's writing her reports for school.

[gmattson]

Its an old machine Tony, but you are certainly welcome to it. The monitor is a big one... must weigh 25 pounds. Al can tell you more about it.

Not sure what happened... I was reformating it with win2000 when I got the blue screen saying I had problems. I tried to reboot and nothing.

It has two harddrives in it.

Let me know if you want the computer. I'd recommend you pass on the monitor. Don't think it is worth the s/h, although it does work.

[Guest]

Hey George,

I might be able to do something with it... what speed is it and how much ram does it have?

Thanks,
Tony

[gmattson]

Its a Toshiba, but with a new (5 years old) motherboard. I was able to load win2000 on it, so must have 64meg ram. Haven't a clue about the speed... whatever was state of art five years ago I suspect.

I'd be very happy to ups the box and keyboard, but that monitor is a whopper...