I Have a Hobby

My life is so interesting, I know. I study during the day (and at night) and on the weekends, too. But I also get to spend precious moments with my wife. I've since been looking for new things to fill up my time, especially now that Melyn spends most nights working. Rather than just "fill" my time, I've been wanting a project I could continue throughout the year. The problem is, fun and interesting projects cost money, like restoring cars or flying airplanes. Those don't come cheap. So I've been wanting a cheap-er project that would also be useful for my education. Like building a computer.

I've been wanting a new computer for a while. My family seems to think I'm always wanting a new computer, and in some ways that's true. One of the downsides of buying a computer at a store is that they can never make it exactly the way I want it. Plus, store-bought computers are generally hard to upgrade, so they have a habit of staying "old". That's where building a computer comes in. The problem is I've never built a computer nor do I have any formal computer training. And I come from a family of Mac users, so they're probably wondering why on Earth I want a PC anyways. But I've learned that building a computer isn't incredibly difficult, it's sort of like putting together a Lego set. Sort of.

Melyn has posted a bunch of recipes, and I'm going to post my own: How to build a computer.

A CPU (This is the processor, or rather, the part that does all the thinking)

A few RAM modules (this is the memory, it stores the programs that you are running)

A Video Card ( this is what translates everything into an image on your computer screen)

A Hard Drive (this is long term storage for your documents, files, and programs)

A DVD/CD drive

A Power supply (as its name implies, it supplies power to your PC.)

A Motherboard (very important, this is where all the different components above plug into)

A Case to fit everything inside

Lastly, the Operating System (Windows) to run all your programs

And a few other odds and ends, like a internal fan to keep things from over-heating.

Another nice thing about building a PC from scratch is that I could salvage all the parts from my old computer that still worked fine, like the hard drive and DVD drive. Another way to keep costs down. So, after doing a bunch of research, I ordered the rest of the parts I wanted and started puting things together.

After several hours of putting things together, I realized that one of the parts I ordered was wrong: The Power Supply didn't have all the connections I needed. I was very heartbroken. My only option was to ship it back and order a different one (and wait a few more days in the mean time). Unfortunately, most of these parts can really only be found online, not at your local Wal-Mart. Well, after a few more days of waiting, I got the last part connected and here was the result:

"What is that." The computer here looks unusual because I chose a clear acrylic case to put all the parts inside. I thought it looked cool, plus when I see all the mess of wires and junk inside I can say "I built that!". The last part was scary: Turning it on for the first time. When you spend this much time and money on a Lego set like this, you kind of want it to work. Well, i hit the power switch, and waited for something to appear on the computer monitor. Nothing did. I looked at the motherboard and it shows a flashing red light. Not a good sign. The red light indicates something is wrong, but it won't tell you what exactly is the problem. The next part was a lot of trial and error. To make a long story short, it turns out I hadn't jammed the RAM modules all the way into the right sockets. After I solved that problem the computer come online for the first time and I was able to install the software. And then I had a fully functional computer

But this isn't a one week project. There's still lots of fiddling around with the computer I can do, you know, to make it go faster and stuff. But that's the story so far. I spared you lots of the details.