Telescope Reviews: It's Not Just a PC: It's an Adventure!

On another thread, I mentioned I was going to build a replacement for this one I'm now on. Accumulation of parts (hovering over the NewEgg website, awaiting "deals") happened over several months, as I was in no rush, but wanted something that could process astro-photos a bit more briskly. This one is 5 years old and sports a P4 2.6GHz modestly OCed to 3.0.

Finally all the parts were in place:
Lian-Li PC1200B Plus II case
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W P/S
DFI LANParty LP-LT X48 TR2 mobo
Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo Wolfdale 3.16GHz
3X Seagate Barracuda ST3500320NS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA HDDs
Ciprico 5000 PCIe RAID card
Corsair Dominator 2x2GB RAM DDR2 1066
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer soundcard
eVGA nVidia 8800 GT videocard
Noctua NH-C12P CPU HSF

Thus began the fun.

First, I installed the power supply without snarls.

Then I found, trying to mount the mobo in the case that the Lian-Li screws furnished were the wrong pitch to thread into the standoffs. NP, I have a "few" of the right pitch from my days building PCs.

Quick test insertions of the Noctua cooler proved that there wasn't enough clearance to fit it into the case, so it got shelved in favor of the Noctua NH-U12P. That fit (barely). The aftermarket HSF is because I intend to overclock this new PC; I should be able to get 3.5-3.6 GHz out of it; most of the higher-end HSFs can cool the Duos and Quads 15°C or better than the stock Intel unit in any event.

The mobo came with a decent Northbridge cooler, but without the fan supposedly included...off to the "I-shouldn't-bother-to-keep-it-but-it-may-come-in-handy-some-day" box, and a fan was located and installed.

The mobo configured, and the Ciprico RAID card connected for RAID 5 to the 3 HDDs, I booted 'er up. The BIOS showed the RAID card detected, but I couldn't get into its BIOS to configure it to be bootable. Further, the mobo was set on "CPU detect" for RAM speed. The E8500 is spec'ed at 1066 MHz, but set FSB at 800. Anyway, the initial Blue Smoke Test was a "Pass".

The RAID card came out, and I connected the HDDs to the Intel (ICH9R) SATA ports. I set the mobo jumpers to 1066 MHz for the RAM.

Reboot. Promising, so I took my ratholed XP Pro CD and started the install. F6 for the "other" RAID drivers from the floppy. All the XP install could detect was the drivers for the second (Micron) RAID controller. Allowing XP to continue the install, it detected no HDDs.

With the RAID driver floppy in hand, off to this peecee, where I copied only the Intel drivers to a floppy; using that floppy, this time the XP install successfully harvested the ICH9R drivers, and the install proceeded normally, and I partitioned the HDD array into five logical drives, and formatted the "C:" drive.

Except for my brain cramp. Here, I should have stopped the install, rebooted, but I didn't, and the initial XP install ended up with the partitioned drives being H:, I:, J:, K:, and L:, because I had connected a card reader to the USB port. Even the optical drive took precedence at G:.

So, we do the XP reinstall, deleting the first XP folder and reinstalling XP. Worked just fine; now the HDDs are C: through G:, normal.

Okay, let's just install the chipset and other mobo drivers. One doesn't usually anticipate "Not Responding" error messages from "My Computer", but I couldn't get the CDROM to cooperate with the install routine. Off again to this peecee, where I burned a copy of the mobo CD to another, and the copy worked just fine.

Finally, we're up and running,and tomorrow, I'll install protective software so I can update Windows and download updated drivers.

I've built probably hundreds of PCs, and I encourage folks to consider building their own as they can config it to their tastes and budget. I suspect had someone followed my buys of gear and tried to build one, I'd have many paid, hostile, Ninjas lurking outside my door.

The jist is that it ain't always as straightforward as it should be.

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N11GPS Fastar
TOA-130S
MK66 Std
Vintage C5
Megrez II 80mm ED Triplet APO
SolarMax 40
NJP Temma II
Sirius EQ-G
ST8XE/CFW-8(LRGBHa)/AO-7/DF-2/STV Dlx/ST237a/350D (Unmodded)/Mallincam Color Hyper Plus/DSI III Color/DSI II Pro
Two not-spoiled Golden Retrievers - Maggie and Casey

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. - Arthur C. Clarke

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