Glenn's Machine

Build Sheet

In Service Date: 25 Feb. 2009 C.E.

Update 1 March 2009

Specific use: Home Office

Case: Antec Sonata III 500- Power Supply: 500 Watts

Mother Board:Biostar TF720 A2+ Processor:AMD 64x2 2.6Ghz

Ram:Mushkin 2gb X 2 DDR2 667

Hard Drive (s): 1- 80 Gb WD Sata Drive for O/S and Programs

2 - Western Digital 250gb SATA Configuration: Raid 1 on PCI Card

Video: On Board VGA with on board HD as well

O/S: Win XP Pro Sp3 (Best Version Yet! but will be available for only a short time. MS is pulling all XP, XP Pro and XP Pro 64 off the market.)

Add On's: PCI SATA Raid Card (SiS Chip)

Changes in Plans:

As it turns out the nVidia Raid is notoriously unreliable having crashed at every turn so I backed up ten and punted. I took the machine to the config. I run on my personal machines. I have multiple Raid Arrays in all my machines so I installed a WD 80 gb drive for the O/S and all programs running as a single drive and used one of my backup PCI SATA Raid cards to hook the twin 250Gb Drives up in Raid 1. The Card uses a SiS chip and I have had delightfully good service from them over the years. It isn't as sophisticated (fancy) as the nVidia but it is as close to bulletproof as I have ever seen. I have since discovered that Biostar builds mother boards with AMD chips providing the RAID function. They work very well thank you!

Notes:Need a road map for Bios exploration and a functional Floppy is still required, Must unzip SATA drivers on another machine with floppy in drive as they unzip directly to floppy, no options on that. Formatted HDD's with a 50 gb partition and a 200 Gb partition. One for O/S and programs and the rest for data only. Running Raid one makes for a pretty much bulletproof combo. nVidia Raid is VERY UN RELIABLE! Had to change config of machine! See paragraph above.

Review: This sucker rocks! Not quite gaming caliber but it would hold it's own for the most part. For what it's intended purpose is though it is awesome. Will have customer comments soon.

Customer Comments:

Just figured it out. Got the connection working. (VPN) Did the obvious and read the instructions. The connection is really great. It’s just like I was on my office computer. No apparent slowdown at all. I can work from home again.

Thanks Glenn (Glenn works from home through a VPN over a cable connection)

Bill Cats New Toy

Build Sheet

In service Date: 28 January 2010

Specific Use: Home/Gaming

Case: Antec Sonata - Power Supply: Antec 550 Basiq +

1-Liteon CD/DVD ROM (IDE)

1-Liteon CD/DVD Burner (SATA)

Mother Board:Biostar TA790GXB3 - Processor: AMD AM3 Athlon II 3.0 Ghz 2 Gb Cache

Ram: 4 Gb

Hard Drive (s): 2x 500 gb WD Black Caviar SATA - Configuration: Raid 1

Video: ATI Radeon HD 3300 - On Board

Operating System: Programs (Base Load): XP Pro Sp3, Open Office, Norton Antivirus 2009

Notes: Raid was a trick to figure out but after I called Biostar it was very simple. Both North and South Bridge are AMD. Raid extremely stable and easy to manage. Raid 1 was automatically set up when I loaded the O/S with both drives connected. Board has six SATA plugs and will support more than one Raid Array at the same time. Increased the virtual memory right off the bat and optimized the O/S for performance rather than being pretty. AMD oveclocking utilities work great!

Review: The S.O.B. rocks!

Cassies Overhaul

Build Sheet

Specific Use: Facebook?

Case: She used her old case

Power Supply: Antec Earth Watts Green EA-380D

Motherboard:Biostar MCP6P M2

Processor: AMD Sempron Sargas 2.7 GHz (Single Core)

Ram: Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 2Gb DDR2800

Hard Drive(s): 1-WD Black Caviar 80Gb (IDE) 1 WD Black Caviar 500Gb (SATA)

Video: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 (On Board)

Software: Win 2KPro SP3, Norton

Cassie doesn't do a lot of work on her computer but mainly uses it to surf and social network and this combo is perfect for that. It is fast but not built for heavy lifting and she is happy with it. At this point I must tell you that she is my daughter but she is the one that contracted me to do the job on her own. Namaste - Moon)Dawg

Big Alex's Overhaul

Build Sheet

Specific Use: Anything he wants!

Case: Old Beige Office case!

Power Supply: Antec Basiq 550+

Motherboard: Biostar TA790GXB3 AMD

Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 Regor 3.0 GHz

Ram: Mushkin Enhanced Black Line 2Gb x 2 (4gb)

Hard Drive(s): WD 500GB Black Caviar 3.0 Gb/s SATA (Raid1)

Video: ATI Radeon HD 3300 (VGA & HDMI plugs onboard)

Software: Win7 Home Premium and Norton Antivirus 2010

First Impressions: This S.O.B. Rocks! I have been playing with it until he comes to pick it up and will have consumer comments soon. I have tried some really cheesy 32 bit programs on it that I thought would possibly give it indigestion but Win 7 handled them without issues. Win7 is a lot smarter than my personal XP Pro Sp3 as well. It loads fast, loads clean and will recognize a USB floppy drive, yes you still need one to load the Raid drivers but external will work just fine.

Issue#1: The hardware works as advertised and is lethally fast as is the Win7 but there is no native email program with Win7. I installed Thunderbird and finally figured out how to get the mail in it but I am still having issues with converting the Win address book files to a format T-bird recognizes. There will be an update later on this.

Update on Issue #1: If possible convert to Thunderbird on old machine first and do a backup and transfer that to new machine.

Issue#2: The Raid kept dropping out so we backed up ten and punted to a configuration I have used many times in the past but without the PCI card. There is now a 80Gb HDD with the OS and all programs on it and the twin 500Gb HDD's are all data.

Customer Comments: Gail: Moon)Dawg, LOVE LOVE LOVE the new computer. Puts the old one to shame. I am going to have a great time playing on this one. It works soooo much faster. I really like that you set up a place for Tyler also. Thanks for all the great work. We love you, Gail