Simple America

I cannot believe it. But the PC I just built is dead. Last night I ran three computers as I worked on 12 to Midnight’s books. My laptop has the accounting software and Excel spreadsheets. The new PC was being used to look up numbers on the internet on Google Checkout and Paypal. The mini tower in the guest room has a printer hooked up to it and I used that to print out sales and royalty reports.

Because of printing I ran back and forth from my office to the guest room to pick up the output. Once I left the happy world lit by blue fan lights of the PC. When I walked back it was dead. No lights. I did not smell any burning smell. I pushed the on switch and nothing. Other electronics plugged into the surge protector worked. I pulled the cord and tried another electrical outlet. Still no power. Looks like my 500 watt power supply kicked the bucket. At least it is still under warranty.

In retrospect it is kind of spooky. I think the computer has died pretty close to the time my brother died last year. At least a PC is a lot easier to do with out. But really kind of strange that this happened so close to the first year anniversary of his death.

I think many of my loyal readers are aware that I am part of 12 to Midnight, a roleplaying game publisher. We have launched a drive for charity this Christmas and New Years, which we call the Midnight Charity Project. For our initial project we have decided to support the Autism Research Institute. All funds generated by the Midnight Charity Project this month shall be forwarded to the initiative, Defeat Autism Now or DAN.

How does the project intend to raise these funds for charity? Twenty percent of all sales of 12 to Midnight products from the Midnight Cellar during the month of December shall go to the Midnight Charity Project. But wait, if you purchase Last Rites, Blood Lines, or Skinwalker from our shop every penny of the sale is going to the charity.

The Midnight Charity Project is conducting some auctions on eBay as well. The first item up for auction is an official City of Pinebox Death Certificate. I believe there are going to be two and possibly three of these items up for auction. The second item on auction is an autographed copy of Blood Lines. Really is a nice gift for the horror gamer in your house. The next item on the auction block is immortality. Okay maybe not eternal life, but if you win this bid you can be a nonplayer character in our ETU: Degrees of Horror book that we are currently developing. Having your name in a published work can be like living forever. Right? When these other items become available for bidding, I shall announce that here.

I hope you can help the Midnight Charity Project. Even if you do not want to purchase our products or bid on the auctions, I would like you to contribute to Autism Research Institute. You can contribute directly too them. We just want to do our part to contribute to the effort to find a cure.

I am still trying to get this subdomain stuff working. Man it is a pain. Reading more about stuff I would prefer not to have to read. Just give me a wizard and couple of buttons to push. Then I can get it done and be happy.

As I learn more I have some ideas for other subdomains. The Writer’s Journey comes to mind. Some of you may have wondered where I am going with the script I was plotting. There is a new television show called, Moonlight, which uses some of the story background I intended to use. I know I wrote my story a few years ago and planned to rewrite it along the same lines. But I prefer to take the time to think about where I can plot my story away from this new entry. I really want this to be a salable piece.

I still have Warcraft on my mind. Let me tell ya that Burning Crusade is gorgeous. I have been wanting to play a Dranei Shaman for the longest time. After loading the last patch, I executed WOW start up and created a new character on the Coilfang server. This new character, Iranu, would be more than happy to run some instances with anyone that wants to meet up. Already have her up to level 21 and she is speced out with 12 points in restoration.

Hope to chronicle her experiences and the other characters I have once I can figure out subdomains work. Banging my head at moment. Any readers ever create a subdomain before? I can create the subdomain no problem. Just not certain how I can differentiate it from the main page. Things like directing traffic to those posts. Really appreciate any help you can offer.

This is the last of the Power Player series of posts. If you missed any of the series they can be found at the following links:

1. Power Player 1
2. Power Player 2
3. Power Player 3
4. Power Player 4
5. Power Player 5. Eh hmmm. You don’t need a link. You are reading this now. Hello!

The PC has booted and shined its pretty blue lights. The BIOS recognized the peripherials enough so that the keyboard and mouse functioned. The hard drive was recognized and I had graphics for basic viewing on the monitor. This stage scared me more than any other. Slapping in cards, screwing in the boads and drives, as well as plugging cords was pretty easy. But if faced a blank monitor I would have been up a creek.

Since I can read the screen I proceeded to place the OS disc in the DVD drive. I loaded Windows XP Service Pack 2 onto the hard drive. This process took a couple of hours. This included formatting all 300 GB as can be seen below.

