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| Is it HARD to build a coomputer? | |
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| Topic Started: Jun 24 2009, 07:23 AM (235 Views) | |
| Trotsky | Jun 24 2009, 07:23 AM Post #1 |
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Big City Boy
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I think I should be thinking about a new computer soon, mine is a 2000 model that tops out at 512 MB RAM max, and has a small 20 gig hard drive and a 933 Mhz processor, and a USB 1.0 system. I see lots of good sounding deals on TigerDirect.com for new systems in KIT form. Has anyone put together a "kit?" Do you get everything you need in the way of screws, bolts, instructions etc.? How long did it take you from start to finish to put yours together, including the learning curve. Did you find you were missing anything ESSENTIAL that caused you problems? I think I plan to use my old OS (Win XP Home (With Service Pack 2.) I presume there's no problem adding a fast video card to a system with integrated video on the motherboard, right? I have several floppy drives... yeah199 Do you recommend 2 DVD drives, one read only and the other a DVD+-RW? Or is just the burner okay? I presume they are all backward compatible with old CDR's? |
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| Kahu | Jun 24 2009, 12:12 PM Post #2 |
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I've never built one from scratch or kit Trotsky. I've only replaced various components like power supplies, cd drives, or extra RAM. I think most componetry comes in separate 'packets' and you need to make sure that all the various parts are compatible ..... so in theory, I think it could be quite simple ohmy 03 023 Toodles is part of a computer security group where there are a number of people who're vastly more experienced than me. I'm in awe of her son's computer which he uses for fast computer gaming! I'd give her a pm to see if she could put you on to someone who can provide sound advice. |
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| Trotsky | Jun 25 2009, 01:28 AM Post #3 |
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Big City Boy
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Thanks Alan. |
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| Deleted User | Jun 28 2009, 07:41 AM Post #4 |
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Deleted User
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Hi Trotsky - Kahu is absolutely correct in what he posted. Yes, my son's computer which he built himself is awesome but it took him and another techie about 2 - 3 days to put it together. He is a gamer and has nothing but the best and most expensive [hit me up for a sizeable amount of $$ . lol]. But ordinary users do not need anything of this nature like 5 or 6 cooling fans to keep the computer from overheating when gaming. But he does not have a DVD burner installed... I don't ask why either... LOL I have an old computer like yours and I upgraded it by adding another internal 100GB hard drive [$80.00] which is used for storage and the 20GB is only for programs used. On high speed it works just fine but when you try to edit say 4 pictures or more at one time ... 512 memory is insufficient. The processor can be upgraded and it depends upon your make & model if the memory can be upgraded. If so, you can still get a lot of mileage. I only added the extra hard-drive and hubby uses it for email, browsing, storage and editing photos and it serves his purposes. However, computers are cheap now and to even have them built for you is not expensive. I have had both my computers custom built & the one I use now is a power house as well. the advantage of custom built is you that put in what you need and want and not stuff you will never use & pay for & can have it built to be upgradeable. I have 2 CD/DVD drives and use them both ... I even added a floppy drive for $10.00 and people laugh but I use it to read old floppies and sometimes store something small on a temporary basis and then can throw it out or rewrite on it. |
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| Delphi51 | Jun 28 2009, 12:35 PM Post #5 |
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About 1999 I ordered 25 computers for my school and got them all in pieces so the students could put them together. We did the assembly one evening and had lots of fun. All the computers worked, no damaged parts. The student who assembled each machine got his or her name on a sticker on the back and was quite proud of it. We saved about $50 on each computer, mostly due to reduced packaging and shipping. I'm not up to date on this - haven't seen a kit offering - but I would be surprised if there is a large saving and of course there is a risk that you'll zap a RAM module or something while handling all the stuff. |
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| Trotsky | Jun 30 2009, 01:45 AM Post #6 |
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Big City Boy
