> Finishing things up.

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Troubleshooting your computer system-1

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Finishing things up

1. Configuring and hooking up the drives

Whether the channel of a drive is on is determined by the IDE connector that is plugged into, but how does each drive know whether it is a master or slave? Well there are jumpers on the back of the drives which determine master or slave status. By putting a certain combination of jumpers across the pins you can tell a drive whether it is a master or a slave (or you can use Cable Select). The exact way this is configured is different with every drive, so check your users manual, or the manufacturer's website for details. A good set of needle nose pliers or tweezers works well for this.

After you get all your drives configured properly, you'll need to plug them in. Locate the primary IDE port on the motherboard and plug a ribbon cable into it, lining the extrusion on one side of the cable up with the notch on one side of the socket. If you don't have notches on your motherboard, pin 1 (should be labeled) goes on the side of the ribbon that has a red stripe. Attach that cable to the primary chain devices. The side of the ribbon with the red stripe generally plugs into the side nearer the power jack on the back of the drive.

Make sure the cables are up to specifications.
One other thing to remember: If you want to use the new and up coming Ultra ATA/66/100 drives at full speed, not only do you have to have an adapter (or one on your motherboard) but you also have to have a compliant cable, and all the devices on that chain have to be ATA/66 compliant. Repeat for the secondary chain. 9/10 times, a motherboard that supports ATA/66/100 will come with the cables you need, but take the reference of the manual to be sure. The tricky thing about ATA support is that its fully backwards compatible, meaning that if you connect your ATA/66 drive to your ATA/66 controller with an ATA/33 cable, you're gonna get ATA/33 performance!

Next to the IDE connector on the motherboard, there should be something that looks similar to the IDE connectors. That is the floppy connector. Take the floppy cable (narrower) and plug it into the back of the floppy. The same rule about the red end of the ribbon being closer to the power applies here.

You probably noticed that your CD-ROM or DVD drive has an extra jack or two. One of those is the CD-Audio jack, which will be unnecessary in a few years. Unfortunately, if you want to listen to CDs today, you'll have to get a CD-Audio cable (which usually comes with CD-ROM drives). Run it down to your sound card, and fit it out. If you plan on using Windows 2000 or Windows 98 SE, there is a pretty strong chance you won't need one of these cables though. Nonetheless, some applications and services will prefer the CD-Audio connection.

2. Fixing loose ends

We are almost to the end of this exciting journey, and surely we've got a few loose ends to tie up. Most likely none of your drives have any kind of power going to them right now, so you'll want to grab a power wire, and run it to each one of them. Big ones go to the hard drives, CD-ROMs and some fans, and the small ones go to floppies and some Zips. Make sure that all your heat sinks/fans are plugged in. They will either have a big connector (like the hard drive) or a small 3 pin one. You can plug the fans into any power cable on its way someplace else, but the 3 pin ones need to be plugged into special headers on the motherboard. These fans can be monitored by the computer, or even shut off entirely if they aren't needed.

Once you think you're ready to go, check everything again. Is the RAM seated firmly? Are all of the cables plugged in? Is that video card nice and snug in its AGP slot? Is your CPU fan plugged in? After all this work we realize that it's tough not just to jump in ahead first, but a little patience here might save you that sinking feeling that comes along with a system that didn't boot the first time.

Brave people go ahead and close the cover on their case at this point, but I usually recommend that you power the system up once, to make sure it'll boot, so you don't end up just unscrewing everything again. After you power it on the second time, consider it safe to close the cover and plug all the stuff into the back and turn on the computer that you built with your own hands.

Once the PC has been fully assembled, it is time to boot up and load the video drivers. Once Windows loads, it will detect the new hardware and attempt to load the appropriate drivers. With CD auto-play functionality, you simply insert the driver CD and follow the on-screen instructions.

Congratulations!! You have assembled your own computer.