From all the "my Pentium is bigger than yours" badinage that gets thrown
about in here, I assume (yeah, I know...) that most of you build your
own boxes. I've been a Mac user (graphic design and consulting) for 7
years, but I went with a friend to a computer fair a couple weeks ago,
and bought all the ingredients for a PC. (Why? Mostly for sims, believe
it or not). Here's what I got:
Shuttle Spacewalker HOT553 mainboard, Plain Old Intel Pentium 166
w/htsnk and CPU fan, 32Mb RAM, 512K L2 PB cache, Western Digital 2.1 Gb
HD, Creative 8X CD-ROM, Creative Soundblaster 16 (Yeah, I know it's not
state-of-the-art, but at least there's a good chance it's compatible
with most things), and a borrowed Diamond Stealth 64 video card (until I
decide which 3D card to go with). All in a mid-tower case with a 250W
power supply. Not cutting edge, but adequate and oh-so-cheap!
My problem now is I have the box mostly together, but I can't figure out
some of the internal ribbon connections to save my life (and I even have
a couple wires & connectors left over from the front panel). The
mainboard manual is unfortunately less than helpful, and what
information is there is in tortured english, apparently translated from
the original Mandarin by a high-school kid who failed three solid years
of english.
Can anyone here point me to a site or newsgroup that might have some
simplified information on putting one of these tubs together?
Thanks
Bart Brown
It's not too uncommon to have some left over connections of the small wires
from the case to the MB (some newer MBs don't have connections for the
turbo switch for example), but as far as the other connectors go (the
actual ribon cables) you pretty much should have them all. A pair of IDE
cables for the HD and CD, 1 for the floppy, and one each for LPT, COM1, and
COM2.
--
If you have Web brower capability, use Infoseek or one of the other search
engines to find a series of pages titled "Build your own PC". It is a
great series and a good introduction to the inside of the box.
Good Luck,
MW
Remember red stripe to pin 1. Connect the Hard Drive to the primary IDE
controller and set the jumpers to master. Connect the CD to the secondary
and set it's jumpers to master. The connectors from the case that you need
to hookup should be the power LED, reset switch, and speaker. The turbo
indicator can also be hooked up but because you have a pentium it is not
really needed. The only reason to hook up the turbo LED is just for looks.
Really though the system should function even with nothing from the case
connected. You may have to flip these connectors to get the LEDs to lite
properly but don't worry you won't blow anything up even if they are
backwards.
I hope this helps and if you have any specific questions I'll be glad to
help since I build/repair PCs for a living.
Michael Barnett
...snip......
...snip.....
Here's the address of a good one with LOTS of info about Motherboards and CPU
and all you can think of...
It's called Tom's Hardware guide
http://www.sysdoc.pair.com/
Hope it'll help :-)
John
