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

Thu Feb 16 18:35:34 EST 2012

Case connectors can vary, some I would agree its a matter of knowing what 
pins in other cases its much harder. Let me give an example: The system I am 
using to write this message, the firewire and audio header cables terminate 
in individual plugs for each individual wire instead of a single plug for 
the type of connection its a header for. I needed sighted help with finding 
which was the left and right audio wires, which was the microphone one and 
which were the ground wires and then the pins on the board needed to be 
found. In fact not knowing a huge amount about the wiring of firewire and as 
the labels in the board manual differed from those on the cable I agreed 
with the sighted person not to bother trying to match those up.

As for processors, I thought normally they will only fit one way round. Yes 
you need to be careful of the pins,but you shouldn't need any force to 
insert the processor so it should be possible to do it by feel without 
damaging it. As a note: The current intel socket 1155 processors have little 
notches in the side of the chip and the socket has bits which fit into these 
so its extremely obvious which way it fits before you even start putting the 
processor on the socket.

Michael Whapples

-----Original Message----- 
From: John Heim
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 10:25 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Building PC without any sight (wasRE: still more on bug)

All of the cables from the case to the mobo can be identified by feel.  The
problem is that it may not be clear where to plug them into the mobo. You'll
be able to figure out how to connect the power, fan, sata devices, and
serial adapter. But there will also be wires on the case for the front panel
power and reset buttons and the audio and USB jacks. The ends of those wires
are all different so you will be able to identify them but you won't know
how to connect them to the mobo unless you have access to that
documentation. And you're not going to be able to ask your spouse to look it
up either unless they're a computer nerd too.

To tell you the truth, I got assistance from an on-line PC hobbiest group.
One guy in particular downloaded the manual for my mobo and described via
email how to connect up the wires. It was difficult to do but I got it. It
worked the first time.

Another thing I got sighted assistance with was installing the CPU.   I
bought an AMD Phenom CPU and it has itty, bitty, tiny pins.  I googled for
instructions on installing that CPU and listened to a lot of videos. But I
still wasn't confident enough to do it myself.  The previous machine I built
had an Intel CPU and I installed that myself. But that was 3 or 4 years ago.

But I think that's about it. I got help with the CPU and the wires from the
front of the case. The rest I did myself. I installed the mobo in the case,
connected up the power, the fan, installed the RAM, the hard disk, and the
DVD drive,.

From: "Albert Sten-Clanton" <albert.e.sten_clanton at verizon.net>
To: "'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'"
<speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 5:24 PM
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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