Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

Been putting together Connie’s new computer. First time I’ve ever had a machine not power up and also the first time I’ve smelled burning. Not good. Fortunately, didn’t burn out the whole motherboard. Whenever you build a new computer, make sure your hand is next to the power off switch.
So, here is what I would do if you have something like this:
* Take out all the peripherals. Unplug them from the power connectors
* Take out all the cards and memory too.
* Find the motherboard manual (hopefully saved in hard copy or PDF from a site somewhere).
Now, the chore is plugging things in one at a time, powering up and seeing if anything blows up. Took some time, but here was my order:
* Check the power supply fan and the cpu fan. Make sure they the ground goes to the ground side pin. These are keyed.
* Install the ATX power supply connector. Might want to take a gander at the power supply manual and the motherboard manual to make sure the pinouts are the same.
* Don’t power up the machine, but just plug it in. On most modern motherboards, there is an LED now on the motherboard itself telling you if there is standby power. A good sign.
* Plug the power switch into the front panel connector on the motherboard. A little confusing which is power and which is ground, so read the manual.
* If this is good, you should see no smoke, the CPU fan turns on and the power supply fan turns out. Eureka. No smoke I hope.
* Now the rest of the front panel into the motherboard.
* Now, plug in the memory and try again
* Now, the cards (graphics, that sort of thing), try again
* Now plug in the IDE drives and their power supplies connectors (it is possible but very hard to force these connectors. Power cycle each time.
* Now finally, the floppy. This is the one that I got wrong because its easy to flip the connector. First of all, you can easily misalign since floppys just have four pins and there isn’t a housing. Second, you can easily defect the small key and put in backwards.
Floppy Drive – How To Build A Computer. Took a while, but discovered, I had put the floppy power connector in backwards. This is essentially the only non-keyed thing left in a computer. Good illustrations for this.