Building PC without any sight (wasRE: still more on bug)

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
The main places where I have needed sighted support in building a PC is 
connecting the front panel connectors (eg. power button, power LED, HDD LED, 
possibly USB headers, etc). Normally the front panel connectors do not have 
shaped plugs which only allow them to be connected to the correct pins. 
About all other connectors only fit in the places where they should go. The 
only possible exception might be SATA and memory connections and this isn't 
something where it doesn't work but just a loss of performance. If the board 
has SATA 3GBps and 6GBps ports like intel based boards do then if you have a 
SSD you may connect it to the slower SATA connection. In theory there is 
nothing wrong with that, but if you have gone to the expense of a SSD you 
probably want to use it at the maximum speed it can work at. With the 
memoryt connectors many modern PCs expect pairs of memory in specific 
connectors and these are colour coordinated, getting it wrong possibly won't 
make it not work, but rather will just mean you won't get the full 
performance capable of the system.

Michael Whapples

-----Original Message----- 
From: Albert Sten-Clanton
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 11:24 PM
To: 'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'
Subject: Building PC without any sight (wasRE: still more on bug)

First, I believe

<pcsforeveryone.com>

Also sells machines with serial ports.

If it does not, or if it would just save me some big bucks, I may want to
assemble a machine, as John did.  John, how much sighted help did you need
with that, if any?  My limited experience with trying to assemble a computer
indicated that some stuff can be known only by way of color coding, but I'd
like to have been wrong about that.  (I have no sight.)

Thanks!

Al

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of John Heim
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 5:50 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: still more on bug

<speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: still more on bug


> John Heim wrote
> | Well, admittedly, we have a problem down the road regarding serial
> | hardware synths. But it will be years before serial ports go away
> | entirely. Every Dell server class machine still comes with at least
> | one serial port. I don't know about other server manufacturers but I
> | would guess they're the same. In fact, even dell small footprint
> | desktops still have serial ports. So I think it will be some time
> | before server class machines don't come with serial ports. And even
> | after serial ports become obsolete, speakup won't be obsolete, it
> | will just have to start supporting USB synths.
>
> You say just like it's easy to fix speakup to do what you want it to do.
> It's not that easy in fat to fix the code, hell i'd fix it if i could
> my husband would fix it if he could probably, but it's not that easy.
>

First of all, I didn't say it was going to be easy. But have you tried?  Are
you an experienced C coder?  Are you saying you tried and found it couldn't
be done?

> I've got a couple serial synths laying around but the fact is that
> i've not had a computer with a serial port since 2007 so yep, guess
> they're out of date. Last time i tried ordering a computer i couldn't
> get del or hp to add them even though i wanted them.

I am typing this on a Dell Optiplex 760 with a serial port.  We have about
100 760s all with serial ports. We have another 40 small footprint 760s in
our student labs all with serial ports.  We have about a dozen newer Dell
desktops and they all have serial ports. I don't know how you managed to
order a Dell w/o a serial port but its not that hard to get one with it.

And those are just desktops. Of course, every one of our servers has a
serial port.  We have 3 mail servers, 2 DNS servers, 3 web servers, and 6
machines in our VMware cluster. All have serial ports.
I just built myself a machine for home with parts ordered from newegg. The
mobo didn't have an external serial port but it does have a serial port
header. So then it was just a matter of attaching the appropriate cable. So
even a machine I built myself has a serial port.

Look, I'm not saying you don't come across machines w/o serial ports. But
holy cow, I have certainly never had any trouble finding machines with
serial ports. Laptops & apples... You're in trouble there.

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