Couple of questions on Panama Red's checklist.

[FrostByte]

I plan to bulid my first computer so I read the stickies and got the checklist, however I don't know what the following things are/mean.

PSU, HDD, Pri Optical, Sec Optical, FDD.

I'm pretty sure Pri Optical means primary optical, and Sec Optical means secondary optical but I dont know what that is. Thanks for your help in advance.

[blue60007]

PSU = Power Supply Unit
HDD = Hard Disk Drive
Pri Opitical = Primary Optical (ie, DVD/CD drive)
Sec Optical = Secondary Optical (ie, DVD/CD Burner)
FDD = Floppy Disk Drive

[ktkendall]

Hello Frosty:
Welcome to pcmech;
PSU is the power supply unit
HDD is the harddrive
FDD is the floppy disk drive
And that primary and secondary opticals are if you have 2 optical drives on 1 ide channel, 1 is the primary and the other is the secondary one, although they both function just as well and will perform whatever tasks they are designed to do no matter if they are on the primary or secondary channel. It's just with ide devices they both can not do read/write functions simultaneously if set up as primary and secondary on the same ide channel they must take turns.

[rspassey]

Your opticals are the ones which you put DVDs or CDs into.. there are many varieties, but you will probably want a Combo drive which does everything, and then a secondary drive for normal use. The combo can take the wear and tear of buring.

And blue covered the rest of the acronyms.

Originally Posted by ktkendall And that primary and secondary opticals are if you have 2 optical drives on 1 ide channel, 1 is the primary and the other is the secondary one, although they both function just as well and will perform whatever tasks they are designed to do no matter if they are on the primary or secondary channel. It's just with ide devices they both can not do read/write functions simultaneously if set up as primary and secondary on the same ide channel they must take turns.

If you get SATA harddrives, then you can set each Optical to it's own IDE channel.

[blue60007]

Originally Posted by ryan124712 If you get SATA harddrives, then you can set each Optical to it's own IDE channel.

Provided the motherboard has two IDE channels. A number of newer ones only come with one IDE channel for your opticals - since IDE for hard drives is being phased out.

[FrostByte]

Alright that clears it all up for me, thank you.