Last evening we installed a COM port, a game port, and a IEEE 1394 port on the back of the machine. There is already a 1394 port on the front with wires that I connected to the other header. I’m not sure what these are used for but I connected them anyway.
I still have a doubt with the CD engraver/player. I didn’t find a cable connecting the sound pins on the CD to the sound card or motherboard. I don’t think I’ll have sound from a CD. In fact, I don’t have a sound card. The sound jacks are all integrated into the motherboard.
I did a last check of all the other connections and then powered up for the first time – an exciting moment. The machine passed the smoke test! No smoke came out. I went into the BIOS and configured a few things (the date/time, a graphics card setting). Everything seemed to work ok. All the fans came on. There are 5 of them: on the CPU, on the graphics card, on the power supply, and two on the case. There’s even the slots for two more optional fans on the case.
I put in the Windows XP cd and rebooted into the install program. Formatting the hard disk (80 GB) took about 35 minutes. The install program continued until it asked me for the key. That’s where I stopped because I couldn’t find it, yet…