Mediarocker543
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2007
- Messages
- 27 (0.00/day)
- Location
- Teh US of A
| Processor | Intel Pentium 4 HyperThreading 3.2GHz- Prescott 540 90nm 800MHZ Frontside Bus |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Dell Dimension XPS Gen4- Intel Alderwood i925XE |
| Cooling | Processor:Heatpipe Tower with dual fans| Case: 80MM Fan Located above Graphics card. |
| Memory | 1GB Samsung Dual Channel DDR2 533 |
| Video Card(s) | nVidia GeForce 6800 256MB PCI-Express x16 |
| Storage | 250GB 7200RPM Western Digital Caviar 8MB Cache | 500GB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 16MB Cache |
| Display(s) | Dell E173FP | 1280x1024x32 @ 72 Hz (increased from 60Hz) |
| Case | Stock Dell Dimension XPS Gen4 |
| Audio Device(s) | SoundBlaster Audigy! 2 ZS |
| Power Supply | Dell Dimension XPS Gen4 460W PSU |
| Software | Legit Windows XP: Home Edition SP2 |
Well I origionaly wrote this as a guide back in 2004. But this is a project I am kinda proud of. Enoji 
(yes this was all done in my room)
(yes this was all done in my room)Mediarocker543 said:I had this old 98 box and I needed something to do with it...I couldn’t really mod it out and put some cathodes in it even though the panels may cut through real easily for the case window.
so here we go...step by excruciating step...
First I took the crap computer apart.
This was only a small job being that all I needed to do was switch the dual drives from master to slave. But I had a little more trouble with the hard drives being that they are a little old.
333 sportin the dualies…
pin 1..pin 2…pin 64???
After I found out what was the Maxtor’s jumper set up was, I tried to find the Western digitals….I have used this drive before. but some how I weirdly forgot that it was plain painted white on the bottom of the PCB.
Solving the Maxtor mystery
Painful realization that its on the bottom…
After that was finished I proceeded to test the drives, earlier I had problems with the mobo recognizing the drives..until..2 days later I remembered the Master/Slave pins…
The way I set it up was the Master being on the Top ribbon and the slave on the bottom…later realizing that slave would be better on the top because of less bandwidth…it all worked out.. SuSE (now SUSE for some weird reason) chose the slave first. So…oh well
Differences in ribbon cable is important, hard drives use this fine cable and normal IDE drives like CD-ROMs and DVD-RWs go on the coarser cables..(i didnt have another fine cable.)
Coarse IDE cable (left) Fine HDD cable (right)
Well now that BIOS detected the HDD on the boot I enabled S.M.A.R.T. and shut the computer down so I could finish mounting everything.
BIOS Detection…YES!
Drives in the mount…
Now this case is real tricky you cant remove the right side bay screw with out removing the Mobo tray. So if you’re hoping to do some computer building and modding I’d suggest one of these…
Snake
Snake at work on the “Screw you Screw”
On mine there are tricky hooks…if it doesn’t go in right I made a list of what happens..
1. Drive bay falls off with sensitive hard drives
2. Screws wont go in
3. Screws snap
4. Floppy bezel doesn’t align
5. Floppy bezel pops off
6. Floppy bezel shatters
7. Excessive Vibration
8. When bay falls damage to the motherboard
9. Case Damage
10. Bay damage
Bay hook…
Afterwards, I got bios set up (needs to replace Bios Battery)
I got the SuSE 9.1 Personal Disc burnt and I installed it onto my slave drive. I also opted to have GRUB boot manager installed because I might put windows on the machine. Or I just may put another distro..=P
After installation…
Tux box at first boot up
This project took a lot of time because the drives did not have their documentation, I spent a lot of time getting it from forums and other sources.
