I got my new machine up and running!  In fact, I'm now listening to the Rush in Rio DVD in Dolby Digital on this machine while I write this post.  And since it's in my living room (as opposed to my un-kid-friendly office), it's easy to sit here with the baby.  Paradise!

Getting this box running was a bit of an ordeal, though.  After initial setup, when the machine ultimately wouldn't POST, I ended up buying a new BIOS chip.  Since I'm impatient, I paid a total of $40 for that little chip, including shipping.  And when it arrived, imagine my chagrin when I bent some of the pins during installation.  I was about to kill myself at that point.  But I got out the needle nose pliers to set things straight and seemed to get the chip to seat correctly.  I prayed.

But the box still wouldn't boot.

It this point, I figured the only option was to send back the whole board and start over.  I posted my latest dilemma to the directron.com support site, and someone suggested that I disassemble the whole thing as a last resort and try to just get the board to POST sitting on a piece of cardboard with the video card seated.  Certainly an approach I wouldn't have thought of myself.  Suffice it to say - it worked.  I couldn't believe it.  There must have been short somewhere; I'm lucky nothing got fried.

However, to date I still can't get 64-bit Windows to boot on this thing after setup completes.  So I'm running 32-bit XP right now.  I'm debating whether to install MCE 2005, but I read that domain join is disabled on that SKU, so I'm having second thoughts since I run a home domain (although pratically speaking domain membership probably isn't critical for this machine).  On the other hand, the ATI All-in-Wonder software theoretically does everything that I would otherwise need MCE for, so maybe I'll go that route.