Photos:
All the parts laid out | Kingston HyperX Memory | Running with cover off | Running with cover on
I picked up one of those USB ATSC TV tuners for my main desktop so I can watch my favorite shows while reading email, writing or surfing the net. I started to tinker with the Media Center (MC) functions in
This got me to thinking. If I set up a media PC for my home entertainment center, with a 2tb hard drive, I can record 496 hours more than the mere four allowed on 1 DVD-RW disk in the DVD recorder.
Also I can run a digital optical audio cable out from the onboard sound of the motherboard and into my Pioneer Elite receiver for the full 5.1 surround, along with an HDMI cable plugged directly into the TV from an nVidia 9500 video card. With a wireless keyboard and mouse I can park my butt on my couch and view internet content on the big screen and also play videos and MP3s really loud from the hard drive.
My desktop is an Intel DX48BT2 motherboard with an Intel QX9770 processor LGA 775; basically a really good chip in a mediocre board. What I would like to do is get a really good board for my really good processor to build a main Windows 7 desktop, then use the current mobo and buy an E8400 duo core processor ($120) for the media center.
After shopping around for a week I zeroed in on the Asus Rampage Extreme motherboard (RE). The first problem encountered was that even though the processor is only 1 ½ years old, Asus isn’t making the RE with the 775 socket anymore. For that matter nobody is manufacturing good 775 boards now. The World is going to the new i7 processors into the 1156 socket. I spent too much a year-and-a-half ago for the QX9770 just to make a media PC out of it so the search continues.
On eBay, many sellers are listing the Asus RE 775 board but they don’t have any accessories, like the heat sinks, driver CD, etc. Finally someone listed one with all the gear for $180. I received it in 4 days but when I popped open the socket cover, several pins were either bent or missing. The seller was way cool about it; they sent me a UPS label that I stuck on the box for a free return and my money back.
Two weeks later another one showed up on eBay slightly used with all the accessories. The ad stated there are no bent pins and they tested it the other day; it works. It shipped in the original box for $250.
Now I had to order all the other goodies to along with it. I wanted a 1tb C hard drive for Windows, programs and documents and a 2tb D drive for storage of photos and videos. I will hook up my current C drive as the E drive for document restoration into the new folders on the Win7 C drive. All of it is going into a Thermaltake (TT) Soprano RS case with the clear side cover.
I had trouble finding the RAM memory I wanted at a good price. The current 4-by-1gb
Alas on 12/22 after 2 months of study and shopping I was ready to assemble my main desktop. I backed up to DVD all my important files and photos then disassembled the current unit to extract the processor, nVidia 8600 1gb PCI-E video card, Zalman lighted CPU fan, TT lighted case fans, PCI modem and TV/Video capture cards.
I put together the new box, plugged it in and pushed the button. All I heard was ZZZZZZZZZZZ, then a large plume of smoke emitted. CRAP!! I pulled the cord from the power supply and investigated. The mobo has a floppy controller and to make use of it I installed a floppy drive (not that it will ever be used). Apparently the power connector to the floppy drive ended up with 2 pins in 1 hole; it fried.
OK, don’t panic. All I had to do was cut off about 5 inches of wire from the power supply and take out the floppy drive. I put the power cord back in, pushed the button, the new unit awoke to a promising new life.
I went through the extensive BIOS and set it to what is suggested in the user manual. I then inserted the Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit DVD and restarted. The Windows screen came up with the mouse pointer in the middle but nothing happened. The pointer would not move when sliding the mouse.
I restarted again, same thing. I waited 5 minutes, no front panel lights blinking, no screen messages, nothing.
Second time I waited 10 minutes. Same results.
The fourth time I restarted I went outside, pulled some weeds and raked the leaves. By the time I returned about a half hour later, displayed in front of me was the window where you enter your location and time. Windows 7 finally loaded. Looking back, I think Windows was formatting the new hard drive but there were no messages to indicate such, as was the case with Win2000 and
My usual policy is that when there is a new Windows OS, I at least wait until SP1 before I load it. I went with brand new Windows 7 nonetheless, this is what happened.
The second problem occurred when I went to update Windows via the Internet. I had my previous desktop connected to my home network wirelessly with a Belkin 802.11N USB adapter. I loaded the drivers and plugged in the adapter but Windows said it is incompatible. Oh for... The first thing I plug-n-play doesn’t work. This is rather major as networking the desktop over the air is imperative. Here’s why:
Last year when I set up my home entertainment center with the LCD TV, blu-ray player and DVD recorder, they all have RJ-45 jacks so they can connect to the network. They have to be hard wired to the router; you cannot use wireless adapters. That means the router must be in the living room stacked into the media niche away from the desktop, which is in my command center. The desktop must be networked wirelessly.
