Project PC

Whenever I do any kind of PC upgrade, I always look hard at what I can do to get the most bang for my buck. I hate to throw away any PC components, not only because I feel like there must be a use for them somewhere but also because of the environmental impact discarded PC’s and PC components have. So, last year, when I upgraded my system from a PIII 1 Ghz machine to an AMD powered AMD 2000+, I took the P3 system components and built a machine from them and gave it to Connie’s nephew, Alex. He wound up with a P3 1Ghz machine with 512MB RAM, a 30GB hard drive, ATI All in Wonder Radeon (AGP) video card, a Creative Lab sound card, a Firewire PCI card, Ethernet, a 56K modem, a Pioneer slot-drive DVD ROM, and a TDK 24X CDRW. Alex got it for Christmas.

Earlier this year, I stepped my system up to an AMD 2800+ and took my old AMD 2000+ CPU and used it to upgrade my son Tim’s PC, which was the one UPS destroyed in shipping. (You can read about that on this page.) To recover, I ordered Tim an AMD 2500+ CPU, a new motherboard, memory, and case; and he built himself a system using those components and what was salvaged from the UPS destroyed PC. This weekend, I put my system components in a new snazzy case (a black and silver “Dragon” case from Soyo bought from Microcenter for $29 after a rebate) and put together another “Christmas PC”. The “new” PC consists of:

* an AMD 2700+ CPU (it and its motherboard were bought on sale at Fry’s for $99);

* a Samsung 352B 52X CDRW/DVD Drive (already had this in my old case; bought a new black one for my new case at Multiwave for $50);

* 512MB PC2700 DDR Ram stick pulled out of my MDD PowerMac and originally salvaged out of the UPS destroyed PC;

* a spare 40GB Maxtor hard disk (originally in an Apple flat-panel iMac and a spare after I upgraded hard disks last week);

* and a 56K modem my wife bought at Fry’s for this project ($30 with a $15 rebate).

I added to that an ATI Radeon 9000 video card, loaded up a copy of Windows XP Home OEM (bought at Fry’s for $109) on the machine, configured it, added a few applications (like Open Office, iTunes for Windows, Nero 5.5 Light, and ATI Multimedia Center 7.8) and a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical, updated the OS using Windows update, and then put it up, awaiting word from Connie’s sister about whether to send the machine now or wait until Christmas. Someone there has to buy a monitor for it. It will stay here until they’re ready.

More than likely, this is the last one I’m going to build for a while. Alex’s machine could use an upgrade, but I’m not going to volunteer for that unless I take my own PC to 64 bit and it generates the spare parts. That’s not likely anytime soon, if at all. My own sons seem to be taken care of, so I don’t see a reason to undertake another project soon. That’s a good thing. I’ve hit my limit on PC related expenses.

Installing Windows XP on this project PC was an adventure, like it always is. The setup routine would crash just before the screen where you select either the installation or the recovery console. It taught me a new Stop Error….06F…accompanied by a message that “Session 3 Init Failed”. Research indicated it was hardware related. Surprise! What isn’t? I had forgotten that the hard disk’s partition was not set active, so I used FDISK on some Windows 98SE boot floppies to repartition the drive and set it active. I then formatted it using FAT32, double-checked my memory timings, played with external cache (turning it off and on) and somehow got the installation to work. I hit another snag when it couldn’t copy a file from the Win XP CD; obsessive cleaning of the CD got me past that one. I had no further problems, but it would be nice to install XP on a “new” machine without having to troubleshoot the hell out of it. I know, I know; that’s not likely to happen.