How could I pass up a chance to build computers? What a perfect volunteering job this was for me. Progress Energy set everything up, organizing the event and giving us all t-shirts. They have a great program where they give full-time employees paid time off to volunteer a couple days a year.
The place was a kind of geek nirvana, reminded me of my brother’s storage space that I helped him organize. Bins of every possible computer component, with memory sorted by type, hard drives clearly marked if they had been properly wiped, etc.
The work is organized into four stages:
- Triage
- Cleanup
- OS load
- Final test
Triage seemed like the most fun so I jumped in there. Step 1: blast the dirty incoming PC’s! They have a compressor in the back that provides endless high-pressure blasts to eliminate dust buildup from case and cpu fans and everything else in the case. Then we stripped everything extraneous from the case – video cards, sata cables, etc. Then we stocked them with parts to bring each up to the standard configuration: 4 256-MB sticks of memory and a 40GB hard drive. Once BIOS posted, they provided an ISOLINUX variant boot CD that could run a host of tests. We ran quick memtest386 and hard drive tests, and used BIOS to set the correct date and time. After the paperwork was complete and the PC was labeled, we moved them over to the cleaning station!
Of course we ran into all the usual problems. I put in four separate pairs of DDR2 memory and they all posted bad. I was sure I had a bad motherboard or memory socket so I put the PC aside, only to get the same result from the next PC. I methodically tested each stick and found that one of each of the four pairs was bad. What are the odds! But it felt good to weed out all the rotten stuff. :> Larry, next to me, had a bad power supply that fried a CDROM drive, but he persisted until he got his BIOS post. It’s no fun if it’s not a challenge!
It was seriously so much fun that the time flew by and I was totally disappointed that we were done. They have open nights every Wednesday, I might just have to go back and give this another shot. :>
