Replies to post #3958 on Dream Machine

[tc]

I have to assume that the construction went smoothly with few if any problems.

Incorrect. That's the reason you didn't hear from me. To make a long story short (against the wishes of the local friend that was going to help me), I couldn't wait for him to get back in town so I dove in as soon as the parts arrived. I once again proved my complete inability to do anything mechanical. I was sure I had damaged the motherboard and/or the processor trying to put the cpu in. The heat sink fan came apart when I tried to force it on. I had to wait several days for my help to arrive to get it put in properly. When he did it, it slipped in so easily it really po'ed me. I had all kinds of problems with the Radeon 9600 video card and ended up sending it back and getting an nVidia card. Seems that sometimes the Radeon would work and sometimes it wouldn't even be recognized and I would get a black screen. I followed the instructions to the letter several times (I can now install a video card in the dark) and finally just threw my hands up and sent it back. Of course, at the same time, my hard drive died in Cowpie 1 and I had to get a new one and redo everything on it. I didn't request help from this thread cause I didn't want everybody to post solutions when I couldn't work on the problem anyway. I was sick of messing with the Radeon. The frame of mind I was in, I wouldn't have kept it if they gave it to me.

[jwalk]

Hi Bruce,

I've been following this thread since last winter. I used your terminator information as the basis for building my own machine, which I put together this spring. Because of my schedule and the difficulty of transferring and configuring programs and data, this machine only recently became my primary computer.

C drive needs a defrag, but other than that, here are my results:
http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=S3X7LWFEVPMSCHEE
I'm most pleased with this machine.

The only detail worth commenting on about my experience is the about the video card. Last winter, before I built this machine, I upgraded my old box by installing the recommended Jaton PCI video card. I installed this an ran it without a hitch, using the original agp card for one monitor and the new card for another. In order to efficiently use the slots on my new box, I went with the Jaton dual agp card. This installation was quite different and unless I've done something wrong (always a possibility), people should be aware of the differences. The operating system configures the two monitors on the agp card as a "single" monitor. This is no big deal if you have no experience with a multi-monitor setup, but it was different for me after running for several months with the previous dual setup.

What is different? For one thing, some programs automatically expand to fit both monitors. This is easy to deal with, but it is not the way I would configure the screens. Also, warnings and error messages that ordinarily open in the center of your screen now open "split" --half on one screen and half on the other. None of this is any more than a pain in the ass, and would not stop me from ordering this same card, but it is something to be aware of as far as differences between agp and pci dual monitor cards.

Anyway, your instructions on this thread were a great help to me in building this box. Thanks much.

Jay