Travails of assembling a PC
my family friend needed a decent pc for home use. They were totally ignorant of the pc stuff, so they contacted me for some advise... as any other commitment it started as a small spring. Little did I know, what I was getting into... I never thought this would change my perception of hardware engineers.
So I pitched in with my programming brain, and enquired couple of vendors who were eager to pitch in for a lower price and of lower power. I realized the fact that the common consumer just worried about the price and not what it has t offer. That is when it struck me that, I must also be ignorant of these facts in areas which I'm ignorant of ha ha ha....
Anyway, I decided to go ahead and assemble a monster of P4 2.8 Ghz Given the money constraint decided to go with a 256MB RAM. and the rest as usual, UPS,speakers,keyboard,CD R/W optical mouse.
I decided to get some help from my friend, who has been in the assembling market for nearly 2-3 years. His original estimate was around 2hrs, without the OS installation. So we marked Jan 8th as the D-Day. He decided to pitch in with a 2 hr permission from his boss.
11:00As planned he dropped in at around 11:00A.M and we went to my family friends house and got the money.
11:30From there we went to the market and started negotiating various configurations. We were on the lookout for decent stuff, something that looks and works decent. Believe me the market was buzzing with people hovering all around. Actually the market seems to be on fire.
2:30 Around this time we paid for the stuff and started from the market. By the time we paid our bills the shop had already sold computer accessories for 3 PC and addressed 2 faults and 5 other minor purchases. I suppose it would come around a hefty sum of 1 lakh.
3:00 we were there at the destination, this was against our original plans to assemble the machine in my house. We were actually starving, but wew wanted to pull this off and then have a hearty meal. But to our astonishment we realized that we did not have a screw driver set(dummy me!)
3:30 we left for my house and decided to have the lunch first. So that we could head out all guns blazing to assemble the monster. It was a hearty meal.
4:00 we were back on track and started putting on the motherboard, SMPS and the processor. To our dismay we could not see the SMPS running. in the flurry we somehow managed to skew one of the legs of the processor. phew! believe me I was shattered, it was someone close and you took the complete responsiblity of getting things up. And unconsciously I started sweating. Then we tried couple of gimmicks but nothing worked. So we carefully straightened out the leg...
5:45 we decided to head back to the market. and headed for it on my bike
6:00 we were in the market, and we were puzzled when it worked the moment we plugged it in. The vendor explained that it could be because of voltage fluctuations and improper earthing in the house. And luckily he put the processor in the slot and it seemed to work... that was sense of relief which is worth experiencing rather than explaining.
6:30 we were back on track and made the PC up and running with the help of the UPS. and the cmos screen flashed. Just at that time all the anxiouos people in the house dropped in and made us nervous. I stated that it is bound to take couple of more hours, because we were yet to partition the disk and install the OS. That is when we realized that the partition did not show 80GB whereas the CMOs shows all of it.
7:00 just then the dreaded call from his manager, who desperately called hm back. So we decided to head out and drop him there and get the windows XP CD from my other friend (Sai)
So we promised to get back by 8:00P.M
7:30 we were at the BDPS office at porur, and was waiting for this guy to wind up the office. So that we could head back.
8:00 we headed out and visited Sai, and there we got the CD and asked for help for Rajesh...
8:30 we started back to complete the setup... straightaway we left to my friends house and gathered the CPU and decided to have it in our house and install the OS and deliver it next morning.
9:00 we were at my house and we decided to have dinner and I was sure that we were going to have a long night.
9:30 we started playing with the parition stuff and voila we found that dm /x did it all.
10:00 now we got started and installed the win98 and believe me we had to install it 3-4 times because of some dumb error and our negligence. C'mon we were half dead already. Given the amount of stuff we went through..
12:00 we installed XP and finally we had to do it all once more and I wrapped it up all by 2:00A.M in the morning. Wow what a sense of satisfaction. This what we all work for.
7:15A.M we woke up, remember we were already half dead with less sleep and the amount of travel we made yesterday...
7:30 A.M we booted the machine and to our surpise the machine did not boot, it just said insert boot floppy... shucks we were shocked. But when we did a ALT+CTRL+DEL it worked. we were groping in the dark.
8:00 A.M we recollected the fact that somebody was in the shop, with the same complaint, we tried calling couple of guys but in vain.
8:15A.M got pissed off and I badly neaded some rest so I asked him to have a look at the problem and then I tried to doze of ( You know what I get answers in my sleep, that might sound weird) but that is a fact!!!
9:00 A.M something struck me I cannot just like that sleep around when the house is on fire. I had already promised my family friend that we would deliver it by sunday morning ( that is the current time) So I decided to browse the net
8:30A.M by this time we formatted once again and formatted the C: drive. but in vain. we had lost all hope and were desperate and were searching on the net and came up with couple of options fdisk /MBR etc.... at the end of the search I had around 6-7 options.
9:00A.M all during this time something flashed me, there was an option called pre-delay which kept flashing all along...and in the search it talked about the speed mismatch between the harddisk and the CPU. ie. the CPU starts searching for the hdd, even before the HDD can catchup to the normal speed.
9:15A.M we struck on the gold pot,we fixed it! Eureka!!! it worked!!! wow! you should have looked at our excitement!!!!
9:30A.M We had our breakfast while the installation was going on.
10:00 A.M we could feel that it is going to end happily.
10:30A.M everything was inplace and we left for destination
11:00A.M we gave a demo and ESCAPE from location
11:30A.M dropped rajesh at his place.
