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The first PC I ever built

  [15]Dave Farquhar [16]Retro Computing [17]November 4, 2003November 20,
  2018[18]1990s, [19]amiga, [20]building a pc, [21]dell, [22]macintosh,
  [23]memory slots

  I’ve noticed a disturbing trend lately: Everyone who built his own PC
  knows everything. Just ask him.
  Now, don’t get me wrong: It’s admirable to build your own PC rather
  than just buying Dell’s special of the week (although some people would
  be better off just doing exactly that), and it does require at least
  skill with handling a screwdriver. But it’s not what it used to be.
  Today, building a PC makes you know something. It no longer makes you
  an expert.

  The first PC I built was in the early 1990s. It was a 386. I did it as
  a personal favor; an organization I worked with had a 286 that blew its
  power supply, and I couldn’t locate a compatible replacement because of
  the machine’s semi-proprietary nature (it was almost a standard AT but
  not quite). So we bought a used AT case and a 386 motherboard, I
  disassembled the 286, and I started building.

  Back then, a motherboard was a motherboard. It had a CPU, it had slots,
  and that was all that was guaranteed. Some motherboards didn’t even
  have their memory slots onboard. This one did, but that was only true
  about half the time. Plug and Play didn’t exist yet, unless you were
  working on an Amiga or a Macintosh. You had 15 IRQs to work with,
  several of which were taken up by the system, and no sharing was
  allowed.

  The store mounted the motherboard in the case for me. It wasn’t a
  terribly difficult job, but since they didn’t charge me for it, why not
  let them save me some work? Besides, they didn’t want me connecting the
  power supply leads incorrectly and blowing up the motherboard, then
  returning the whole mess as “defective.” Yes, in those days if you got
  your power leads plugged in wrong–they weren’t keyed to prevent you–you
  would blow the board.

  When I got the loot back home, I started off with the easy stuff. After
  I plugged in the memory, I pulled the serial/parallel board out of the
  286 and transplanted it to the 386. Now I could hook up a mouse and a
  printer. Next was the video card. That, too, was easy. Those boards all
  had lots of jumpers and DIP switches, but they’d already been
  configured for me.

  The disk controller was trickier. The 286’s controller was on the
  motherboard, which was very unusual for the time, and was what kept the
  286’s motherboard from simply fitting into a new case–it was an odd
  size and shape, even though its keyboard port was in the right place
  and its slots were in the right place. So I had to set IRQs. I did
  that, then put the card in place, then transplanted the floppy drives
  over.

  I fired the system up and inserted a DOS floppy. It did its memory
  test. Then I went into [24]CMOS setup and told it the types of floppy
  drives it had. I exited and let the system boot. It booted. Excellent.
  I had a working computer, and I was just a step away from having a
  computer complete with a hard drive.

  To that end, I plugged in an IDE controller. I jumpered it properly–or
  so I thought–and then transplanted the IDE drive over from the 286. It
  choked. No memory test. No nothing. I couldn’t even get into CMOS
  setup.

  [25]Backwards IDE cable, right? Nope. I checked that. I even tried a
  couple of different cables.

  I struggled with the hard drive for hours and didn’t get anywhere.
  Finally I called the computer store. They couldn’t suggest anything I
  hadn’t told them I already tried, so I drove in and dropped off the
  mess. They struggled with it for a couple of days. Eventually they
  found the drive was one of the few 8-bit IDE drives made, and it was
  compatible with a limited number of controllers, and those controllers
  only worked in some 286s. They took the drive as a trade-in, and they
  backed up the data to tape, then restored the tape to the replacement
  drive for me. I took the drive home, plugged it in, and fired up the
  machine.

  This time, it did the memory test. Excellent. I went into CMOS setup,
  and fed it the parameters for the drive–no IDE autodetect here, boys. I
  exited, and the system restarted, and booted off the drive.

  It was definitely a rite of passage. I started on a Thursday afternoon,
  expecting to have the system running by Thursday evening. By the end,
  it was Tuesday evening when it was running. I did everything right, but
  an unanticipated problem–one that even stumped the experts–hung me up.

  It humbled me. At the end I knew a lot. I knew I knew a lot. But I also
  knew there was a world of not-so-obvious problems and tricky solutions
  out there, and that I didn’t know everything. There certainly were
  people out there who knew a whole lot more than me.

  It was a while before I tried building a PC again. But for a year or so
  in the late ’90s, it was how I made my living. I know I built more than
  100 in 1997-98. And I saw some weird stuff then too, but never anything
  as weird as my first. A lot changed in those few years, and a lot more
  has changed in the five years since.