Dam, I had to go shopping 3 days before Xmas. I stopped by Staples, none of the wireless adapters said Win7 compatible. I cruised over to Fry’s, the sales guy said he hasn’t heard of a Win7 compatible wireless adapter yet. CRAP!! And oh the crowds.
Last year I had my house wired with Verizon FiOs 10-over-2 speed. After the tech left, I spent two days in the attic re-cabling so that the TV antenna signal comes through every room’s wall outlet and the router cable comes through the one outlet behind the entertainment center in the living room. Now I had to re-cable temporarily to be able to attach the router to the cable outlet in my command center, then run a cable to the mobo’s Ethernet port. Windows got updated, Norton anti-virus was loaded and now up-to-date but I cannot watch TV on the new computer because now there is no antenna outlet close by. In order to catch Letterman while reading email I will have to wait until I find a Win7 compatible network wireless adapter.
The third problem arose after I attempted to load the motherboard driver CD. When autorun started, the message ‘not compatible with OS’ displayed. Great. Moving along, the Epson R300 printer CD and the HP Scanjet 4050 CD wouldn’t load either. It wasn’t all that bad, at least when I plugged in the USB cables for the printer and scanner, the drivers were already part of Windows and the units work fine. But not great. Both come with other programs to use the CD print and the negative and slide scanning functions. For the moment I can only print and scan docs and photos.
Poking around, I found that you can right click on a program (.exe file) and select Troubleshoot Compatibility from the menu. It comes up with the Program Compatibility menu, I selected Try Recommended Settings, which attempted the install in XP mode. The problematic CDs were recognized and the programs began to load however none of the Asus, HP or Epson software would install due to DLL and other errors.
I went through my stack of program DVDs to install, they all processed normally. Office 2007, Expression Web 3, Windows Live Mail, Nero 8, NTI, Firefox, Safari, Photoshop Essentials, Quicken 2010, Chrome, Delorme Topo
Once I got on the Internet I found the Windows 7 Compatibility list to be helpful. It says my printer and scanner are compatible but my Belkin 802.11N is not. Belkin is concocting a workaround. Meanwhile I found another brand of USB network adapter that is compatible and picked one up from eBay for $40. Problem is it will ship from
The HP site says yes the Scanjet G4050 is compatible but only for basic scanning. They are not going to support this scanner on Win7 for transparency scanning and all the other features that sold me on this unit.
The Epson site was much kinder, as they had all the downloads for Win7 to make my R300 printer operate exactly like it did with Win2000 and
It took some digging but I did manage to find the Win7 drivers and programs on the Asus site for the Rampage Extreme. They are in WinZip format and are rather messy. They didn’t install correctly on the first attempt. I found the best way was to download the zip folders into an Asus folder on the C drive then copy them all to a blank CD. You unzip from the CD into folders the programs create in the C:\Program Files path. Soon all the Asus stuff installed properly.
I hooked up the brand new 2tb SATA D drive and powered on but Win7 didn’t recognize it. The
I wanted to copy all my video and photos from the old D drive to the new D drive. I installed the old Seagate 1tb SATA but Windows would not recognize it. Thirty minutes of thinking passed before I remembered I had it protected like crazy on the
I had to quickly assemble the unit that is to be my Media PC with the old vista C drive and hope it boots. After all it will have a different processor and video card on the same motherboard. I went into the attic to get my old 17-inch monitor, plugged it all in using the keyboard and mouse from my new desktop and unbelievably it booted fine! I was able to change the security of the old D drive from specific users to Everyone full control. The process took about an hour and when I put the drive into the new desktop, Win7 recognized it just fine and I was able to copy everything to the new 2tb drive.
Once I had the RE up and running and tested for five days, I updated my step-by-step build blueprint and formatted the C drive. I started the whole thing over, now that I know how to install all of the software cleanly. It only took a day to set it all up and I was ready to go. The only thing it won’t do until HP comes up with the Win7 programs is scan negatives and slides.
It is now New Year’s Eve and it is time to update the calendar links on my web site using my new Expression Web 3 program. Previously I was using Expression Web 1 on my
Later at work, where the Microsoft domain is one of the few the company allows access to, I went a pokin’ and found that Expression Web 3 – even thought it is the 3rd generation of a popular program and brand new this year – already has a service pack 1 to solve 30 issues, one of them being the freeze while updating. Sure enough, back home I looked at the Windows update section and there it was, Expression Web 3 SP1 already downloaded to my PC and ready to install. It is curious as to why it didn’t automatically install after the download like the security patches do. But nonetheless I was able to save my updated DWT and upload my web site sans problem.