This is only the beginning of loading too. Several hours were spent loading all of the drivers, reading menus, downloading updates and getting the computer arranged to work logically. The order I suggest for loading software and drivers is first your operating system. Really, there is no option there. Next you should add any software that came with your mother board. Since everything processes through the mother board it only makes sense to load these first. But there are some exceptions. If you have a video card or sound board installed, you should be able to skip loading those particular drivers. This allows the system to avoid driver conflicts. Last I loaded the video card drivers and rebooted the system. Note the DVD had software, but this is for watching movies and burning and such. Not essential and usually not as good as other software available for purcahse. I did not load them as I want better software for this function.

After thre reboot the trouble bug reared its ugly head. The video card I bought did not like something. One thing on the Nivideo card I noted during installation is that  Microsoft warned it did not support this product in their approved vendors or something along those lines. But the manual said to ignore this and the card would work. Just download the most current drivers. And I did this and the big beautiful screen kept smearing the colors and it got just ugly. I spent hours on this card tweaking and poking. I even pulled the card out and popped it back in again.

Finally, I got fed up and repackaged the card. I loaded the motherboard video driver and plugged the monitor in the mother board’s VGA inlet.  The graphics were so much better. Unfortunately, not good enough to play Burning Crusade, the World of Warcraft expansion, but I could play World of Warcraft. But before loading on any games I loaded security software to give me a firewall and virus protection.

It took a few more hours to load World of Warcraft, which includes enduring all of the time spent downloading patches. It is so difficult to wait to play while all of this downloading is going on. Though I did spend some of this time at wowinterface getting my preferred addons ready. Once everything was loaded I enjoyed watching the cinematics on the 19″ screen. Really knocked my eyes out, drop down gorgeous even with basic graphics.

The next day I looked at Fry’s Electronics web page for Radeon cards. No way was I going to risk my time with another Nivideo card. I found a super deal on a VisionTek Radeon card at 512 MB for only $50 after the rebate. This card turned out to be cheaper and more powerful than the one I originally purchased. After work I went to Fry’s and had no problem returning the old card. And I found the VisionTek card I saw online.

So I took this bad boy home. I popped in the graphics card, which was not as easy I thought it should be. But finally got the card set and secured it with a nut. Loaded the drivers, updated them, and ran the World of Warcraft cinematic. Then I got a towel to wipe the drool off my chin. The graphics were so beautiful.

My next step consisted of a trip to System Requirements Lab to see if I can run Burning Crusade. This is a must link site for any PC Gamer. You go there to see if your system can handle the latest PC games. Find your game on the list and click the can you run it tab. This is my results for Burning Crusade.

Almost 100% green which is super. Not only did I meet the minimum requirements, I also exceeded the recommended requirements. Since I can play the game, I busted open the Burning Crusades and started loading it and then again patching the software.

Earlier, I did not open the box on the off chance that I might need to buy another copy of World of Warcraft too. But since the game runs off of a subscription service, my user name was recognized and logging on proved no problem. If I had to buy the basic game again I wanted to get the World of Warcraft chest, which has both games and user guides for both.

This ends the Power Player series. Mission accomplished, I can play Burning Crusade. I no longer crash every two hours from playing. Now I need to get some characters up to 70 so I am prepared for Wrath of the Lich King. That is the second expansion for WOW.

This continues the ongoing PC build I did last weekend. This is a link to the last post.

Now I am ready to put in the mother board. I layed the mother board near the case that I had laid flat on it’s side. By comparing these I coult arrange the pins to match the holes on the mother board.

Hard to see them, but they are the little brass looking doo hickeys that are used for screwing the board in the case. I am glad the board followed the standard or I would have been forced to drill some holes in the case to accomodate the difference.

Here is the motherboard all ready to move into her new home. I still have the board on the wrapper to protect it. One zap will ruin your entire day.

And here the board is secured within the case. My case can accomodate a much bigger board, but that is for the upgrade in a year or two. Fitting the board in was a bit tricky. Had to recruit my son to help me as his smaller hands could get in the tighter spots.

Then it was simple to pop in the video card in the PCI-E slot. One screw and it too is secure.

Another look at it. You can see the two 32 spin slots below it.

With the mother board in and all of the cards and drives secured the next step is power. The power supply was quite nice too. I could stick in the power cables I needed so there is no excess cables sitting around taking up space. And I have a fw slots left for future expansions.

With the power set up completed I could put the side covers back on. We can peek in from this side.

Another look.

