Dreams of Networks: A Story of Life, Dead and Upgrades.

[DarkShin]

Hey guys. This is the story of my first attempt to make a home network, so if anyone cares enough, and even if you don’t, read away, maybe you'll learn something, or laugh at me. I don't care

Yes I am THAT cool

I had a dream...
So all begun some forgotten one day when my summer vacation started, I was waiting for my bro to finish chatting on MSN, so I could log on myself. I started looking around, and something got my attention. It was the case of my old PC, in it there was perfectly good Penium2 Processor, its motherboard, a 32MB Ram Module, a video card and a 4 Gig HD. I realized that I could resurrect that PC with some few components and make a network between and my 1.4GHz P4… that’s when the dream started.

It was cool, it was doable, I had some cash… there was just one problem. I didn’t have enough money to buy a monitor.


A Stroke of Big Luck
Many weeks later, I accompanied my mom to do some shopping. We went to a nearby Office Depot, because I wanted to browse around for a while to look at monitor prices. And then, out of sheer luck, I saw a beautiful Philips 19” Flat Screen CTR monitor on sale, for the fabulous price of $150 USD. Obviously I was shocked; I knew this was my chance to get my hands on a good cheap monitor. I already had told my network idea to my mom, so she told me she’d give me the money to buy that monitor, and the other components I couldn’t afford.

The next day we went back with cash in our pockets. I took one of those ticket things and went to the cashier to pay and get my monitor. But the cashier told me they were sold out of the model (apparently it was discontinued). I asked her to see if they had it in another store, but there was none. But there was one last chance, the one they had on display. We asked about it, and after a few minutes, they agreed to sell it to us, for $136 USD.

Woooohoooooo… I got a new (well almost new) and cheap monitor.

After that we went to another nearby PC retail story and bought a generic Keyboard, a MS Optical mouse, a 3 ½ Floppy Drive, a CDROM drive, a SB Live! 5.1 sound card, speakers, a Router, a Network card, a couple of CAT5 Ethernet cables, and an extra stick of 256MBs PC133 Ram for my P4.


And so… it Came to Life
The next day I started assembling the P2, after I had installed the new monitor on the P4 and replaced the sound card.

After I had assembled and connected everything, I just had to turn the ON switch, and I did… I heard the sound of PSU’s fan, the HDs, but the monitor was blank. I figured I connected something wrong. So I checked… but everything was connected correctly. I continued searching… and after an hour or so I noticed that the reset button was stuck. I just sat there laughing at that such a silly thing was causing so much trouble. After that I fixed the reset switch, and awed at the BIOS screen before me.

The time came to Install Win98SE.


In the Wired, Everything is Connected
After installing Windows, the drivers and all that other stuff, I proceeded to setup the network. It was really easy, plug in cables, configure router, run Networking Wizard and I was all set.

Finally my dream had come true… or so I thought.


Dead Strikes Back
Three days later the P2 started misbehaving, it shutdown randomly, I knew something was up. My first thought was that something was wrong with windows, so I reinstalled it. After that, it behaved for a while.

On the next day I tried to turn on the PC, but I didn’t want to come on. Not even the PSU. I freaked out. I decided to open the PSU and clean it up, maybe that would fix it I though. But it was all in vain, the PC refused to power up.

After 2 days of extensive (and I do mean extensive) testing and experimenting of each component. I came to the conclusion that my P2’s motherboard was indisputably dead. And to make matters worse that stick of RAM I had bought for my P4 was defective.

And so died my P2 and my dream, for my funds were depleted.

RIP my P2, you’ll not be forgotten. :guitar:


Upgraded Hope
I was looking at a magazine looking for prices on parts, contemplating the possibility of buying a new motherboard and CPU, probably one of those high-end Celerons, since they are very cheap.

My mom told me that if I could upgrade the P4 and use the leftover parts to get the other PC working again, she could spare me around $200 USD. At first I refused since I knew she needed the money for something else, but after a while she convinced me to take the money.

I had $200, so an Intel system was out of the question. So I turned my eyes to AMD. I found a nice bundle, which came with an AthlonXP 2500+ Barton an Asus A7N8X-VM (nForce2 Chipset) and a CPU Fan, all for around $189. It seemed like a good deal, I just needed some DDR Ram. Then I remembered I hadn’t returned my defective SDRAM stick yet, so I already had half of the money for a 512MB DDR333, the other half, was kindly donated by my brother. So I was all set, and went to buy the stuff early the next day, with no problem.

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

After I returned home with all the stuff I needed, I went directly back to work and rebuilt both systems, installed Windows XP on both and setup the network.

I just needed a bigger HardDrive for my P4 system (since I was using the 4GB one in that one), luckily my dad agreed to buy an 80GB HD for my the following weekend.


Corruption!!
Ugh… if I didn’t have enough problems before, my new Athlon system was having random reboots. Not very often, but they were annoying. I started googleing to see if I could find out what the problem was.

I read that among other things I had previously ruled out, corrupted or damaged ram could be the cause of the problem. Also, that Athlon systems tend to be very picky when it comes to ram and that cheap ram sometimes don’t work correctly with them. I thought this could be a problem since I bought one of those cheap OEM Ram Sticks (Elixir was the brand of the Ram).

So I searched for a memory tester and found this nifty tool called MemTest86. I ran it and it detected over 600 errors after it ran it’s tests. Indeed my ram was either corrupted or too cheap.

Urgh, annoying. :cuss2:


And I saw, and it was Good
Last Saturday I went with my Dad to buy the HD he promised me, and exchange the darned Ram stick. I took no chances this time and paid the extra 10 bucks and bought a Kingston stick this time, no more of that cheap stuff.

And so I returned home, installed my new Ram stick on my Athlon, ran MemTest86, and viola NO ERROS Wooooooooooohooooooooo!!!!

The next day I installed the new HD on the P4 and reinstalled Windows, configured the network once again, and I updated, patched both machines. Everything ran smoothly. I am pleased

And finally after 2 and a half weeks of effort, frustration and evil defective ram, I finally realized my dream, and setup my first home network.


THE END

[grahf]

So how much did you spent altogether?

You could've just brought a crossover cable instead of the router. Could've save you some money.

[DarkShin]

I spent around $600 overall, not too bad since i practically built a new PC with a monitor and all.

I thought about using a crossover cable instead of a router, but i decided not to, because i'm probably going to add another PC later on. And in the mean time, I could use it to throw a LAN Party with a couple budies of mine.

[KillerShots]

Kewl - so what are you using this other computer for? Desktop applications or server type stuff?

[DarkShin]

I'm using both for Desktop Aps, now i don't have to fight my bro every time I want to use the PC, specially now that classes are about to start again.