HOW TO BUILD A COMPUTER 101
Date: 10/8/00
By: Rice
4. You're ready!
Final step: on the very top of your tower, you should see the power supply, and a mass of cords protruding from a box. Amongst those cords, there should be a grand daddy of them all. That's the main power cord you gotta feed your motherboard into. Take that big boy and plug it into the appropriate slot on the mobo. I don't have to reiterate that you should double check the manual for the exact position of it, do I?
Don't close your case yet. We still have a long way to go before we're done with the construction. However, you'll want to boot it up right now for the first time just to check that you're on track. Lug the tower over to where your monitor is.
Behind the monitor there should be two thick cords. One will go into a power socket, and the other one will go into the back of your tower. Plug the monitor's power cord into a socket, whether it be on the wall or from an extension, and take the other cord and plug it into the back of your tower where the video card receptor is protruding. Don't worry about plugging it into the wrong place. If it doesn't fit, then you must acquit.
Finally, there should be a cord that came along with your tower, one end is female, the other male (if you don't know what I mean by male or female, think nasty). Take it, and plug it into the female slot behind your tower. It should be on the very top of your tower, where the power supply resides. Again, don't worry about plugging it into the wrong place. There's only one place where it fits right. Then plug the other end into the wall, or an extension.
Okay, now plug in your keyboard and mouse, and you should be ready! Just in case you don't know where to, they're behind the tower near the top. Two identical circular looking ports, called the PS/2 port. The ATX backplate should have them labeled clearly which one is for mouse, and which one is for keyboard. If you have an extra old keyboard that require big, circular slots, there are converters that will make them into PS/2 compatible. Also, your mouse may be either serial (if you have a really old one) or USB (if you have a really new one). Both slots should be near the vicinity of the PS/2 ports, so hunt them out and plug them in accordingly.
Double check everything, and make sure you have your spacers and motherboard installed securely. When you're ready, hit the power button on your tower! If all goes well, you should hear the fans whirling up and your monitor display all that nice bootup information where they count how much RAM you have.
If you bought a jumperless motherboard, mash DEL on your keyboard to enter the BIOS to setup your CPU information. Besides multiplier, FSB, and core voltage, if you see jargon you don't understand, consult the manual. By now, you should be a pro at finding info in the manual. =)
Seeing your computer boot up the first time should be a satisfying experience. You can now shut down and roll up your sleeves again. We're going back to work.
Worst case scenario: if nothing moves when you hit the power button, double check everything and hope you didn't short out your motherboard. Chances are it's something stupid that is causing this non-bootup. Make sure you plugged in the power supply to your mobo. Make sure your LED and switch jumpers are plugged in correctly. Hell, make sure you even plugged in your monitor and tower correctly.
If you can hear activity, but can't see anything, make sure your video card is secured properly, and your monitor is plugged into the VGA adapter protruding out from the back of the tower. Jiggle the wires behind your monitor if you have an old one. As usual, double check everything. If all else fails, sit there, scratch your head for a few minutes, then call for help. Consult our message board here too, because we have some knowledgeable readers that may be able to help.
Setting up the drives:
You're halfway through the battle. You should feel a big confidence boost seeing your darling computer that you put together by hand boot up for the first time. Now, you should have 3 main drives. The hard drive, the floppy drive, and your CD-ROM drive. We'll work through them in order:
1. The hard drive
This is the main storage unit of all your stuff. You keep all your games and data in here. First thing to do is to setup the jumpers. Yup, there's more jumpers, and there's no way to circumvent it. Don't worry, it's just one set.
Along with your HD you should find a small manual, or even just a piece of paper that tells you which jumper corresponds to which mode. Most of the time it's also printed physically on the HD itself. There are 3 modes: Master, Slave, and Cable Select. Don't bother with the last one. Even I have no experience with it. The theory is that on each IDE adapter, you can install 2 drives. One is the master, the other is the slave.
Right now, we're just going to install the first, main drive. Most of the time, just set the jumper to "Master" and you're set. However, some other HD's may require special instructions if it's going to be the lone drive on an IDE adapter. For example, my Western Digital Caviar drive requires all jumpers off in that case. Just follow instructions and you'll be fine. With the jumpers set, place your HD in the tower and screw it in securely. Normally you place it at the front of the tower, where the 3.5" expansion slots are.
Now you take the IDE cable, and plug one end into the primary IDE (or IDE 1) of the motherboard and the other end into the HD. IDE cables are those big, flat cables, either gray or white, that you see populating all the space in towers. If you don't know where the primary IDE adapter on your mobo is... you guessed it. Bust out that manual (I should leave that line on my answering machine).
Important: On one end of the IDE cable you'll see this thin red stripe. Make sure that the red stripe corresponds to pin 1 of the adapter when you're plugging it into the mobo and the HD. These days, all IDE cables and adapters are cut so to prevent you from plugging it in backwards. In the case that you got a throw-back model, orienting the red stripe with pin 1 is the key. The pin 1 on the mobo should be marked near the adapter, while the pin 1 on the HD is the pin closest to its power connector. If you're still confused, just plug it in, and later when you boot it up and it doesn't respond, reverse the cable then try again.
Note: Many of you will be using the new ATA-66 / ATA-100 hard drives, and motherboards with adapters that support it. In that case, you'll need to pick out the gray IDE cable that looks a lot thinner with twice as many lines in the cable. You can also identify it by the colorful gray, blue, and black ends that it sports. This follows a very specific protocol. You must plug the blue connector into the mobo, and the black connector into the master device, which in this case happens to be our HD. Later on, if you want to install a slave HD, just use the gray connector. Don't forget the jumpers either. ;)
With the IDE cables down pat, grab a power cord from the protruding mass from the power supply and stick it into the HD's power connector next to its IDE connector. These are cut for sure, so there's no way you can mess this up. Make sure it's in firmly. I've had problems when it wouldn't detect because I didn't plug it in well enough.
That's it! Don't be intimidated by the volume of words. I'm just trying to cover all situations. Most of the time this process won't take more than a few minutes.