2/26/05: Not that much accomplished today; another dry, cold day so more staticness. I did get the PSU installed, and replaced the stock thumbscrews. The holes on the rear chassis and the rear of the window panel don't quite line up properly, so getting the thumbscrews in was a chore (say goodbye to the tip of a thumbnail, but they were getting too long anyways); I had anodized-blue dust on my fingers for a bit afterward. The flange on the very back of the window panel is a PITA; useful for lifting the panel out, but it's right on top of a screw hole, so tightening that thumbscrew is fun. The panel itself also requires of bit of wiggling/pounding on a corner to get it flush so the thumbscrew holes are aligned properly.
3/6/05: Finally was able to get something accomplished last night.
M/B with CPU/HSF and RAM installed. The AMD heatsink was a bit fiddly to get locked down properly; the clips didn't seem to want to catch.
|
Using screw standoffs, the I/O backplate didn't fit properly. The offset
was just about the height of the standoffs, so after this photo they were removed and everything lines up now.
|
First shot of hardware installed.
|
Plextor drive installed. This was much easier to install than the hard drive; the drive screws included with the case were not threaded, and the screws included with the drive aren't long enough. Hard drive is currently held in by the pressure of the rails until I can find suitable screws.
|
Last photo in this round. Finals this week, so more to come when I actually get time.
|
3/16/05: Navi's almost up and running...except, neither of my SATA (Samsung HDD and Plextor optical) drives are detected. Switching them to the Promise RAID header results in the HDD being found, but I'm not able to get into the RAID setup. On the non-RAID headers, nothing is found at all. And...my PSU appears to be possessed. Navi now boots instantly when the PSU is turned on, before the case power button is touched. All panel connections on the motherboard are solid and the only thing I've changed around are the SATA connections. This just started last night. On the upside, my fan controller now works...
4/4/05: Well, my SATA hard drive works, but my CD drive does not. A regular IDE optical drive that I patched in earlier this week works, so I've decided to just cut my losses and order an IDE CD drive until I can get the SATA sorted out (whenever that may be). That should get here by the end of the week. I'm having the same issues with PSU/case power even though power in bios is set to "last state" which worked before... Still need to get the wiring spaghetti tamed; even with the tangle my m/b is holding somewhat steady at 18C and CPU around 34C.
4/6/05: Lite-On CD/DVD drive arrived today; replacement for the Plextor. Lesson learned: there's no guarantee that cutting-edge tech will work the first time around. Plextor goes in my parts box for now until further research can be done as to why it wasn't detected in any configuration. Installation of the Lite-On went fine, except for pinching the audio cable in the drivebay (discovered when I went to plug into my board). Oops. Take drive out, free cable and thread back into the case. No damage that I could see.
4/12/05: I'm getting errors from XP when trying to install the SATA drivers from floppy. I need the drivers or Windows cannot see my hard drive...fun fun fun.
Who Is The User?"
|