  Today, you can buy an ATX motherboard with everything–not just the
  serial and parallel ports and disk controllers, but even sound, video,
  and Ethernet–integrated onto one board. Sometimes “building a computer”
  is literally nothing more than mounting a motherboard, hard drive and
  CD/DVD drive in a case, then running power to the motherboard and a
  power cable to each drive, then an IDE cable to each drive, slapping in
  a stick of memory, and closing the case up. Even if you go for discrete
  cards for video and sound, it adds less than five minutes to the
  process. The hard part is busting out the back cover from the card’s
  slot and finding the right screw to hold it in place. Any flunkie can
  plug the card in and expect it to work.

  The people who soldered together computers from kits in the 1970s would
  say that what I did in the early ’90s wasn’t building a computer. What
  they did took a lot more time and patience and skill to accomplish.
  When they finished, they had a lot more understanding of what went into
  the computer and how it worked than I did. Who am I to disagree?
  Working with completed ISA boards that only need a couple of DIP
  switches flipped separated me a lot from the heart of the machine. But
  the computers of today move you yet another order of magnitude away
  from the internals of the machine. Just as it’s possible today to pump
  gas into your car without knowing anything about how a car works or how
  to fix it if something breaks, it’s possible today to build a PC
  without knowing anything about how a computer works or how to fix it if
  something breaks.

  You just throw it away and buy a new one, right?

  Right, buddy.

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6 thoughts on “The first PC I ever built”

    *
  Anonymous
      November 5, 2003 at 1:02 am
      [40]Permalink
      You’re right. It’s the same reason people toss power supplies
      without checking the fuses.
      It’s economics over engineering. Commoditization that decreases
      knowledge.
    *
  Anonymous
      November 5, 2003 at 5:51 am
      [41]Permalink
      Economics definitely drives this bus. It’s all part of a trend in
      which technology is used to make sophisticated, technical jobs
      “do-able” by minimally trained (and lower paid) technicians. It
      minimzes the number of truly knowledgable (higher paid) people
      required for any one site which effects an increasing supply of
      knowledgable people relative to the positions available – hence
      driving down the cost (or pay) of an expert technician.
      Conceptually this dumbing down is just an extension of the
      philosphy you see at any store checkout where the cashier isn’t
      even required to figure change anymore. In almost all industries I
      think the trend is to use technology where-ever possible to remove
      or minimize the individual as a critical component of any process.
      The sad part is, as requirements drop, so do expectations and many
      times drive and motivation as well. What increases oddly is
      frustration a further examinations into using technology to solve
      “the problem”
    *
  Anonymous
      November 5, 2003 at 10:47 am
      [42]Permalink
      You mean I *don’t* know everything?
      I hate it when my ego bursts so early in the morning…
      Hope your feeling better soon. Registration’s okay by me.
    *
  Anonymous
      November 5, 2003 at 3:05 pm
      [43]Permalink
      My wife’s told me for years, I don’t know everything. Now Dave has
      joined in.
      I forsee a depressive tailspin.
    *
  Anonymous
      November 6, 2003 at 9:37 am
      [44]Permalink
      Amen brother David.
      I am 33 years old, I have made a living for the last 15 years
      directly from hardware, software, and web specific careers. I built
      my first PC in 1987, it had pre IDE drives, lots of IRQ issues, and
      no mouse. It was for my church and they had NO idea what they were
      doing, and wondered why I kept asking what their timeframe for
      completion was. It took about 3 days and it worked.
      Now I have a 23 year old friend that works as a Admin, has never
      used a computer with PnP or a mouse telling me what I need to buy
      when I build my next PC. I need that video card because its specs
      are better then that one and how NO one uses THAT card anymore.
      Real simple dude, chill. I know what I want in a system. I want to
      play Medal of Honor without having to go through hades to get the
      video card to work with my motherboard, and I do not have any plans
      to do any “super video bla bla” anytime soon. I know that if
      anything goes south it will be me fixing it. If I want a video card
      (or a sound card, or a motherboard) that cost a few dollars more,
      or is a less popular brand, because I like the drivers, web site,
      and support from that company then I will buy it.
      Just because you use a computer and work in the business does not
      mean that you know what every other person needs in a system, what
      hardware they should buy, and how they should build it.
      Keep your hands off my PC!!!!
    *
  Anonymous
      November 7, 2003 at 2:58 pm
      [45]Permalink
      My take on the video card thing, from July:
      [46]http://keith721.dyndns.org/archives/2003_07.html#000052

  Comments are closed.

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