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Thanks guys. Toodles, the thing that stands in the way of a decent upgrading is my god forsaken motherboard which is limited by design to 512Mb ram. All I could really do is replace my hard drive and add a USB 2.0 card but that memory weak point would haunt me unless I replace the MOBO...and then what do I have except an old case and old power supply...which would fail 10 minutes after upgarading says some guy named Murphy. Every time I think of ANY upgrade, I hit that same wall...512 Mb RAM. Yeah, I still use floppies like crazy to trade stuff and carry info around from computer to computer. I have a gazillion blanks and if someone doesn't return a flopy, so what. My new computer WILL get one of my stash of floppy drives that I've salvaged from the dumpster. In a plea for sympathy let me tell you my hard drives story. Unthinkingly, when I formatted several years ago I split the 20 gig drive approzimately in half with only 9 gigs for the C-Drive thinking the dumb dumb dumb thought: "That should be enough" Of course, I try to put as much as possible on the D-drive but you know how most programs, especially Windows defaults many many components to the C-Drive. So you can IMAGINE how tedious keeping the C-Drive to a level where it still RUNS. Even my last defrag said that it couldn't run unless I freed up a gig of space...so now I have to make sure I keep emptying the Recycle bin, getting rid of temp files, and regualrly deleting chkdsk files to keep a gig free. (I MUST make the C drive bigger but I am procrastinating becasue I know that will only buy me a little time.) Delph, No zapping for me, I wire myself up like Frankenstein with static straps before touching iinnards and I choose a humid warm day, a hard floor and I'm NUDE. cross 07 The deals are still quite something on kits and the choices are astounding. For example here's a cheapy from Tiger: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4794838&Sku=B69-0096 Now of course, this setup is quite elemental by today's standards, but it so blows away my old rig it makes my head spin...and for $199 bucks, I'd be getting a 2.5gig processor, 2 gigs of RAM (upgradable to 4), and a 320 gig hard drive. It wasn't long ago that any ONE of those items would have cost me $200 bucks. But then, on the other hand, the same company offers THIS already built rig for only $100 more INCLUDING the OS. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=4527899&sku=SYX-2015 Far cry from those $2000 computers we all had to buy back when, eh? Edited by Trotsky, Jun 30 2009, 06:16 AM.
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| Delphi51 | Jul 1 2009, 06:33 PM Post #7 |
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Well, $100 is a significant saving - and you get to feel good for stealing it from Micro$oft! Go for it. Looks like a good computer. It seems to me Microsoft improved their system a couple of years ago, and they may now be able to tell if your XP install code is being used by two computers. Strictly speaking you are not permitted to move your license to a new computer, but that isn't fair and probably isn't actually being checked. Might be an idea to look into it, though. |
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| Kahu | Jul 1 2009, 07:05 PM Post #8 |
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My primary school kids were a bit young (1997) to build their own computers but ....... I got the local tech college to assist there, I had my hands full organising staff and parent volunteers who knew nothing about computers or local area networks. We followed the US example of NetDay and installed Cat5 cabling, dug trenches, and physically installed the hardware for a school wide network. NetDay 1997 |
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| Delphi51 | Jul 2 2009, 07:50 AM Post #9 |
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Amazing what can happen in a school, isn't it? In 1995 I had a room full of computers that weren't capable of running the new Windows 95 and I wanted it bad. I got on the school division's tech committee (where most of the other people were Mac devotees) and proposed the idea of a "modern computer". The Mac people readily accepted the idea that only Windows 95 could be considered modern (it was obviously copied from the Mac system whereas previous versions of Windows were archaic). We soon got the funds for a class set of Windows 95 computers and some leftover for networking. My son and I set up the network in the computer lab over the summer based on a Windows NT 4 server. We just ran the wires along the floor with a hub on each side of the room. |
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| Kahu | Jul 2 2009, 01:09 PM Post #10 |
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In 1990, I had no computers at all, a staff and Principal who saw no need for them at all, no internet access at all, or even a phone line into my classroom block, a school constructed in three isolated blocks ........ one of those blocks was 30m lower than the other two. I used to bring my own Commodore Vic20 and Amiga into the classroom and allow the kids access ...... I used to write a of BASIC language educational programs and games which were really popular ..... especially for music and language. Commodore machines had the facility to POKE values for sound files, and also easy access to enter phoneme values so you could make the computer 'speak' even with a kiwi accent, use the keyboard as musical instrument, and they were also excellent graphic reproducers too. Anyway to cut a long story short, I got support from the Board of Trustees, and took part in the first NetDay which installed a phoneline, an old IBM PC to act as a server, linked three classrooms ........ and over the next three years managed to extend the network throughout the school. |
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| Delphi51 | Jul 2 2009, 05:14 PM Post #11 |
