This is a story of the epic struggle between a man and a machine. A machine so vast and powerful that it can compute equations at 2600 Mhz, and a man who tried to tame that savage beast. That man is me, and that machine is my computer. We are good friends now, but it hasn't always been that way. We had many disagreements that went to the point where this machine refused to operate. But I have my ways of making it talk, as you will shortly find out.

This story starts off on a bright and sunny saturday afternoon. I woke up, did my usual morning business then went off to the computer store with my dad to pick up the parts that would soon become my computer. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, rummaging through the graveyards to find the perfect specimines to make up my CREATION! As it turns out I only had to hit 1 graveyard, a store called Infonec. They had everything I needed: motherboard, CPU, memory and a beautiful case... well, everything EXCEPT for my videocard. So after we picked up those parts we made our way to another computer store... the computer store that I like to call "One big pile of useless crap" because thats what it is. I went there in search for a videocard that they had advertised, only to find out they had none. So they were nice enough to offer to order one for me (it is now over a month since I visited that store and they still haven't called to tell me it is in. I have since purchased my card back at Infonec).

After purchasing everything I needed, and going through the disappointment of not getting a videocard, we retreated back to my home to start the construction. The first thing I did, as any responsible first-time computer manufacturer should do, was read the manual... since I had no clue as to what I was supposed to do. After all that was done I cracked open the case:

...moved the cables aside and dropped in the motherboard. This was a faily simple task, all it involved was first screwing in some anchors for the motherboard to be screwed into. Then I placed the motherboard down into the case and screwed it in.

Feeling fairly confident of my skills at this point I proceeded to open up the CPU box and remove my precious processor from its plastic refuge. Carefully aligning its pins with the motherboard's CPU socket I placed it in its new home and pulled down the clamp forever bonding it with the motherboard. Now came the fun part... The CPU came with a HUMONGOUS heatsink and fan. The thing was a beast, it is almost larger than my fist. I thought that it felt it needed to prove something to me, but I had no reason to feel inadequate ;) I placed the heatsink down on the processor and proceeded to pull down on the clamps. THIS is where my troubles began. As I pulled on the clamps I noticed they weren't latching onto anything. The clamps were too high and needed to be pushed down more in order to hook onto the special frame on the motherboard. I was afraid to push down on the heatsink anymore in fear of cracking my beloved CPU. After reasoning with myself that it wouldn't be this hard to do unless it was supposed to be (whatever that means) I decided to use every ounce of strength I had to get this thing to work. I pushed down and pulled the lever *CLUNK* the first one was down and locked... but UH-OH... I couldn't get the other clamp to lock. Now I've got this 1000 lbs heatsink pushing with all its might down onto 1 side of the CPU... FOR SURE its going to break... I could just see it now, all that money down the drain... I struggled with the beast, begging it to submit, praying to the gods of silicon that I could win this fight... And I did, take a look at the finished product:

There you see that I've got the motherboard and CPU in place. After that I popped in the power cables into the motherboard. I continued on with the installation, next stop - IDE DEVICES. Your IDE devices are just your harddrives and your cd/dvd drives. They were fairly simple to install. Just needed to pop in 2 ide cables into the motherboard, screw in the drives and plug some power into them. I then continued on to dropping in an old ATI Radeon videocard and a sound card (I was not willing to use the onboard sound for some weird reason). I then finished connecting all the internal cables, propped the computer onto its feet:

and proceeded to the moment of truth. THE 1 MOMENT where you find out if all your hard work, your Tender Love and Care, was worth it. I connected a keyboard, mouse, monitor and power cable. It was at this moment that I felt very inclined to pray (as depicted below).

Plugged it into the wall and hit the button... All at once I had a rush of emotions: did it work, is it running, wait, why isn't there any noise... OH NO! It didn't start, NOTHING has happened. A panic ran through my body... I checked everything inside the computer, didn't really know where to look. Then it hit me... "YOU IDIOT!!! You forgot to wire in the POWER BUTTON" Of course it wouldn't work, silly me. So I popped in the proper jumper, and tried it again.... NOTHING. What was wrong this time you ask me? I had no clue. We waited for monday and my dad brought it to the shop. They looked around in it and noticed that I had put the power cable for the floppy drive in wrong, only 3 cables were connected and it was causing a short circuit. So that night after work I plugged the computer in, and it started up nicely... until I heard a terrifying beep. I checked the manual for what it could mean... beep beep.... 'parity error' wtf? what is a 'parity error'. Apparently its a memory problem, I had the wrong kind of memory maybe? So, we bring it back to the shop and they turn off the parity check. No worries. bring it back home, start it up... beep beep... WHAT NOW??!!?!? I was getting furious. It turns out the stupid thing beeps once for every USB device thats plugged into it. Whatever... At this point I was about to snap if I ran into any other problems. To make a long story short (and because I'm getting sick of writing this thing) I had problems with windows, it wouldn't boot off the CD for installation, so I had to download some diskette images to boot off of, then the installation went smoothly. Then when Windows was installed I kept getting an error that my videocard was going into an infinite loop, so I had to quickly install new drivers before the thing decided to crash. Now it all works nicely. THE END.

Here are the specs:

NEW COMPONENTS:
P4 2.60 GHz 800MHz Front-Side Bus 512-KB L2 Cache
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe Motherboard
1 Gig DDR-RAM (2x512MB)
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro 128MB
ENERMAX CS-3051L-S3A - 350W power supply + neon light

OLD COMPONENTS:
60GB Western Digital Harddrive 7200 RPM
80GB Maxtor Harddrive 7200 RPM (used to be 30 GB)
Sony DVD-Rom
TDK CD-Burner 48x24x48
Some generic Floppy Drive