Anyway:
The case arrived today, and it's pretty. It's gloss black, like an expensive piano, and about the size of a shoe box.
No I don't have pictures yet. I will, I will...but later.
For the past, oh, six hours the laptop has been laborously copying data from the spare 500 GB drive onto the 500 GB external drive. I had to make room on the external first, of course, and that took time; and after the copy had been started I put the mobo into the case and plugged stuff in. WIthout a hard drive, though, what can I do?
Six hours--stupid USB 2.0. So it's sitting there and waiting until I can put the 500 GB drive in. *sigh*
And even when I finish that, I still have another problem. You see, like an idiot, I didn't notice that the specifications for the motherboard excluded an IDE interface of any kind.
That's right: the motherboard has two SATA ports on it, and nothing else, so there's no way I can use the spare DVD drive I've got with this thing.
So Friday I get to hie myself out to CompUSA to pick up a cheapo SATA DVD-R drive. It'll be $20 with tax, excluding the $$ I spent on gas getting there and back.
...except that it's supposed to be 61° and partly cloudy, with no rain; I suppose I could ride the motorcycle. That would probably be fun, mostly.
* * *
Anyway, now it's almost 4 AM and I'm falling asleep. I got up at 2 o'clock (PM I mean) to wait for the UPS guy, and I was sleepy then. Somehow I've remained awake throughout the ensuing insanity and stupidity; my torrent box is half-built and will remain so until I get the DVD drive, so I guess I'll try plugging it in and see if it switches on...and then go to bed.
UPDATE: I have not seen AMI BIOS in about a thousand years. Holy smokes.
...I powered it up; it switched on, found 2048 MB of RAM, and complained that there's no keyboard. That'll do until later today. Heh.