I finally got my PC going but it was a hard slog and expensive!!
I looked on the web at UMart, Gamedude and The Disc Shop. It looked as if Gamedude had the biggest range and was more likely to have something suitable for me.
I needed a motherboard supporting: AMD64 Socket 754 CPUs, a PCI Express graphics card and preferably using nForce 4. Gamedude was the only one with boards like that.
I drove the car up to Springwood only to discover Gamedude is closed until this monday. I must have missed that on the website. I went next door to The Disc Shop but they didn’t have anything at all. I rang Rebecca and she gave me the address for UMart in 8 Mile Plains nearby. I drove up there and had a look around the shop and asked them, but they didn’t have anything either! They said they could order it in if I wanted. That’d take too long and it’s far from where I live anyway.
I drove back home and decided at the last minute to check out The Disc Shop up the road from where I live. They had an Asus K8N4-E motherboard which fitted all my requirements. Amazing! Even the guys in the shop were surprised that the Springwood shop didn’t have anything but they did. I grabbed that and a new Power Supply which has 24 pins on the connector.. just to be safe. Rebecca also wanted one of their Snoopy webcams. They are $29 and it’s a plush Snoopy doll with a webcam in his black nose. So cute! I grabbed that as well. $200 all up for that trip.
I grabbed some lunch and headed home to put it all together. After lunch I put the new motherboard and Power Supply into my case and replaced all the other components. I booted up the PC but…. nothing. No POST beeps. No display. Nothing. Nada. El Zilcho, etc. … CRAP!
I took my whole PC into the shop to show the guys and they tried replacing each part (Graphics card, memory, CPU) until they got a POST display. The CPU. They put in an AMD64 Athlon 3000+ CPU and it worked! Gah! I went up to the front counter to get a new AMD64 Sempron 2600+ CPU to replace mine which was the same. There’s another $105. Sigh.
I took the CPU home and put it in my PC and booted up. Nothing. Nil. etc. You get the idea. CRAPOLA! I’m going crazy. I took the PC back again and got the guy there to boot it up. He got no display either and put in another 2600+ and got nothing and that was a brand new one out of the box too! We agreed you just couldn’t get two brand new CPUs that didn’t work. So what? He Tried a few spare Semprons and it finally showed a display and POST when he put in a 3100+. Hmm. He put in the 3000+ instead and that worked too. He checked the AMD website and it says the motherboard works with Semprons as well as Athlons. Obviously it doesn’t. Well it works with a Sempron 3100+ but no slower than that. So I was left with the only option. Upgrade the CPU to a more expensive one. He took back the 2600+ and I decided to go with the Athlon 3000+. At least it’s not a cut-down CPU like the Semprons and I know it works. This time I got him to put it in and boot it up to test to be sure. It worked. Funnily enough when I first bought the new Sempron 2600+ I thought "Maybe I should get them to put it in to try… nah! It will work!". It didn’t. They even suggested I buy an Athlon 3000+ since they were coming down in price, but I didn’t want to spend the extra moolah. Looks like I should have and saved myself so many trips!
I drove home and plugged the PC in with all it’s myriad of wires. Booting. Beep. Looks good. Hang on a sec! It says it only has half a Gig of RAM in it!! Oh noes! When they tested the RAM they only put one of my sticks back in the box. A quick phone call confirmed it and I went back yet again to the shop.. grabbed the RAM stick and headed home again. I told them this time they were lucky it was only 20 minutes until closing time and I would not be able to return 
At least they gave me a little discount on the new AMD64 Athlon 3000+.
Okay. Got home yet again, put it all together with the right RAM and it booted nicely. Everything ran fine, but I don’t want to leave drivers for another motherboard in the PC with the new drivers, so I formatted C: drive and reinstalled Windows XP. I’m still busy installing all my applications again. Sienna had missed me all day. I was going to keep her company but had to spend so much time driving around the damn place, so I spent the evening with her. I made some homemade pizza and we played some games. Now she is asleep on the lounge so I figure I have some time to get my PC going. Lots to do!
Video Talk has never been so much fun!
Features:
- Sonix Series CMOS chip 35k pixel
- Resolution of 640 x 480.
- 5 layer glass lens with manual focus.
- USB interface.
- Hot plug and play.
- Video frequency format - 24bit real colour, view angle 45-60 degrees.
- Recording software included.
