Take a deep breath, slowly exhale. Push the Power Button. Hmmm, it's booting ----- for exactly one second, that is,
and it all goes down. What the....? Try it again. Same thing. Quickly feel the CPU for heat - none, nada, zip. Well,
maybe that's a good sign, anyway. Magic Smoke still enclosed. No smells, no nothing, actually. Strange.
Check ALL connections, ALL cables, EVERTHING. But it's all just the way it's supposed to be. Now what? What
could POSSIBLY be the cause? I mean, ya know, it's supposed to just fire right up, go into bios, set it up, and go.
Get out the Momboard Book from Abit again. Richard's been reading it, too. He points out one VERY important step
that I'd glossed over with my glassy eyes. Reset the BIOS with the jumper. doh. OK, let's try this again.
Push the Button. Cool, it's booting! ...maybe. Hmm, no POST beep...and the hard drive light is not blinking, it's just
ON. OK, well maybe I have the connections wrong - but, no, they're just fine. Normally, when I install a new piece of
anything, and the thing won't come back, it's pretty easy to figure out what the culprit was. However, when EVERY
piece is new, where does one start? Is it motherboard, is it CPU, is it video card? Yeah, you know what I'm sayin'.
OK, let's disconnect everything that don't need to be for the system. I left the Vid card, HD, FD, and CD-RW still
connected and tried it again. Same thing - lights come on, and nobody's home, no POST beep, nothing. Just sits
there and hangs. This is getting weird.
For some STUPID reason, I didn't suspect any of the drives. That should have been my tip right there. After over (and
I'm ashamed almost to admit it) 2 hours of screwing with everything I could think of, I found out it was the new Plextor -
it would NOT allow anything to happen until I disconnected it entirely from the system. As soon as I did that, man, did
that sucker POST ! Way cool. First thing I did was check the BIOS for the System Temps. Whew !!!!! 54C - way too
warm considering there wasn't even an operating system on it. So, I shut it down, put a little table fan blowing into the
side onto the CPU
)
and took an old CDRom I had lying around and installed
it, and... ... Houston, we have ignition.
)
After setting the BIOS for the default settings on everything, I rebooted to the Win98 Boot Disk and proceeded to
Fdisk and Format Drive C. Flawless. Then I stuck the Win98 SE CD in, and started copying files to C: to do an
installation from the Hard Drive, it's a lot faster. Only thing, the CDRom I was using was really old, and it took about
7 times to get all of the necessary files over. This just wasn't going to work, I've got way too much stuff to install.
So, reluctantly, I tore my unit apart and put my 40X CDRom in temporarily, and that worked just swell.
Can we say: "Complete Win98 SE install in less than 15 minutes" ? heh. things are lookin' good, ain't they?
I took the temp from the BIOS, and it was at 34 C (about 93 F), that was acceptable, eh?
After the o/s install, I shut down and installed the Modem - that took quite a bit of work, too. When I rebooted, I
kept getting the 'New Hardware" found screen, but it was looking for PCI Serial Connection drivers. Yeah, no problem,
just pop the KT7E driver disk in, and .... hey, they aren't on here. Crap. OK, I put my unit back together, got online,
and started searching for the answer. I found one totally unrelated site somewhere that gave me at least a clue: trick
Windows into using the .inf files from the Modem driver floppy. Which I did, and which worked, which was strange, 'cuz
it wouldn't load them either from the install on the disk, or from install/.inf, and Windows couldn't see the modem without the drivers. Catch 22. Cool, communications. Now to get online with the Tbird, but let's reboot first.
Which would have been nice, but: 'Check Video Connection' was all I got for a screen, no POST beep, nuttin' honey..
Now what? I screw around with the Shuttle, thinking, well, you know, it could be that cheapie card, but.... Reboot, and
everything boots normally. This is getting to be a drag, mostly because I'm gettin' pretty tired. At least, I have a system
of sorts. Now, get online, and .... it won't even come close to connecting. ( I used to work at my ISP, so I know what
to do for internet/modem settings, and they're all ok. Crap, again.) I tried a new program I'd been trying on mine called:
Accelerate. It's another program that tweaks your internet settings for a better connection - you know the kind. After the
4th different setting, and rebooting (again - to the: "Check Video Display" issue), I finally get on. First thing, head to
Windows Update and get some of the updates. And EVERYTIME I reboot, I get the Vid. Display error issue. Can't quite
figure that one out, but now it's 4am, I'm toast, but at least the Athlon ISN'T, which is fine with me.
Slip into the ol' bed for about 4 hours, and back at it. I went to the VIA Hardware site and d/l the final 4.31 4-in-1
drivers and installed them, and guess what? The Video Display problem TOTALLY disappeared, and has never returned.
It may be safe to say the KT7E has an issue with either itself, or the Shuttle card, but it's all ok now.
We're getting really close to the end of this article. The rest is pretty much vanilla from here, I installed all the
software Richard had, got all the updates for the hardware and software, and put Windows ME Defrag.exe and
ScandiskW.exe in place of Windows98's versions. Get this - Complete Defrag in around 1 minute. I was amazed !
Now for some foolin' around. I temporily installed SiSoft Sandra, and went into the BIOS and set the FSB to 133 just
to see what happened. Know what happened? It booted promptly to 1.33 GHz immediately, and just sat there going,
"You Rang? Where do you want to go today? What fantastic thing do you want to accomplish at 1.33 Ghz?
After loading the apps Richard used, I ran Photoshop 5.5, IE, Dreamweaver, and something else I don't remember,
but a real world scenario of how it's going to be. Neither of us are gamers or sound junkies - just users, and as long as
it ran good doing what we do, that was cool....literally. It only reached 96 F after after an hour or so. So, stick a fork in
me, I'm done, thank you very much, take your baby home, and I'll try to foget how fast it was compared to mine.
)
The Final Product
I DO have a pic of
the burn-in process, too, as I didn't think 54 C did the trick. )
I'm thinking of dropping one of the Evergreen PerformaSE II Celeron 766's in my old PII 266 box. Think I can get a Gig
out of an LX board that's 4 years old? I'll post my personal experiences with that if it happens. Until then, happy trails.
- Crow - OK, enough of fartin around with piddly upgrades, I finally did myself. ..er, built one for me.
** The Plextor: Bought from Beyond Computer, Inc out of New Jersey They wouldn't deal with either an exchange or refund. Said we had to deal with the manufacturer. Pretty strange, but ain't goin' shopping there in the near
future. We affectionately refer to them as Beyond Hope Computer, and Beyond Belief Computer, and ....
** Update from Plextor: they sent a new unit out pretty quickly that works like it's supposed to. Great !
Still do not like dealing with companies that answer the phone like you're interrupting their day, like BC,Inc.