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That is interesting, Kahu. In Canada, it was the Apple computer that first appeared in most schools. I recall begging for some programmable calculators about 1978 and couldn't get them, but all of a sudden an Apple II computer appeared. I got hooked on it really fast. It came with terrific manuals that even listed the source code for the ROM and I didn't rest until I understood most of it. I wrote some CAI programs and then a teacher's marks program in basic when the first disk drive appeared about 1981. Then a word processor called "TouchType" in assembly language - and sold $15000 worth of them in 1984. Would you believe I included a little disk operating system in the program, all on one 140 kb disk, and it booted up into the word processor in 10 seconds! It had some neat features for teachers like automatic question renumbering and two files open at once so you could copy questions from a bank to a test. Not quite good enough for a guy with two small children to give up the teaching job. When I moved to a larger school in 1984 they had a lab of 25 Apple II's. I don't remember when we got internet but I don't think we had anything beyond dialup until after 1995. |
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| Kahu | Jul 2 2009, 06:09 PM Post #12 |
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We seemed to have followed a similar path Delphi ....... I know I spent hours developing different games and uses for my two kids to use ...... I couldn't afford to import or buy programs so it was always a case of DIY. I had a bit of help, my wife used to work at the National Airways Corporation (the forerunner to Air New Zealand) and she had some mainframe knowledge of FORTRAN and machine language and I learned by osmosis so to speak. You're right about Apple computers apearing in schools first, first before PCs. What you may not know is that there was a NZ designed and constructed computer system called the Poly Computer which was built to supply the NZ Educational Market. Apple completely sunk this NZ initiative by supplying a free computer to some schools! This was during the period of economic free market reforms here, and the Wellington PolyTechnic 'Poly' computer simply dropped by the wayside and into oblivion.
There's a very interesting background site, if you're interested Poly1 Educational Computers And another here too ....... Poly Corp piece - General Manager of Progeni Edited by Kahu, Jul 2 2009, 06:20 PM.
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| Delphi51 | Jul 4 2009, 04:30 PM Post #13 |
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Fascinating, Kahu. In Canada we had the Orange computer, which was pretty much a copy of the Apple II. They didn't sell many outside the home province, Ontario. My own school bought heavily into the Franklin clone of the Apple II but it turned out to be somewhat unreliable. The NZ prices for the Apple II you mentioned seem to be higher than ours were. I'm pretty sure the Apple II Plus was $2000 (without disk drive) in 1980. Disk drives were $800 extra. I actually spent nearly $5000 on my first one in 1981 but I bought one of the first 80 column cards and the first dot matrix printer that could do graphics as well as extra memory - 128 kb as I recall. I wrote my word processor to use all three cutting edge attachments. My mother bought it for me, in lieu of the new car she had promised as a wedding present a few years earlier. I don't think my wife was impressed! A minority of schools here are still Apple devotees, using nothing but Macs. I tried to keep a foot in both worlds for a few years and wrote my Marksheet for the Mac in 1989. Soon the Think Pascal system I used went under and my program was orphaned with the next major version of the Mac OS. |
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| Kahu | Jul 4 2009, 07:15 PM Post #14 |
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I'm not sure that you understand what an economic revolution can do to a country ...... it turns all previous understandings and methods upside down ...... especially in educational administration. ...... and things can get quite nasty! Most teachers have a strong altruistic streak which tends to align them with the Labour Party. This really was an ideological battle between a state funded Labour government and a pro-business, pro-private enterprise National government ....... with the current recession we're going through a similar period now.
My wife would have agreed with her wholeheartedly! She always was commenting that she subsidised the NZ Education system ... {numerous expletives deleted!} After I had worked on the networking nuts and bolts for the school ..... I worked on a post graduate Advanced Diploma in Information Technology (Education) qualification and I didn't really have much time left, or interest, or energy ....... to pursue the programming aspects. |
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| Delphi51 | Jul 6 2009, 05:36 PM Post #15 |
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Our Conservative province was a leader in introducing computers in schools. Also, distance learning using computers and even a virtual university (Athabasca U). I always suspected this was because the government had in mind saving money by replacing teachers with machines. It didn't work out that way. |
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7:59 AM Jul 12