Follow Along and Help Me With My Very First PC Build. . .

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gotchya. well, i am going to try again, but this time with 4 spacers installed.

Hey all,

Sorry this came so late, but I had to work today.

I have been able to power on my computer and edit the CMOS settings! Yes, I finally figured out that the blue cable labeled "Power SW" must mean power switch! The green one with the + and - signs is for the Power LED.

Okay, so last night I installed the spacers underneath the mobo, plugged in the hard drives (including the 2 drives from my old computer), plugged in the 2 DVD drives and installed wireless network card! Everything is working fine, according to the CMOS, except for one thing. I do not have the necessary cable(s) needed to plug in the 2 DVD drives. There is no extra IDE slot on the mobo for this cable, however, there is a slot on the mobo labled CD_IN. Is this where I am suppose to plug in the DVD drives? Please tell me how I am suppose to do this and what cables I need; also where is the best place(s) to get this kind of cable?

Thank you for your time and attention.

If you don't have enough EIDE slots on your Mobo then you might want to get a PCI card with more EIDE slots if you have extra devices you want to run off that Mobo. Your Hard drives aren't SATA or anything are they? Using SATA would free up a couple of EIDE slots.

The CD-In connects to the CD drive, but that might be due to your Mobo having integrated sound because that usually connects to the CD player through the audio card. You need IDE cables, most likely an PCI adapter for IDE slots, and the CD-In wire should have came with your Mobo and/or your DVD drives. You can get cables from CompUSA really, but online Newegg works fine (or go with a highly rated but cheap vendor on www.pricewatch.com). I used a combination of the two to build my last 2 PCs.

2 of the hard drives, which came out of my old PC are 80GB Maxtor EIDE hard drives.

Get an expansion PCI card then to add slots if you are out of them on the mobo. EIDE controller cards aren't that expensive from what I remember. Never had to use one myself.

Is there such a thing as an EIDE cable with 4 connectors? If so, will it work on my system?

BTW, I switched the IDE cables to the DVD drives and now I am installing Windows Vista Home Premium!

Nope. Only 2 items per IDE channel.

Nice one, Im glad everything is working out

Okay, I now have Windows Vista successfully installed and I am typing this message on my new computer using Windows Vista Home Premium!

Still a few issues/bugs to work out, but so far so good.

More later. . .

Okay, obviously I have Internet, but the sound is still not working. Could it be that my onboard soundcard is not compatible with my old 2.1 speakers, which are hooked up to it as of right now?

My apologies. When I facetiously commented on the two DVD drives, I should have noticed that you had opted for a motherboard with only one IDE socket. Plugging two DVD drives in the same IDE slot will certainly do nothing for file copying.

You may be missing the driver for the on-board sound. It may have come on a CD with the mobo, or you may need to download it from here.

Speakers won't be an issue... except... I assume you have everything connected up? If the case has jack sockets at the front, and you are using those, there will be a flying lead to connect from there to the mobo.

Okay, I have ordered another part from Newegg.com! This time it is a PCI IDE card to plug in my 2 DVD Drives. The IDE socket on my mobo will be used to plug in the 2 IDE hard drives. Here is a link on Newegg to the part that I ordered:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815280002

What a confusing part you've ordered. It seems to have two parallel ATA connectors, yet comes with no parallel ATA cables (you'll need to order those separately, I guess), yet it includes a SATA cable, which it doesn't say it supports.

I don't see what your problem is at the moment. Even if you only have a single parallel cable, with only the two connectors on it, just suck everything you need off each of your old IDE drives to the new drive, and put them back in the old machine (which you can still fix, as a backup machine). Then put the DVD writer in. As I've said before, I cannot see any point in having a superfluous DVD reader.

Bear in mind that you only have two PCI slots.