Well, my project to build a new PC has been the typical frustrating mess these things usually turn out to be. By Friday, all the various parts had arrived. I spent some time Friday evening and Saturday putting it all together. And when I turned the new PC on, nothing happened. Not even the beep that indicates the thing is starting it’s POST cycle (power on self test).
So, I took everything back apart and did hours and hours of debugging and troubleshooting. It’s now Sunday night and the thing still doesn’t work right. Here’s what I’ve found so far:
1) The original motherboard I bought was an ATX form factor, not MicroATX. DOH! So I found that the local PC Club had the model I really intended to buy.
2) The memory I originally bought mail order doesn’t work with the motherboard I bought. That was why the PC wasn’t even getting to the POST beep. I bought 2 sticks of another kind of memory and even tested one of the sticks in the store to make sure it worked.
3) The new memory I bought? Well, the motherboard will only boot if only one stick is installed. It can be either stick, in either slot. Just not both at the same time. So, I’m stuck at only 512 MB of RAM.
4) The ATI X800 Pro video card I bought doesn’t work with this system, either. It has a place where you’re supposed to plug in one of the hard drive power cables, because the video card takes more power than the AGP slot will provide. Well, even when I have the extra power plugged in, the video card gives a long constant beep and shows an error message on the screen that I haven’t plugged in the extra power.
So, now I’m starting to have serious second thoughts about this whole thing. Right now I have the original motherboard to return, 2 memory sticks to return, and an expensive video card that doesn’t work. Bah!