Starkist
10-29-2003, 03:55 PM
I Frankensteined a computer last night. :)
A year ago our old P3 450 machine gave up the ghost. This week I brought it into class to do testing on it and my original fears were confirmed: both the processor and the motherboard were dead. Yesterday I went shopping around for replacements. Since I had to replace both the board and the processor, that gave me a little bit of freedom. I eventually haggled (annoyed?) my way to a steal: an Athlon 750 with board for $30.
Last night my cousin and I get it home and begin rebuilding. For the longest time we couldn't figure out why it would not start. I think it turned out to be the CMOS battery was dead, for some reason or another. I replaced it with the battery from the old board and it fired up nice and good. :)
So the Athlon board is in there, and the old 8GB hard drive and DVD-Rom that came with the computer originally. I added a sound card that came with my cousin's computer, before they upgraded to a leftover one of ours. Same with the video card, a GeForce 2. I stuck a network adapter in, and I have a crossover cable to hook it up with my main computer soon. (Our DSL Modem/Router has only one cable plugin. How stupid. And hubs are expensive.) I also installed WinXP Home on it. (Would do Pro if I had it.)
The only problem now is the moniter. The old 15 inch CRT we had in my closet is totally shot, and I'm not sure where we will get a new one. This whole project is for a limited budget, so I don't know...
A year ago our old P3 450 machine gave up the ghost. This week I brought it into class to do testing on it and my original fears were confirmed: both the processor and the motherboard were dead. Yesterday I went shopping around for replacements. Since I had to replace both the board and the processor, that gave me a little bit of freedom. I eventually haggled (annoyed?) my way to a steal: an Athlon 750 with board for $30.
Last night my cousin and I get it home and begin rebuilding. For the longest time we couldn't figure out why it would not start. I think it turned out to be the CMOS battery was dead, for some reason or another. I replaced it with the battery from the old board and it fired up nice and good. :)
So the Athlon board is in there, and the old 8GB hard drive and DVD-Rom that came with the computer originally. I added a sound card that came with my cousin's computer, before they upgraded to a leftover one of ours. Same with the video card, a GeForce 2. I stuck a network adapter in, and I have a crossover cable to hook it up with my main computer soon. (Our DSL Modem/Router has only one cable plugin. How stupid. And hubs are expensive.) I also installed WinXP Home on it. (Would do Pro if I had it.)
The only problem now is the moniter. The old 15 inch CRT we had in my closet is totally shot, and I'm not sure where we will get a new one. This whole project is for a limited budget, so I don't know...