Christmas.... :-)

Brandon and I celebrated Christmas Saturday morning. He leaves Sunday to go to his mom's for two weeks. He's been complaining for a while that his computer is slow. He wanted a laptop. That is not going to happen. However, Santa had a brilliant idea and I agreed. Santa brought him all the PARTS he needed to build a new computer (in his old case). Santa also brought him a Lego Mindstorm NXT robot and some books and a few other things.

I wasn't sure how well the project would go. Brandon has been saying for a while he wanted to learn more about computers...

The project went amazingly well. He was brilliant. He never complained and stuck with it until the end. He didn't even complain about my 20 minute introduction to computers whiteboard session:
We went through a lot.

Then we got started with the project. He had to first disconnect the existing system and open the case. Then he had to remove the existing PCI cards, power connectors, and pull out the hard drive and DVD drive. Then he removed the motherboard and the power supply.

He turned every screw and performed every action. I just gave him verbal guidance and took pictures. We re-iterated what the component's functions were along the way. Once the case was cleaned out, we blew it out with the air compressor. We were ready for phase two.



He put in the new power supply first. I had him read through parts of the motherboard manual and tell me what all the component on the motherboard were and where they were. Then he put in the supports for the new motherboard and installed the motherboard. Next he installed the new memory. Then we put in the new processor, explaining about thermal paste, heat sinks, and heat transfer surface area as we went. He connected the motherboard power leads and then put in the hard drive and DVD drive. He also connected the front panel leads too. I had him refer back to the manual for as much as possible.



It took between two and three hours, but the moment had come. It was time to turn it on. I explained that we usually miss something along the way and so it may not work the the first time we turn it on. However, it did work the first time. It has blue LEDs in the power supply. :-)



We got started installing Vista (64 bit since he knows a little about the difference between 8, 16, 32, and 64 bit now). His friends came over and wanted to play so I finished the OS and other software installs. Had to go buy a Netgear WN311B Wireless adapter since it has 64bit drivers and the Linksys does not. It took forever to get all the Vista updates too.

I had to get a tackle / tool box for the Mindstorm. At least with that he won't lose all the pieces at once....

See what I mean?

I hope your Christmas / Holiday goes as well as ours did!