Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 07:53:46 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG, mhenry@hons.cs.usyd.edu.au Subject: Re: First time for my own PC hardware Message-ID: <199907221453.HAA61090@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <19990722010418.1061D14E0C@hub.freebsd.org>
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>Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 11:04:08 +1000 (EST)
>From: "Michael Henry" <mhenry@hons.cs.usyd.edu.au>
>> Got everything home, and found that "ATX" apparently doesn't mean that
>> an "ATX" motherboard will necessarily fit in an "ATX" chassis. :-(
>That doesn't sound right; I'd suspect that the case is not ATX.
The chassis had the "insert" placed in a different orientation from some
of the others -- so I found when I took it back last night.
This was from the "asset recovery shop" -- so it didn't have spare
inserts or screws....
I then got to the place where I bought the motherboard, and bought a new
chassis for the same amount of money, with mounting hardware, including
a couple of screw-on inserts with knock-outs. One of these worked just
fine.
>> And
>> the motherboard seemed to be shy one jumper (for setting the voltage to
>> the CPU core).
>Hmmm. Asus is a pretty reputable brand. (And the P5A is a popular motherboard).
Turns out they had spare jumpers in the bag with the cables. I hadn't
expected to find them there... but more to the point, I hadn't expected
the jumper (of a set of 3 used to specify core CPU voltage) to not
already be on the motherboard.
>That should have come with the case. Don't use screws, there are little
>plastic things that you push through the holes in the chassis and some
>"wings" come out and lock it in place. Then you push the motherboard down
>on it (from the other side) and another set of "wings" locks it in place.
>At least, that's how it was for me :)
Well, the plastic stand-offs looked kind of like:
||
|| |
||=|==---\
||=|==---->
||=|==---/
|| |
||
So I figured that the pointed part should go up through the un-tinned
holes in the motherboard. The base of the stand-off, though, didn't
have any holes, nor was there anything in particular on the case to
which to affix it.
The case did have some brass stand-offs, similar to the hardware on
either side of typical external connectors -- male-threaded on one end,
female on the other. ("Hermaphrodite," I suppose.)
There were just enough of these (6) to match with the tinned holes in
the motherboard, and it turned out that the holes in the case (labelled
as to whether they were for AT motherboards, ATX motherboards, or
both/either) were threaded, so the male end of the hermaphrodite brass
stand-offs would screw into these, the motherboard would sit on top of
them, and supplied screws would hold the motherboard to the stand-offs.
>Noooooooooooo. Long live the simple window managers! (like twm, mwm).
>Although I must admit I can't live without a virtual desktop now.
>That's why we've got tvtwm, pmwm (on UnixWare), and fvwm (version 1 :) ).
Yup; I use tvtwm now; been using it (on that same 3/60) since '94 or so.
>I've got 64Mb and I don't think it's ever swapped.
:-)
>If you know where incompatabilities exist, you can usually avoid them without
>too much trouble. The salespeople will do their damndest to give you flaky
>hardware :)
Those of us who are "newbie" to PC hardware have an interesting time of
it!
Anyway, I wanted to correct any mis-impressions I gave of Asus. I've
got the box basically put together... except that I neglected to pick up
a DIN-to-Mini-DIN adapter (so I could connect the one PC-style keyboard
in the house to the mini-DIN keyboard connector on the Asus board.
(I did note, though, that the cables supplied with the motherboard were
one floppy cable & one IDE cable... even though the motherboard has 2
IDE controllers. I thought it would be a good idea to make the CD the
master for the secondary IDE, so it doesn't slow down access to the
disk. Maybe I'll try picking up another cable, along with the adapter,
tonight.)
So I haven't given it a smoke test yet....
:-},
david
--
David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com UNIX System Administrator
voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (888) 347-0197 FAX: (650) 372-5915
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