Computer Technician Wannabe
AJ Jorge June 7th, 2006
Last Saturday I was at Pen’s house in Laguna attempting to revive their PC. We have come into conclusion that their motherboard was the problem beforehand so I brought with me a spare Socket A motherboard lying in my room.
That was my first time to actually replace a motherboard but I was pretty much confident that I can do the switch.
I remember all the first-times I had to replace or pull out a part of a PC. It started with a hard disk being added to my PC. I have to figure out the correct way to plugin the IDE cables and the power cables. The most common mistake when adding a hard disk is not properly setting up the jumper that would identify it as a Slave drive or a Master drive. When I was confident enough of taking out my hard disk and putting it back, I used it as a portabale device to bring files I got from Kuya Ronald to my PC - and that was a measly 300mb hard disk.
Then I upgraded my memory. This was easy. On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the hardest, I gave it a 1. Just be sure the notches fit into the slot. SDRAM has 2 notches and you can’t go wrong with it. You cannot put it in the wrong direction (although if you really try, you can hehe). DDRAM only has only 1 notch and there’s a slight chance you can put it in the wrong direction. A rule of thumb in assembling PC’s, if it won’t fit, don’t force it.
Video cards. This is a little bit tricky at first but once it sits properly on the AGP slot, you are good to go. There is a clamp that holds the card and if you don’t release the clamp, the card won’t come off. I learned that the hard way, good thing that my video card didn’t break. Replacing it is also as easy as the memory sticks. Plug the video card, secure the clamp and screw the card in the casing.
Swapping CD Roms, DVD Roms and floppy disks are just like swapping the hard disks. Know how to plug the IDE cables and power cables and don’t forget the jumper settings. Optical drives have another optional cable that you can connect with the motherboard - the audio cable. This is for those lazy people who just want to play their audio cds in the drive and hitting the play button in front of the cd tray. No need a player (like WMP or Winamp) to play the audio cd.
Finally I was able to swap processors when I was still teaching at Math. Rex and I have the same setup (well almost the same) and there was a time when I need to know if my processor is still working properly, I asked Rex to switch our CPUs just to be sure. It goes without saying that I did all the job and he just looked on what I’m doing over my shoulder. This I think scores a 5 in my easy-to-hard rating. Not only you have to know how to plug the CPU itself but also the HSF and applying the right amount of thermal paste. And the risk factor involve here is also high. The moment the pins of the processor misalign or missed it’s proper place, chances are the processor will be broken. I also learned the hard way that you really have to secure the heatsink fan or else you will fry the processor (yeah, I already burnt one processor).
As with the motherboard as stated above, that will be another story to tell. More about the motherboard switch tomorrow.
- Computers
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