THIS IS MY DOG, COMPUTER.
Ben and I rebuilt our computer over the weekend. It was quite a challenge. Neither Ben nor I really knew what we were doing. I am fairly fearless when it comes to computer stuff, though. I have a lot of faith that I can figure things out. I think that's because ever since my dad got our family's first computer back in 1992, he and I both fell in love with using computers. Dad got really great at programming and building computers as well as webdesign and stuff. I mainly stuck with graphic design. Through the years, my dad has built a lot of computers and replaced things, upgraded, cleared hard drives and reinstalled operating systems. So, going into this computer rebuilding endeavor this weekend was not so scary knowing that I had my dad as a "safety net."
On Saturday, we called Tony & Tiffany and asked them if they wanted to go to Fry's Electronics with us. Tony recently rebuilt a computer and he said that he enjoyed it, even though he claims that he doesn't really know what he's doing. We figured having them come along to shop for a new motherboard, chip and RAM would be a good idea since they undoubtedly know more than the two of us do. Fry's was as irritating as usual. The staff there for the most part are really unwilling or unable to guide people. It turns out, another customer there to buy a new motherboard, chip and RAM had the newspaper with him. In it was a deal for a Pentuim 4 chip and a motherboard together, and then he got some RAM which added up to about $330. Exactly the maximum Ben and I had discussed spending. The customer reccommended this deal to us, so we went ahead and got the same thing he did. We went home and discovered that our tower was too old, so the slot plate that faces the outside back of the computer where you plug stuff in could not be converted to fit our new motherboard.
Side note: at 4:30 am we got up to watch the Manchester Derby football match of Man United v Man City. It was disappointing cos it was a tie, 1-1. If United had won, they would now only be 1 point behind Arsenal (grrrrr).
Sunday morning, I returned to Fry's with Ben to purchase a new tower. Again, it was a fellow customer who gave us advice. He reccommended a tower that was really cool with pretty blue lights, 2 internal fans and a see through side casing. It was only $20 more than the one we were looking at. We ended up going with the cheaper one, though, because it had 2 usb ports in the front and Ben was really getting concerned that we were spending too much money. It looks really cool, too. $65, and 350 watt power supply to boot. Not too shabby.
Most of the day was spent transferring cards and disk drives to the new tower and figuring out how to plug in the power supply for each device. It took a few hours and I cut my thumb pretty badly by scraping it against the raw metal after popping out the slot coverings in the tower. Surprisingly, Ben was the one being doubtful that our project was going to have good results. He kept saying that it probably wouldn't work right and that we would have to keep buying new stuff to fix it. Usually, I am the pessimist and he is the optimist. I just said that I have faith that it will work, because how could it not? It should be like having a new computer.
It came down to the last plug-ins: mouse, power, monitor, and then the keyboard wouldn't plug in! Our keyboard was too ancient and not a ps/2 connector. So I returned to Fry's, solo. Ben got really bummed out cos he knew we would have to get more stuff. I tried to tell him that it was no big deal and that a new keyboard wouldn't cost too much. I ran in and ran out in 10 minutes despite the fact that I had to park behind the building because ALL of the spots in front were taken up. I got a cool black keyboard for $21.
When I got home, we started up the computer and tried to make our way through the BIOS setup and detection of hardware drivers. Windows was still looking for a driver for something that we didn't put in this new motherboard. It had been acting funny since before we did all of this and we knew that we should reinstall Windows altogether. So I called my dad for step-by-step instructions on how to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall Windows. In this process, we discovered that the computer recognized the floppy disk drive, but whenever we put a disk in it, it wouldn't read it. So we couldn't make a startup disk to reinstall Windows. Ben got the printer working, which hadn't worked for AGES. Now the only things we really need to work out are the problem with the floppy drive and how I'm going to hook up the scanner with no SCSI port. I'm going to ask the computer guy here at work about the floppy problem, and I think we can probably buy (sorry Ben!) a cable adapter to go from SCSI to USB.
In the pursuit of OTR (Old Thin Rachie), I can happily report that I have lost 2 pounds! 25 more to go! Woo hoo!