The 20th came early...

[vakkotaur]

A few days ago the hard drive ordered arrived. Today, the box it goes in arrived. Yep, the one that Wal-Mart said was scheduled to be delivered on the 20th.

Not bad. Decent case. MSI motherboard, VIA chipset, CPU & fansink installed, cables there. Pretty much everything is onboard, with provision for having cards do it instead. 1 AGP, 3 PCI, 1 CNR (for what that's worth - not much) and two slots for 184 pin PC2100 DIMMs. Each up to 1 GB. Despite the Wal-MArt listing, it can take 2 GB, not just 1 GB. There is a modem but it's a PCI WinModem. Fortunately I don't need it with the network here.

Floppy is there, if it's needed. I'm a bit leery of how far inside the molding it is, but evidently that's not a problem. Also it isn't likely to see much use. I'll find out later how the CDRW is. At least then I can make use of a Christmas present. (My folks gave me a short spindle of CDRW disks which I haven't used at all. Then, I still have a good stack of blank CDR disks...)

There are a couple CDs but they seem to be Windows programs. One looks to be a version of Nero, which would be useful, though on another machine. Another is "the worst Windows communications software"... BitWare. From that place jmaynard has plenty of unkind words about, Computer Assholes. Oh, there is a drivers and utilities CD, which just might be useful beyond Windows, but that remains to be seen. I didn't order an OS (no hdd anyway) so there are no OS disks.

To Do:

* Order memory (1 GB in two 512 MB DIMMs - affordable that way).
* Confirm what jumper/switch settings there are, are set right.
* Remove (useless) modem card.
* Install hard drive and fan(s).
* Install memory when it arrives.
* Install OS (Mandrake 9.0, most likely)

Something to do this weekend. Well, I can get a good start on it this weekend, anyway.