An $800 hard drive. (why I hate working on PC's) - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

#1 05-30-2002, 09:50 PM

My neighbours are researching what is going to be necessary to set up a network between our two houses, which are 600 feet apart, so that we can share their sattelite internet service and split the cost. As part of this, we set up a network in their home in preparation for the eventual link between the houses (still researching best xmit median).

When we went down to the metromess to pick up parts, I came across a 100 gig hard drive on sale for $139. In dire need of more storage, I jumped on the sale. Much later that night, after getting back from getting their network up and running, I proceeded to install the hard drive in my home PC - which is not a newer machine by any means. I had the expected problem with the bios, and followed their directions to install and use their overlay software to make it all work. The PC immediately rendered itself unuseable. I tried removing the new drive and reinstalling the old ones. Still no luck. Called it a night and called Western Digital the following morning. We were on the phone for over 45 minutes trying to bring the PC back up. Best that could be done was to get it to the login screen, which after typing the password, would just loop back to the login, despite accepting the pw as valid.

Needing to get other things done, I let it go untill I got back home from running errands. When I got home, I went to the neighbours and picked up the Win2k CD that we were using to set up the server and network the night before. On the way back home, I decided that it was high time to install the PIII 650 processor and motherboard that I had bought from a friend a couple of months ago. It needed a controller card, which the neighbour had and gave to me, as the on board controller was shot.

I disassembled the old P 266 system and installed the "new" board and processor. One immediate small problem. I needed to buy a new modem, as I had three old ISA boards, and only one ISA slot in the "new" machine. Not wanting to drive back to the metromess, I elected to pay the high prices of our local PC shop. $60 later, I had a new USR modem.

Time came for me to fire up the new system. No dice. The add on IDE controller would not work with the motherboard. We made several attempts to get it running, up to an including using a different controller card. Still no go. Now good and mad, I've decided that I've had enough, and elected to go buy a new board to eliminate the known problems of the current one.

I get down to the place where I originally bought the hard drive the previous day. On the way down, I decide that the old chassis is too beat up and missing too much stuff to continue to be used.

I get there and select this awesome server style box with tons of additional cooling capacity, well built, lots 'o space for only $139. Time for a motherboard. There are NO slot 1 boards left, and apparently they aren't going to sell any more. Now I'm in immediate need of both a new processor AND a new motherboard.

Well, now I've decided that I need to just get the damned upgrade done and over with.

Now, in place of a 266mhz Pentium pc, I now have a 1.5 ghz, P IV machine complete with a new CD ROM burner, 256 meg of ram, "new" AGP video card (bought used), 10 gig main, and 100 gig secondary drives (the drives came up perfectly in this thing), new SCSI card, and a new modem (56K), for the total of $600.

I moved my old CDrom drive (54X), floppy drive, network card, SCSI zip disk, as well as reused the current 17' monitor, and the printer that I had only bought a couple of weeks earler.

What started out as a measly $140 hard drive, resulted in a grand total of $800 into a new PC. Oh well, I needed to replace it anyway.

I HATE workiing on computers.

#2 05-30-2002, 10:20 PM

Your not the first with that problem my friend bought a 100 gig for 85 dollars and ended up scraping his old 40gig because the 2 refused to work together. Where did you look for slot 1's I bought one for 45 bucks new at the computer shows in Orlando.
hey
at least your set on speed for a while

#3 05-30-2002, 10:52 PM

I could have probably found a slot 1 board someplace if I were to have had the time to hunt. It was pushing 8 pm, and most places were closing for the night, not to mention being over an hour drive back home. I needed the machine back up and running. They had some boards in a clearance pile (literally), that were all opened up and looked rather ransacked. At Fry's Electronics, you NEVER touch their opened stuff. It is likely to be non operational.

#4 05-30-2002, 11:03 PM

What are you using for your network. I have sygate working it's pretty nice.

#5 05-30-2002, 11:07 PM

My place is set up on a 10 Base-T network. We just installed a 100 Base-T network at the neighbours house. We will probably run coax between the two houses, or if the price can be had fairly reasonable, we may lay fiber optic between the houses. The latter is mostly to eliminate a grounding issue. The network is mostly for the internet, and some file sharing.

Ashman · #6 05-30-2002, 11:30 PM

DP, ya should have called me. I could have tried to assist you. My friends don't call me Nick Burns for nothing..

hehehe

Alon

#7 05-30-2002, 11:46 PM

oh, NOW ya tell me!!!

#8 05-30-2002, 11:52 PM

Try this one on for size.

A customer of mine has a 2 year old $60K machine go down.

The company that made the machine went down with Zenetix.

The PC that runs the machine has custom ODBC cards.

