I bought a CPU fan today for 20 €. I think we have the minimum set of parts to get the computer up and running. This evening Louis and I started to put it together.
Installing the CPU fan was a bit stressful because I had to push down fairly hard on the CPU to get the clips to lock into place. There is a copper heatsink that is in contact with the CPU and on top of the heatsink there is a small fan with a power cable to the motherboard.
Installing the motherboard into the box was fairly easy. I had to punch out the sheet metal cover that came with the box and replace it with the cover that came with the motherboard. The connecting ports (keyboard, mouse, etc) on the back of the computer protrude through the cover.
The next task was connecting wire leads from the box to pins on the motherboard — for the LEDs (light emitting diodes) that flash on the front of the computer when there is disk activity for examle. Also, the wires from the extra USB ports on the front of the computer need to be connected to pins on the motherboard. Aside from attaching tiny pins with my big fat fingers, the difficulty in all this is matching the instructions that come with the box manual with the instructions for the motherboard. Sometimes the names are not the same in the two manuals.
Installing the graphics card was a breeze.
Next is the installation of the disk drives — hard and floppy. I bought a special round data cable to connect the motherboard to the hard disk. It is supposed to be easier to install, take up less space inside the box and have better data transfer. Well, inserting it into the hard disk did not go so well. I had it a bit crooked and decided to pull it out to get a better straight-on start. In pulling it out, the wires (there’s about 20 of them) disconnected from the plastic clip that has the pins that go into the socket. Oops, so much for my 10 € high-performance cable. I had to dismount the hard drive from the box, go to my toolbox, get my slip joint pliers to grasp the plastic piece and pull it out of the drive slot. In examining the pins on the hard disk, one or two of them got bent in the process, but nothing that a screwdriver couldn’t fix. Luckily, I had another cable, the standard classic flat cable, that will work just fine.
There is still a lot of work to do, the CD engraver, other connections to the motherboard, configuring the BIOS, formatting the hard disk, installing the OS, and probably other stuff that I’ve forgotten about.