First Boot

Let's see. Connect monitor. Connect mouse and keyboard (more on that later). Connect power cord. Switch power supply on. Press power button on the front of the case.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Time to panic, but not really. If nothing works, the cause is usually a simple one. The power cord was connected. Actually, the motherboard got power, since the LED on it was lit. I had left the side cover off the case, so I could see the inside. Supposedly, you should not do this. Pah.

So, somehow the ATX power supply could not be convinced to turn on. I remembered the confusion about the switch connector. Could it be that this thing had a polarity after all?
Easy enough to find out. Disconnect power (unplug it so that it's guaranteed that it doesn't have power), connect the switch the other way around, and turn it on again.

So, in retrospect, this is probably what was going on. The power switch, HDD LED, and reset switch are all connected to ground. Presumably, the ground wires of these three connectors are connected. So, since I had happened to connect the HDD LED and the reset switch connector correctly, and the power switch incorrectly, the latter didn't work. Huh.

Operating System Install

Bingo. Machine started booting. Couldn't do anything of course, since there was no operating system installed. No worries. Configure the BIOS so that it would boot from the DVD drive. Pop in the Windows XP installation CD. Reboot.

Double bingo. Windows starts its install procedure. Oops. Windows can't install since there is no hard drive in the machine. The first reflex was to blame Microsoft, but maybe that wasn't entirely fair.

It could be that the hard drive wasn't getting power. Maybe the funky SecureConnect thing? Long story short, I disconnected the SecureConnect cable, plugged in a standard SATA data cable, and hooked one of the SATA power connectors up. That did the trick. Hard drive was recognized by Windows, and I went through the complete install procedure without any real problems. In retrospect, I could probably have left the SecureConnect cable on, and connect power to the drive with one of the Molex connectors. I still didn't want to run the minimal risk of connecting two power cables, so that's why I didn't do that.

Call me stupid, but I think the manuals could have been a bit clearer on this. Oh well.

Hello? Where's the sound?

So, then it turned out the sound did not work. Hmmm, could my brand new speakers be broken? After some deliberation, I decided to hook up another set of computer speakers. No joy. Now what? The whole strange procedure of hooking up the front panel audio suddenly came to mind again. Could it be that...? So, I hooked up the other set of speakers to the front panel audio connector. Bingo! Worked just fine.
So then it dawned on me. By connecting the front panel audio, I had disabled the audio outputs on the back of the motherboard. So, without thinking it through, I opened up the case and removed the front panel audio connectors, put back the jumpers...oh. So that's what the extra connectors on the audio cable were for. I should have connected those as well, to trick the motherboard into thinking that the jumpers were still in place. Oh well. The front panel audio is not working right now. It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense anyway, since the front panel only supports stereo anyway, and I have this 5.1 setup. Only thing is that the microphone connector isn't connected either. Then again, although I do have a microphone, I haven't used it in years. I don't think I'll miss the front panel microphone input that much.

Funny story, also to do with microphones and computers. My old system, which has served me well for 6 years, came with a microphone. This was a computer I had bought, by the way, I didn't build it myself. Anyway, I remembered that I liked the system a lot, except for one thing: the CD-ROM drive sure was loud. I blamed that on the high speed (40X, which was quite fast in those days). It took me half a day to realize that the CD-ROM noise was amplified through the speakers, since the microphone was sitting right on top of the case. Taking the mike off the case sure made the CD-ROM more silent...

Wrapping Up

I could write a lot more, there have been (and still are) some software issues. The BIOS is a bit funky, in the sense that it thinks that the CPU fan is broken, until the CPU temperature gets to 35 Celsius, and then everything is fine. I can't get the wireless mouse and keyboard to work, currently using an old mouse and keyboard. The multimedia features of the graphics card are great, even the missus is enthusiastic about it.

More later. If I get around to it.

Update

So, I tried the wireless mouse and keyboard again, after reinserting the batteries in the keyboard, and charging the mouse for a full 24 hours. I make my living writing software, you see, and if there is anything I have learned over the years is that if it doesn't work the first time you just try again. Without changing anything. Huh. All works perfectly now. Guess I'll never know what was wrong with it, if anything.

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