My son watches on as I took out the monitor and hooked it up. It has a VGA and DCI connector as does my video card. I elect to use DCI since it seems to be the new standard.

And now we turn on the power and cross our fingers. Blue LEDs. Suhwheet!!!

Rear lights too.

And a look inside.

If you missed part two then go here. 

In the morning I took my daughter and her friend to camp. From there I went to Fry’s to pick up the Thermal lube.

Made out of silver. Cool. I though I had another monitor at home. But a search found no spares. Then I remembered my SIL took it. So I had to get this.

An HP 19″ flat screen monitor set me back $230, but why settle for less? Plus they had a nice offer at Fry’s which gave a free printer with every monitor purchase.

Once I got home it was back to work. I spread a thin even coat of the lubricant on the fan where it contacts the processing chip. I put my hand inside a plastic bag to allow me to spread it evenly.

The instructions said to put on a bit of lube the size of a grain of rice on the processor.

Then you should spread it with a clean razer or stiff paper. I had an index card that worked nicely.

Finished with a nice even coat.

Then we place the fan on top of the processor.

The motherboard had four slots that married up to the fan coupling. Twist the couplings and the fan is secured to the mother board.

Now it was good time to pop in the DIMMs.

With the two DIMMs in the computer has 2 GB RAM which should be good enough for what I aim to do.

The video card is so shy that it hides in bubble wrap.

Exposed!!! I could put this on the mother board now, but I chose to wait. As I need to determine which slot I must remove on the back of the case. Also It might be difficult to fit or scratch it up a bit. So I set it aside and got ready to put the mother board in the case. 

This continues from the Power Player post.

With the power supply in place I was ready to work on the mother board. I removed the board out of its wrapper. There was a padded cloth like protector on the bottom of the board to protect it. I left this pad attached and placed the board on top of the wrapper. Just the safe thing to do.

Note always ground yourself before you go picking up circuit boards. One errant zap and all you have is silicon and solder. This is easy to do if you keep your case near. Just touch a metal area and all should be well. I intend to affix cards and chips onto the board now, prior to securing the mother board into the case. More room to work outside of the case and with the board resting on the pad, less chance of bending or breaking the board while shoving in a card also.

This is a rather small mother board but good enough for my current purposes. It has a PCI-E slot for video cards and two 32 pin slots for further adaptability. I may buy a couple of cards down the road to fill these slots. Most likely they would be a sound board and maybe a television or HD connector. The mother board has video and sound inputs so I can hold off on these if I choose. Being a PC gamer, a decent video card is absolutely neccesary. Sound can wait until I decide I require surround sound.

The board also has an IDE slot and four SATA slots. IDE will be used by my DVD player and my hard drive interfaces with SATA. That means this mother board can run three more SATA hard drives and with my IDE cable I could add an IDE hard drive too. SATA and IDE are the pin configurations for interfacing devices with the mother board.

This was a nice surprise. The PC came with a backplate that allows access to the mother board’s various ports. It even fits onto my case.

I removed the plate that came with the case and installed the one that matches my mother board. Awesome!

I pulled out the processor from the box. The processor is the little bitty chip at the bottom of the photo. The top is dominated by the CPU’s fan. Wow!. It has been so long since I put a computer together I did not realize they came packaged with cooling devices. That is good cause heat kills processors.

Then I opened up my processor slot on my mother board. There are some covers to protect the connectors. You do not want to touch these. The oil from your skin is not good for them at all.

And then I placed the Core 2 processor in its new home and locked it shut. And then I realized that I need thermal lubrication to place on the processor and fan where they contact each other. Of course I did not have any. I hoped they would include it with the product. Too late to go back to Fry’s so this assembly just became a two day project.

This did not stop all work though. This is the Pioneer 18 X 18 DVD RW device. No need to put off placing it inside the case. Just remove one face plate. Slide the device in and secure it with four screws.

And there it is. Kind of stands out. Wish I could have found a black one to match the case. Oh well.

Next I installed the Maxtar 300 GB hard drive. This section of the case can hold three drives and that fan will blow air directly on the hard drives.

Looking from the front to the back there is another fan here. This fan blows the hot air out of the case.

And here is the hard drive secure in its new home. Looks kind of lonely. If it is good I will buy a few more hard drives as the memory space gets filled up to keep it company. I want to purchase a one terrabit hard drive so bad. Never will I get screwed by a computer dying. I am going to have back ups everywhere. But until then I secured the hard drive box back in the case and called it a night. Also put the mother board back in the wrapper to keep off any dust.