12:30A.M was back home what an experience....
will update my learnings soon...
So I pitched in with my programming brain, and enquired couple of vendors who were eager to pitch in for a lower price and of lower power. I realized the fact that the common consumer just worried about the price and not what it has t offer. That is when it struck me that, I must also be ignorant of these facts in areas which I'm ignorant of ha ha ha....
Anyway, I decided to go ahead and assemble a monster of P4 2.8 Ghz Given the money constraint decided to go with a 256MB RAM. and the rest as usual, UPS,speakers,keyboard,CD R/W optical mouse.
I decided to get some help from my friend, who has been in the assembling market for nearly 2-3 years. His original estimate was around 2hrs, without the OS installation. So we marked Jan 8th as the D-Day. He decided to pitch in with a 2 hr permission from his boss.
11:00As planned he dropped in at around 11:00A.M and we went to my family friends house and got the money.
11:30From there we went to the market and started negotiating various configurations. We were on the lookout for decent stuff, something that looks and works decent. Believe me the market was buzzing with people hovering all around. Actually the market seems to be on fire.
2:30 Around this time we paid for the stuff and started from the market. By the time we paid our bills the shop had already sold computer accessories for 3 PC and addressed 2 faults and 5 other minor purchases. I suppose it would come around a hefty sum of 1 lakh.
3:00 we were there at the destination, this was against our original plans to assemble the machine in my house. We were actually starving, but wew wanted to pull this off and then have a hearty meal. But to our astonishment we realized that we did not have a screw driver set(dummy me!)
3:30 we left for my house and decided to have the lunch first. So that we could head out all guns blazing to assemble the monster. It was a hearty meal.
4:00 we were back on track and started putting on the motherboard, SMPS and the processor. To our dismay we could not see the SMPS running. in the flurry we somehow managed to skew one of the legs of the processor. phew! believe me I was shattered, it was someone close and you took the complete responsiblity of getting things up. And unconsciously I started sweating. Then we tried couple of gimmicks but nothing worked. So we carefully straightened out the leg...
5:45 we decided to head back to the market. and headed for it on my bike
6:00 we were in the market, and we were puzzled when it worked the moment we plugged it in. The vendor explained that it could be because of voltage fluctuations and improper earthing in the house. And luckily he put the processor in the slot and it seemed to work... that was sense of relief which is worth experiencing rather than explaining.
6:30 we were back on track and made the PC up and running with the help of the UPS. and the cmos screen flashed. Just at that time all the anxiouos people in the house dropped in and made us nervous. I stated that it is bound to take couple of more hours, because we were yet to partition the disk and install the OS. That is when we realized that the partition did not show 80GB whereas the CMOs shows all of it.
7:00 just then the dreaded call from his manager, who desperately called hm back. So we decided to head out and drop him there and get the windows XP CD from my other friend (Sai)
So we promised to get back by 8:00P.M
7:30 we were at the BDPS office at porur, and was waiting for this guy to wind up the office. So that we could head back.
8:00 we headed out and visited Sai, and there we got the CD and asked for help for Rajesh...
8:30 we started back to complete the setup... straightaway we left to my friends house and gathered the CPU and decided to have it in our house and install the OS and deliver it next morning.
9:00 we were at my house and we decided to have dinner and I was sure that we were going to have a long night.
9:30 we started playing with the parition stuff and voila we found that dm /x did it all.
10:00 now we got started and installed the win98 and believe me we had to install it 3-4 times because of some dumb error and our negligence. C'mon we were half dead already. Given the amount of stuff we went through..
12:00 we installed XP and finally we had to do it all once more and I wrapped it up all by 2:00A.M in the morning. Wow what a sense of satisfaction. This what we all work for.
7:15A.M we woke up, remember we were already half dead with less sleep and the amount of travel we made yesterday...
7:30 A.M we booted the machine and to our surpise the machine did not boot, it just said insert boot floppy... shucks we were shocked. But when we did a ALT+CTRL+DEL it worked. we were groping in the dark.
8:00 A.M we recollected the fact that somebody was in the shop, with the same complaint, we tried calling couple of guys but in vain.
8:15A.M got pissed off and I badly neaded some rest so I asked him to have a look at the problem and then I tried to doze of ( You know what I get answers in my sleep, that might sound weird) but that is a fact!!!
9:00 A.M something struck me I cannot just like that sleep around when the house is on fire. I had already promised my family friend that we would deliver it by sunday morning ( that is the current time) So I decided to browse the net
8:30A.M by this time we formatted once again and formatted the C: drive. but in vain. we had lost all hope and were desperate and were searching on the net and came up with couple of options fdisk /MBR etc.... at the end of the search I had around 6-7 options.
9:00A.M all during this time something flashed me, there was an option called pre-delay which kept flashing all along...and in the search it talked about the speed mismatch between the harddisk and the CPU. ie. the CPU starts searching for the hdd, even before the HDD can catchup to the normal speed.
9:15A.M we struck on the gold pot,we fixed it! Eureka!!! it worked!!! wow! you should have looked at our excitement!!!!
9:30A.M We had our breakfast while the installation was going on.
10:00 A.M we could feel that it is going to end happily.
10:30A.M everything was inplace and we left for destination
11:00A.M we gave a demo and ESCAPE from location
11:30A.M dropped rajesh at his place.
12:30A.M was back home what an experience....
will update my learnings soon...
posted by Ramesh | 9:45 PM
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