Build your own? Suse 8.2 w/MSI Athlon 2600+

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Doug Sweetser <sweetser at TheWorld.com> asked:
> Motherboard replacement sounds like open heart surgery.  How long did
> switching the motherboard take?  Is this something that a first timer
> should try?  Is there enough solid documentation, from PCs for
> Everyone or a great FAQ on the process?

PC systems have had standardized mechanical dimensions for the past 20 years: 
there are about 5 different-sized cases, but in any mid-sized tower case you
can expect to find the power supply, drive bays, rear slots, and even screw
holes in the same places as any other mid-sized tower case.  One thing to
note:  about 5 years ago, manufacturers change the type of connector used to
power the motherboard.  At that time they also changed to a "soft" power
switch.  So a 6-year-old system likely needs a new power supply, and you'd
have to swap in a different power switch.  Note that a case costs not a whole
lot more than a power supply, so if you have doubts about your old case (or
want to run both systems simultaneously), buy a new case.  Most new cases come
with a decent power supply.

Before 5 years ago, for me it was not worth the bother of doing motherboard
replacement:  technology was changing so fast that every 2 or 3 years, there
would be a whole new generation of components.  For example, when I first
started running Linux in 1992, a modem swap quickly led to a hard drive
upgrade, then a RAM upgrade, and so on until I realized it cost more to
upgrade things piecemeal than to simply start over with a new computer.

However, many components such as today's hard drives aren't a whole lot
different from those of 5 years ago:  they are bigger but not meaningfully
faster, and the old ones work just as well on a new system as on an old one. 
The same goes for network adapters.  So a lot of times you can simply do the
"open heart" surgery of a motherboard upgrade without having a cascading,
progressive (and expensive) series of piecemeal upgrades of your other
components.

You asked how long it takes to swap out the motherboard.  Here are the steps:

- Open the case.
- Remove the 3 to 6 screws holding your PCI (or ISA) and/or AGP cards, set the
cards aside.
- Take note of the color and location of wires attached to the motherboard: 
power, reset, hdd LED, speaker, and so forth.  Pull those wires.
- Remove the 6 to 10 screws holding the motherboard in place.  Remove the
motherboard.
- Reverse the above procedure with the new motherboard (not all your old cards
will be needed, of course, because new motherboards have more built-in
components).

All the above takes maybe 10 to 20 minutes.  In fact there are PC-building
contests at some PC shows, where I'm sure the contestants can do this much
faster.

The motherboard comes with a booklet that shows where the connectors are and
what the BIOS settings will do.  The store has a limited amount of faq
information on its website; if you need help you'll be better off either doing
a google search for your motherboard's model number, or calling the PC store's
tech support line.

It's really not hard to do this:  you're pretty much guaranteed to get a
boot-up BIOS screen if you plug in your monitor and the power supply, and if
you plug in a floppy or CDROM with a bootable Linux disc, you'll get a working
Linux in no time.

Of course, once you get that far, you'll probably find time slipping away
quite rapidly, to the consternation of family members who probably would like
to see you at the dinner table at a more-reasonable hour.  ;-)  In fact, more
than 10 years have slipped by since my first time with Linux, and I missed a
*lot* of dinners...;-)

-rich