I think I may create a subdomain for Warcraft. Heck it is an addicting game. I like it for the interaction with other folks. But if you pay attention there is a story going on around you. The epic heroic type.

Thus I think I might do some Warcraft posts. My impressions of the game. What has worked for me. What has not worked for me. Things I’ve done twice and I might try a third time. Maybe I’ll write my chronicles. Like a log of what the hero does. The nice thing about two computers is I can have one open to Warcraft and the other open to whatever I want to do. Life Wordpress for example. Need to get file serving set up so I can take screenshots and pass them to the other PC for quick posts.

Anybody that has read me for any length of time realizes that I am a major game geek. I play board games, role playing games, card games, and video games. It is rumored that I play Scrabulous too (and getting abused there too).

When I got my Xbox 360 I figured that I do not require any other platform for my video game needs. All of the games I want to play should be produced for Xbox. The months went by and there are a lot of good games developed for XBox. But I was missing a few games that would really entertain me. So I bought Half Life 2 and World of Warcraft to play on my laptop. And it was fun. I purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse so I could have better control while playing. But for both games I had to play at minimum graphics. And there were crashing issues. I could count on crashing every two hours while playing World of Warcraft. That is really bad when you are part of a group working through an instance. It can get you kicked from the group real quick, and it kills the fun as you stress through the five minutes it takes before I can return to the game’s server.

Another thing that has always irked me is that I cannot load Burning Crusade, the World of Warcraft upgrade. I have been wanting to play a Dranei shaman for the longest time, which is impossible without Burning Crusade. Then I looked at the money I have been depositing in my Paypal count from Blogging and I said I can afford the power.

But I did not want to just go to the store and buy a box and bring it home. I wanted to have a computer that I knew exactly what was on it and provided flexibility for me to adapt as technology progresses. I don’t really need the best state of the art boards right this minute. My goal is to run the games that I want to play that are going to be coming out over the next year. 

For a couple of months I have been visiting all of the techie sites reading about Core 2 processors, Radeon versus Nvideo, and how it all connects. During the process I focused on assembling a budget that would allow me to be a power player under $800.

Last Friday I picked up the paper as I always do. I pulled out the Fry’s Electronics sales section and I could not believe what I saw. The major components that I wanted were on sale. They offered the motherboard I had been stalking with a Core 2 chip for $98. My jaw dropped to the floor. The processor I had budgeted was 1.867 GHz and here they bundled a 2.0 GHz processor with my board of choice. My budget for these items was $98 and $67 and here I was getting them both for $98. Fry’s also listed the Antec 9000 case for $75 bucks, which is five bucks more than I was budgeting as I had been eyeing a Coolermaster case. But the Antec lists for $150 and it is just a dream. There is enough space for nine 5.25″ bays, and it comes with four fans and space to add two more if I need them. They also had a 500 watt Antec power supply unit for $60, and I had been budgeting this at a hundred bucks. When I picked up my son from school we went to Fry’s and shopped.

This is what we came home with. In addition to the previously mentioned items, I picked up two 1 GB 667 GHz RAM memory, which is the max this board can hold. Cost is $70. That foil package holds a Maxtor 300 GB SATA drive for $80. I picked up a Pioneer 18 X 18 RW DVD for $40. I grabbed an e-Geforce video card for $80, though I have a rebate for $30 that I can mail in. This uses a Nivdeo chip for those that are interested. I bought the Windows XP OEM for my operating system at $100 and the Burning Crusade for $30. I was so happy to see the final total came in under $700. That’s more than one hundred under my budget.

I put everything on the dining room table, so I would have plenty of room to assemble the parts. First, I took out the case, which is huge.

Front view.

Rear view.

The top of the case provides jacks for head phones, microphone, firewire, and two USB connections.

Left side panel off. The case provides a great deal of space for large mother boards and lots of peripherals. Plenty of space for air to blow through to. Cables conveniently provided for the ports and fan electricity. I anticipate using this case for many years. Long after the other components have been scrapped.

Right side panel removed. This lets you have access to secure devices within the bays such as DVD players, and hard drives.

Antec 500 watt power supply.

The power supply fit in quite snuggly in this case. I just pushed it under the metal tab and I am certain it cannot bounce.

Here is a view of the case’s rear, where the power supply fan , on/off switch, and electrical outlet can be seen. It secures to the case with four screws.

We have power. Nice and snugly fit. More to come soon on the assembly of my new power player maker.