One is the computer, which cannot be done until tomorrow when I am no longer on call. Okay, I have my laptop for backup, so maybe I could do that tonight. If I get home early enough and it goes right the first time.
I'm doing two things at the same time: replacing a bad motherboard and transferring everything to a bigger case. Replacing the motherboard in this particular case would require removing all the components from the case in order to get the motherboard out, so I may as well do both jobs.
So:
- Unmount the four hard drives (each is secured with four screws) and mount them in the drive bay of the new case
- Label the four identical SATA cables on both ends, they will have to be attached to the new motherboard in the same order
- Unmount the two DVD writers and mount them in the new case
- The current case is screw-in, but the new case needs me to mount rails on each side of the drives
- Unmount the floppy drive and mount it in the new case
- Two screws both cases, I think
- Mount three 80mm fans in the new case
- These are snap-in, and I did this last night. The current case uses 120mm fans
- Disconnect all the external connections from the rear of the case
- Label all the connectors except the monitor cable, which is self-explanatory
- Unmount all the plug-in adapters
- Video, wireless, modem, USB/MIDI
- Unplug all cables and wires from the motherboard
- Unmount the motherboard
- Unmount the CPU fan
- Four screws under the motherboard hold this in place. Very inconvenient.
- Unplug the CPU and memory DIMMs
- Plug the CPU into the new motherboard and mount the fan
- Plug in the memory DIMMs
- Unplug the backplane insert from the current case and insert it into the new case
- Mount the new motherboard in the new case
- Attach all the case wires (power, reset, speaker, etc) to the motherboard
- Attach the rest of the wires (IDE, SATA, DVD audio, USB) to the motherboard and their corresponding components
- Plug in the video, wireless and modem cards
- Attach all the external wires & connectors
- Plug it in
- Put the BIOS update disk in the floppy drive
- Power up the new unit
- Update the BIOS
- Reboot
- Go into BIOS setup and enable the RAID array.
- Reboot
- Hope for the best.
Next is re-shooting the sapphire collection. There are a few more stones en route from Thailand (several of the places I bought from in Chanthaburi are actually selling on eBay!). We're talking about 170 close-ups under exacting lighting conditions, at best 2 minutes per shot. It will take half an hour just to set up the first shot, but after that it's somewhat automatic.
I also want to scan a lot of my slides from Peace Corps, which will take about 5 minutes each with my single-slide scanner attachment at top resolution. I did six this morning and it took almost an hour. Ideally, I want to find a slide scanner which can take a stack of slides, since the real project is to scan all my slides, which include trips to Thailand, Fiji, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, London, Paris, Germany, Canada and several places in the US. Probably 10,000 slides in all. If i was really serious, I would toss in the 20,000 or so frames of print negatives as well. Last time I looked (about 3 years ago) those machines cost more than I could afford. So would having the work done for me at a place which does have the equipment. It's labor-intensive.
