Daily Practicum #2, Jan 22, Day 11

Today I found in the back a 500GB hard drive, which had a sata cable. All other Hard drives I found with sata cables were either 1TB or 2TB drives, so this was the smallest I was going to find. Corey also found me a Cellron CPU which i tested and It did not work, so I stuck with the Pentium 4. I tried to instal XP on this computer and It did not accept the licence key that was on the computer itself. Paul burned me a disc that might work with the key and by the end of the day the computer was partitioning the drive. I also helped out a customer with troubles activating windows 8, and showing them how to set up a wireless mouse.

Daily Practicum #2, Jan 21, Day 10

Today I went parts hunting, for RAM, a Hard Drive, and possibly a better CPU, cause the CPU in this computer is a Pentium 4. I grabbed 4 512MB sticks of RAM so that there would be 2GB of RAM in this computer. I also hunted for a Hard drive which in the box where we have them, I found a 250GB hard drive, the problem was that there was a ribbon connector with it instead of a sata cable, which I soon realized that I could not use in the first place with this computer. I also dealt with a few customers today, and one customer came in that was in the pictures of people of people that steal. He stole a empty box.

Daily Practicum #2, Jan 17, Day 9

Today I tested out the computer I have been working on for the past few days and, it was horrible. When I turned on the computer I noticed that there was some what I originaly though was dust coming out of the CPU and RAM area. Then immediately after I smelt smoke. I immediately turned off the computer and realized that either the RAM sockets or the RAM itself was smoking because 2 of the 4 RAM sticks I used were warm to the touch. I learned that this motherboard was not working to begin with which made my past few days a waste of time, besides a learning experience. After that incident I went computer hunting in the back room and I found an old HP desktop. this computer I tested and was working fine, but it only had 2 256Mb of RAM and only 40GB on the Hard Drive. I will do part hunting tomorrow.

Daily Practicum #2, Jan 16 day 8

Today was the midpoint assessment for the practicum, and I did a lot better on this one than the ones I did at bargain bytes. I told Greg my practicum project which he seamed rather keen with. He told me I need to take pictures for proof that I worked on it. Besides that I finally put together the parts from the gigantic case and its motherboard etc. I did not have time to test it out though, I am going to have to do that tomorrow. Other than that I did some virus scanning.

Daily Practicum #2 Jan 14 day 7

Today I tried putting the computer I built last friday into another computer, unfortunately I tried a long time to get it into one but the Powersupply did not fit. Another issue that I have run into is that there is no I/O shield available for this motherboard. I searched for a very long time trying to find any that might fit, but there is always atleast one plug that isnt in or is blocked. I grabbed a computer that weighed a ton that had a full case and took out all of the parts for it. I might be able to build a computer out of this considering the parts for it arnt horrible. This computer was extremely dusty and I had to take it outside to clean it thoroughly. When i went to put the power supply in this case was again too small for that power supply I wanted to use for the computer. So I started putting the parts from this cases original parts when my mom came to pick me up. I finish putting it back together on Thursday.

Daily Practicum #2, Jan 10 Day 6

Today Corey found a nice Motherboard in the computer scraps, which I began to look for a computer case that would fit it. I ended up building a computer with 4 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a nice processor that Corey picked out. We built this computer but we ran into a snag, being that we were unable to find one of the side panels for the case, hopefully I will have more luck next day.

Daily Practicum #2, Jan 9, Day 5

Today I sifted though a lot of the stuff in the storeroom where the computer parts are. I found a bunch of boxes containing miscellaneous parts in each, there was a box for motherboards and CPU coolers and a bunch of stuff like that. Also noticed a futon in the room which was kind of funny, when me and Corey asked Mark about that he just said the previous owners had that in there. We also learned that our store was the only one in the Mall area with its own bathroom which is nice. I started right before 5 a computer with a virus issue, I will continue it tomorrow.