Putting together a PC from scratch is fun and not too difficult. Line things up, put in a few screws and flip the switch. If you hear the happy POST beep, you’re good to go.

Installing the OS is another story. I’ve fought (and won) several epic battles with various linux distros, trying to convince them to accept common PC hardware. Hopefully we’re near the end of the “compile your own kernel and drivers” era. On the other hand, Windows always installs perfectly. Locating and installing drivers is generall pretty easy since hardware companies target Windows as their main platform.

This time, things were different. I’m embarassed to say that I ignored the warnings on the newegg message board. I figured they were out of date, or uninformed. In retrospect I should have paid far more attention to things like this in the newegg reviews:

“ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: …

Cons: Sata/Sata Raid has to have a floppy for f6 (not included), but the drivers CD is bootable and has will make the floppy with easy to follow instructions.”

Let me translate this into something more meaningful for the casual reader.

When you try to install Windows XP onto your brand new SATA RAID array, Windows won’t recognize the drive. Googling indicates that you have to press F6 during an obscure 3-second interval of the initial XP install process. A prompt flashes on screen for a few milliseconds to inform you of this fact.

If you manage to hit F6 quickly enough, Windows will then ask you to insert a floppy with the correct SATA drivers. Not a CD or USB key, a floppy. A floppy?!?! Who the hell has floppy drives anymore, especially in a home built system?

So, you run out to the nearest store (Computer Stop on Aurora) to buy a floppy drive for ~$15. When you get home, you have to install the floppy drive into your old PC in order to copy the SATA drivers to a disk.. Let’s hope you haven’t yet taken apart the old PC. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to find the SATA drivers online. You have to use the magic install CD that came with the motherboard. Let’s also hope you haven’t taken the CDROM out of your old PC!

Don’t forget to detach the floppy from the old PC and drop it into the new PC.
Assuming you’ve done everything correctly, and you have good reflexes, you will now be able to press F6 and tell Windows about the drivers so it can talk to your RAID array. Luckily I played a lot of Egyptian Ratscrew as a child so that part wasn’t too much of a problem. Windows will now install perfectly.

Time spent assembling the new PC : 20 minutes
Time spent getting XP to recognized my RAID array : 6 hours