Posts Tagged ‘hard drive’

Custom built computer (Jewel box Project)

Today I was Clicking around in the G4 forums. You know , Looking for game news.

Well I stumbled upon a thread that caught my eye . They guy seems to have built a

Complete custom pc case with the idea of it looking like a Jewel Box.  Look at the way he navigates the air through that thing. and the heatsinks he has all over everything. I mean the video card has the same heatsink as the processor. Amazing.

He has this thing designed to a T. Except two things. The second platform has no front support, and the build just looks kind of retro ugly. But the way it looks does not mean squat. I am 100% for the cooling it has.

here is the complete project

I have to say.

very good job man.

The Parents’ Computer!

Maybe my parents are weird, maybe this normal.

They have a dell, a 900mhz Dell CD ROM and 15 inch CRT and Windows 98SE ME bundle.

Well they keep getting pop ups and spyware. I keep trying to fix it. that was some frustrating stuff. I mean it is said all over the net that the hosts file is located in the windows directory. Well on their machine, it was not. It was no where. S I download mvp’s hosts from his site. their computer had nothing to uncompress zip files. No wonder they think computers are useless. I mean they can’t even get a bundle of Christmas pictures because no one can send them a compressed file.

Ok 7zip came to the rescue. See you can not tell them you are installing stuff you just have to do it. If you tell them you are putting stuff on there ” that ain’t gonna slow it down is it?. does it take up much space? is it a virus thingy?” so just wait till they go to the bathroom and BANG!

Well the hosts file does go in the Windows directory, even if there isn’t one already.

Well now mom opens here browser and sees in the little boxes where the ads used to be “page can not be displayed” and gets mad because I made it ugly.

WTF!

so I tell her I didn’t do it and something must have broke.

I tell her I will look and see if something is broke inside the computer, because “I thought I smelled something burning earlier.”

I open the computer and pull out all of the dust and hairballs and fuzzy stuff. and clean from motherboard to hard drive, yank out the PCI slot modem because I know they have cable. I throw away teh pci slot modem and close the computer and boot up and surf the net a bit, defragment the hard drive run spyware and online virus scanners , when all is done I shut it down and leave.

for the next week I will not be answering their phone calls.

My son’s computer specs

We are building him a computer right now.

Well he is , I am just telling him how to do it easier. He spent his Christmas and birthday money  on this build.

We had to go to fry’s and to wal~mart . Wal~mart for the monitor because he had like $200 in Wal~mart gift cards.

He got dual 2.2 x2 Pentium processor , two gigs of of kingston pc2-5300 memory , nvidia 8500 gt pci-e with 512 memory.

He is right now in the middle of snapping the motherbaord in and cussing up a storm .. lol  that’s my midget!!!!

Should go good with the tower I bought him for Christmas  with the 500wt power supply and 3 ( I think it was 3) case fans. with the dvd/cdrw combo .

Right now the only thing on this machine that is old, is the 80 Maxtor hard drive.

Not bad for a 14 year old kid, but guess who his daddy is? :-P

Precautions For Building Computers

Use lots of overhead light. Once you have all the parts together, find a flat, smooth, clean, static-free surface. Make sure your clothes are not polyester or you stand a chance of building up buttloads of static and having a merciless discharge turning your junk into… well… junk.

I like using Gatorade lids to hold my screws and small parts in. Yeah Trailer Park Boys-ish, I know, but it works. Working above tile is good, also, so you can hear the small parts when they drop and kinda locate them easier by where the sound comes from. With the tower open and all parts scattered on the table, lower the motherboard in. Take small pin nails and set them through the mounting holes to mark your spot — should take like 6-9 of them depending on board size and tower abilities. Pull motherboard back out and try to not disturb the pin nails. Replace each nail with mounting studs, lower board in, and screw it down. Follow instructions in the manuals for motherboard and instructions from tower to set up power switches and USB connectors. you may sometimes need to split the end connector for the tower speaker so it fits the prongs. Tie back wires so they stay low and out of view.

Insert RAM, CPU, and heat sink. Simply put: Be gentle, be slow, bend no prongs, and scratch no boards

Set in all drives: CD-ROM / DVD / hard drive / floppy drive. Place the power supply in, and take the board connecting the wire strand and try and map the cleanest, least visible route. Then plug it in. Do not crack the motherboard (yes, it can happen)! Do the same with the drives. I tie them to the rack as I go down the line. Keep hard drives away from all magnets — even the case speaker magnet!

The Video card is done pretty much the same way as the RAM. The slit(s) in the card tells you which way it should face.

Get a good look at the inner case. All air paths need to be clear of anything — even wires. Now plan the path your air will flow and then look at your fans to see which direction the blades should face to achieve the airflow you planned.

Close the case, cross toes, plug in all devices for first boot, and press power button. Pray for BIOS/CMOS boot. Press delete and watch temperatures for about ten minutes or until you see that it is getting really hot.

More stuff to keep in mind.