Getting
to know my hardware
In the not-so-distant Paleozoic era of computers -- circa 1975 -- you bought a kit and built your PC yourself. After days of tinkering, soldering and cursing, your average user (generally someone with a graduate degree in astrophysics or quantum mechanics) had finished a box that would blink its lights on and off. Maybe even in sequence. A unit like the MITS Altair 8800 from 1976 was priced around $539 for the kit or $775 assembled. Thankfully, the days of assembling your own PC are long gone.
Well, not for everyone they aren't. Take me, for instance. I built one just a few weeks ago. I bought the individual parts to make myself a nice 1GHz Intel Pentium III system. I can safely say, after shopping around for bargains at sites like Comp-U-Plus and MotherboardExpress, then buying the parts at a local PC show and taking a weekend afternoon to assemble it, that anyone could build one. The real question is: Why would anyone bother?
I use a wide-slot toaster and a television and a sport utility vehicle all the time, but never had any inclination to build them. Then I thought to myself: Would I go to a doctor who didn't know how my guts worked? As technology editor for Access magazine, it's only fair I know the guts of a PC as thoroughly as I can. So yes, dear reader, I did this for you.
Well, that's not entirely true. I also did it because -- watch as my inner geek bursts free -- it was fun. Building a computer these days is akin to building a ham radio 35 years ago. And it gave me a feeling of accomplishment I haven't had since Mom liked the ashtray I made her in metal shop.
It took a couple weeks of tinkering and tweaking to get all the bugs out of my new system. I might even have saved some money buying a basic system at a site like Dell.com. Plus I would have had a year or three of tech support from the manufacturer, maybe even got a monitor thrown in for the price. Now I'm stuck doing my own tech support.
But still, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It taught me more about the inner workings of a PC than any book ever could. If you're feeling up to the challenge, I highly recommend it.
Eric Griffith is a senior editor at Access magazine. He hopes to someday be able to change the oil in his car all by himself.
For details about Eric's project, write to him at egriffith@accessmagazine.com.