Went a bit crazy in Akihabara today
Trying to install Redhat 7.0 on a dodgy Pentium 133Mhz drove me crazy so I went to Akihabara and bought a new PC.
- Intel P4 2.53GHz with fan 30,980
- 512Mb DDR2100 RAM 18,500
- Asus P4B-533E motherboard 21,800
- Seagate 80GB hard disk 12,800
- Windows XP Pro/J (OEM) 19,800
- Gladiac Geforce Ti6400 39,800
- Logitec DVD-R 24,799
- ATX case 9,799
Total 178,278
The new Pentium4 motherboards are a little complicated to install and it helps to have a P4 compatible case or power supply. Make sure you plug the ATX12V power connector to the motherboard.
The IDE cable that came with the motherboard only had one connector. I tried putting the DVD-R on the Primary IDE and the hard disk to the Primary Extended IDE but the disk wasnt being detected. I’m not sure what the extended IDE connector is for. In the end I had to find a spare IDE cable and put the hard disk on the primary IDE and DVD-R on the secondary.
After installing WinXP a lot of system devices werent being recognized because the motherboard is newer than Microsofts standard XP drivers. Install the drivers from the motherboard CDROM. Dont let your computer restart between installing each driver. The order you install the USB related drivers is important:
- Install QFE fix for USB 2.0
- Install INF driver
- Install USB 2.0 driver (click Next on the Drivers screen)
- Restart your computer
I disabled RAID in BIOS to remove the “Scanning IDE drives…” during startup.