The CPU fan went out and killed the processor, seemingly a simple problem but when the processor went it took out the firmware via corrupting it to the point that it can’t be accessed but that’s another issue.

Because of the cards and loopedey do crap on these machines I have to use an OLD motherboard to accommodate the cards and a NEW OLD processor and a geek to put it all together without calling me all day telling me what he’s doing and all I am telling him is “The only call I want is, I got it working and give me my check” I have had 3 geeks on this all are very reputable, but this equipment and having no manuals is a royal pain.

Cost so far…………

Pentium 133 computer with windows 3.11

$3725 and still counting but I think we are half way there.

Oh yea and relearning dos has been a real treat.

#9 05-31-2002, 12:01 AM

I do a lot of computer repair and networking on the side. In fact, in our new house I ran at least 1 outlet for structured wiring that included 2 RG6 Coax, 2 Cat5e's and 2 fiber optic cables...very cool!!! Anyway, if I were you I'd consider wireless networking assuming your houses are close and you don't mind <10mps. The Apple Airport Hub is great, but you can look for other iee802.11b hubs. If you don't go wireless, run 2 Cat5e's in flex conduit.

Shaun

#10 05-31-2002, 01:09 AM

OUCH!!!

I think I would've blown that one up and started over if at all possible.

#11 05-31-2002, 06:58 AM

We did start over but getting all the old specialized stuff to jive together is a whole new ball game.

jsmith · #12 05-31-2002, 07:46 AM

to each his own, i guess. i love fiddling with PC's but i do a lot of planning and never jump in and compromise my main machine on a whim. i'll do an upgrade every couple of years, which usually amounts to building a new PC from the new parts i've been collecting. the obsolescence curve is steeper these days and it's not worth trying to retrofit old parts with the new technology. when the time comes to build the new system, i set up shop on a table and work on it in my spare time. it never takes more than a couple of days and i never have down time. the last time was pretty interesting because i decided to mess with overclocking - learned a whole bunch of now obsolete stuff

in the process.

computers are becoming more and more essential to everyday life just like automobiles are. i don't see why you should approach a PC project any differently than you would a car project. depending on what you do for a living down time on either one could have quite an impact...

jsmith · #13 05-31-2002, 08:03 AM

rsbiomedical,

i am really confused by some of the numbers you posted ($60k machine?) regardless, IMHO it is probably time to re-engineer a solution to the business problem. it is just not worth it to try and rebuild a system with tech that bill gates had to offer almost 10 years ago. you can probably build a current system that will do quite a bit more for the same amount of money that can be serviced by pretty much any PC shop.

#14 05-31-2002, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jsmith
to each his own, i guess. i love fiddling with PC's but i do a lot of planning and never jump in and compromise my main machine on a whim. i'll do an upgrade every couple of years, which usually amounts to building a new PC from the new parts i've been collecting. the obsolescence curve is steeper these days and it's not worth trying to retrofit old parts with the new technology. when the time comes to build the new system, i set up shop on a table and work on it in my spare time. it never takes more than a couple of days and i never have down time. the last time was pretty interesting because i decided to mess with overclocking - learned a whole bunch of now obsolete stuff in the process.

computers are becoming more and more essential to everyday life just like automobiles are. i don't see why you should approach a PC project any differently than you would a car project. depending on what you do for a living down time on either one could have quite an impact...

The upgrade itself was planned, just not as soon as I ended up doing so. My main problem with that machine has been its reliability. It was built from scratch about 4 years ago, and I had numerous problems with it - even back then. That thing seemed to always balk at anything being added. It was my intention to pay off some credit card debt, and then pay cash for its replacement, which was going to be built prior to dismantling the old one. The upgrade simply came down to asking myself why I was trying so hard to keep an obsolete pice of junk running for a few more months - especially one that I hated as much as I hated that machine. The new one was a joy to build. Everything went smoothly from start to finish. The computer powered up for the first time in less than an hour, and three hours after this, I was ready to transfer the old information that was still on the old hard drive. I had it up and running, ready to work (except the modem) by 04:00 Thursday morning. The modem itself balked, but was still running before I left for work Thursday afternoon.

This machine is TOTALLY kicking ass.

I started rebuilding my MP3 library that was lost to a virus last month. I was procrastinating on this due to the time that I thought I was going to have to divulge into the process. The new one is compiling the MP3's in about 1/4th the time. I also burned a couple of direct copies of CD's that I bought recently. I had these done in about 3 minutes each!! Methinks I'm going to enjoy this one immensely.

Ashman · #15 05-31-2002, 06:04 PM

if you are interested inf inding that old hardwrae, p133's, etc, try www.computergeeks.com.

They usually have a lot of used but still working older and some newer equipment, for dirt cheap prices.

Alon