In the end I am really digging Windows 7 a lot. The new task bar is a dream come true. You can start a program then pin the icon to the task bar and keep all the icons in the order you like. Also you can now drag icons on the task bar so that you can arrange them in any order. I have been wanting all this since Windows 95!
Also the motherboard has a bios option to power off after a specified amount of time of inactivity. You will see the front panel power light blinking; all you have to do is click the mouse, type in your password and the PC powers on and you are back to all your up-and-running programs within 30 seconds. No need to ever again close programs and log out in order to power off.
It also has a power up on PCI function so if you have the right internal modem and voice mail software it will come up within a few rings. Once the caller leaves a message a WAV file of the message can be emailed to wherever you are at the time. I’m using Fax Talk Messenger.
I do all my work from a standard user dufish ID and all my backups and admin tasks from a secret administrator id. To back up using Nero8 all I have to do is close the programs running on dufish, switch user to administrator, run the backup, log off administrator then go back to the already logged in dufish to resume. Works beautifully.
As predicted, two weeks after ordering, the Linksys USB wireless network adapter showed up in my mail box. Even though the carton claims only to be compatible with XP and
Hey, not so fast. I had to re-cable the house and media niche to put the router back to where it is supposed to be. After that I loaded the Hauppauge drivers and plugged into an empty USB port the tuner but only the analog stations would scan. The digital channel scan would only sit there abusing 14% CPU and not accomplish anything. A quick trip to the Hauppauge web site found the Win7 drivers and WinTV program, which I copied to a CD and installed without a problem. I tried the scan again, all analog and digital channels were picked up within five minutes.
Ok now for the last annoyance. When I reboot, the PC gets stuck during POST while checking the USB functions. I know this because the mobo came with a small LCD screen you place on top of the box that tells you what POST is doing. At the time of the freeze it reads, USBFINAL. It could be many things, as I have my printer, scanner, keyboard, mouse, TV tuner and wireless adapter all plugged into USB ports. The only hook-ups that are slightly out of the norm is the way I have my keyboard and mouse plugged into the two USB ports under my Samsung T24 monitor, then the monitor plugged into one USB port on the I/O panel.
What I narrowed it down to in order to get through a restart was to unplug the monitor’s USB cable from the I/O panel, then plug it back in when POST went past USBFINAL. I looked at the Asus web site and found a cache of BIOS files, with the latest listing saying, system may hang if use with some USB Mouse. Perfect. I downloaded the file to my C drive.
The user manual that came with the mobo lists three different ways to update the BIOS. The cleanest way is to enter BIOS during POST then tab over to the TOOLS menu to access EZ Flash 2. It says to copy the new BIOS file to a 3.5 floppy, insert it into the A drive then restart. I stopped by the store, got me a box of 10 floppies and tried to copy. Oh for... the new BIOS file is 2.05mb, you can only write 1.45mb to a 3.5 floppy. Not to worry, the manual also says you can put the new BIOS file on a USB flash drive and load it from there.
To enter BIOS, you are to hit the
I tabbed over to EZ Flash 2, it displayed C:\ for the USB drive, I loaded up the new BIOS file and restarted. Once I was in Win7 Administrator, I re-arranged all my mouse, keyboard and monitor USB cables back to where they were. I tested the keyboard and mouse successfully in WordPad then restarted. The boot with the new BIOS file worked!!! No freezing during the POST USB check, the last bug squashed.
I went to the HP site to see if Win7 drivers for my Scanjet G4050 are available. Basically they said the unit will not be supported for Win7. I dug deeper into their user blog section for the G4050. Many posts were – like me – whining about not being able to scan slides and negatives. At the bottom was a post from an HP tech, who suggests right clicking the program (.exe file), select Troubleshoot Compatibility, then select Troubleshoot Program. On the next window select This Program Worked in Previous Version of windows. On the next window select Vista SP2. I’ll be dam it worked! All of the Scanjet software installed properly. Before when I selected Use Recommended Settings the system picked XP SP2, which failed the install.
Now, after 22 days of tinkering, my new Windows 7 machine is fast, smooth, looks pretty and does everything I want without a hitch. And oh yes the task bar, what a joy. It makes working so much easier. Also my Logitech Wave keyboard not only is extremely ergonomic but it has buttons to display the desktop gadgets, calculator, start menu, media center and to manipulate all the usual multimedia controls.
Damit, me and my big mouth, I found something else today. When I try to record a WAV using a microphone plugged into the mic jack on the Sound Blaster FX card that came with the mobo, the sound is really faint. Something else fun to tinker with in the future.
For my next trick, watch me pull a media PC out of my hat.