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Burnination Achieved!
Nov. 6th, 2003 03:25 amI drove out in the blinding rain this evening to purchase myself a CD-burning drive. It's one of those things that I've been telling myself I needed to get, but putting off for no good reason. I checked the ad for Best Buy and discovered they were selling one that, after rebates, was $20. They also had a stack of 50 CD-Rs for $3, after rebates. I was a bit hesitant about this, since "you get what you pay for," but I found it hard to rationalize buying a different one simply because it cost more. Anyway, I got the last one on the shelf and brought it home to my tired old PC.
I cracked open the case and discovered that there were impenetrable steel plates preventing me from actually installing the drive. What the hell? Is there a good reason for that? Can any of you hardware-savvy people out there let me know if my computer is going to burst into flames because I ripped one of the plates out and put the drive in anyway? Are those 3 empty slots on the front of the case just there to taunt me, and they really shouldn't be used?
Anyway, like I said, I ripped out one of the plates (literally, since they seemed to be welded in), discovered that the cables wouldn't reach properly, tried to remove them from the other CD drive so I could wire things properly, and discovered that they were in there too tightly for me to extricate them without risking damage to components and/or to my hand. Fine. I moved the old drive to the new slot and put the new drive in the old slot, since that configuration means the cables all reach. Of course, this means I don't have it wired in the "optimal configuration" that the manual requested, but it still seems to be permissable.
I screwed everything in, put the case back on, put the tower back on its stand, plugged everything back it, and fired it up. It successfully detected the drive, and I thought I might be home free for a moment. Wrong. The floppy drive failed. Now, this may seem trivial at first, but you need to understand that I recently acquired an antique digital camera that needs the floppy drive. I tried to poke at software things to see if it was hardware fighting for configuration issues, but couldn't get anywhere. So I finally gave in and unplugged everything, took the case down, and ripped it open again. Sigh.
Looks like I accidentally unplugged the power to the floppy drive while hooking things up. Or so I hoped - I thought it would sort of suck to hook up a power cable to something that it actually wasn't supposed to be attached to, after all. Still, it seemed to be the likely problem. I closed it back up, put it back, plugged everything in, and officially launched Attempt #2. Success!
The final test - does the drive actually work. Apparently, yes. I burned my first CD, and it seemed to go smoothly. Yah! On the down side, my fingers smell like metal now, a situation that I seem to be unable to resolve just using soap and water. Fooey.
In fact, my hands are extremely unhappy right now. In addition to the indignities of computer upgrading, they also had to suffer through Stikfa assembly as well, since I found the Warrior Monk while I was out. It's awesome! I just wish my fingers didn't hurt so much after putting one of those things together, though.
I cracked open the case and discovered that there were impenetrable steel plates preventing me from actually installing the drive. What the hell? Is there a good reason for that? Can any of you hardware-savvy people out there let me know if my computer is going to burst into flames because I ripped one of the plates out and put the drive in anyway? Are those 3 empty slots on the front of the case just there to taunt me, and they really shouldn't be used?
Anyway, like I said, I ripped out one of the plates (literally, since they seemed to be welded in), discovered that the cables wouldn't reach properly, tried to remove them from the other CD drive so I could wire things properly, and discovered that they were in there too tightly for me to extricate them without risking damage to components and/or to my hand. Fine. I moved the old drive to the new slot and put the new drive in the old slot, since that configuration means the cables all reach. Of course, this means I don't have it wired in the "optimal configuration" that the manual requested, but it still seems to be permissable.
I screwed everything in, put the case back on, put the tower back on its stand, plugged everything back it, and fired it up. It successfully detected the drive, and I thought I might be home free for a moment. Wrong. The floppy drive failed. Now, this may seem trivial at first, but you need to understand that I recently acquired an antique digital camera that needs the floppy drive. I tried to poke at software things to see if it was hardware fighting for configuration issues, but couldn't get anywhere. So I finally gave in and unplugged everything, took the case down, and ripped it open again. Sigh.
Looks like I accidentally unplugged the power to the floppy drive while hooking things up. Or so I hoped - I thought it would sort of suck to hook up a power cable to something that it actually wasn't supposed to be attached to, after all. Still, it seemed to be the likely problem. I closed it back up, put it back, plugged everything in, and officially launched Attempt #2. Success!
The final test - does the drive actually work. Apparently, yes. I burned my first CD, and it seemed to go smoothly. Yah! On the down side, my fingers smell like metal now, a situation that I seem to be unable to resolve just using soap and water. Fooey.
In fact, my hands are extremely unhappy right now. In addition to the indignities of computer upgrading, they also had to suffer through Stikfa assembly as well, since I found the Warrior Monk while I was out. It's awesome! I just wish my fingers didn't hurt so much after putting one of those things together, though.
