Is this a Bear Market Rally or a Recovery Rally?

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 1)  Update: The largest Single-day Fall (19 May 2022)

# largest single-day fall,  bear market rally,  recovery rally,  Dow Jones

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18 May 2022

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DOW) came back and broke the Head and Shoulder line (H&S) last night as shown in the attached chart below.  This has made the market wonder if this is a "bear market rally" or a real market recovery rally.  This article will make an attempt to analyse it.

What  Happened?

The investors were expecting a rally to happen for the following reasons

1.  SP500  was about 19% down from its peak in Jan 2022.  It is expected that investors will make attempt and try their best to avoid SP500 slipping to 20% which will make SP500 officially a bear market.  They made 2 attempts to save Nasdaq from slipping into the bear market at end of April but failed.

2.   The trading calendar was positioned as if with a purpose to "push market sentiments up".  The retail sales estimation figures were in favour and Powell and many money policymakers would speak afterwards;

3.  The market was down for nearly 4 months.  It is about time at least for a temporary rebounce.

However,  although the US market was up last night,  it is expected that the present stock rally is just another bear market rally.

Why?

 1.  The US market was driven by "hope" mainly due to the Quantitative Easing (QE) money although some might not agree.  The SP500 took off soon after Fed pumped in about 3 Trillion in March 2020.  Later,  Fed pumped in another 2 Trillion.

Although the companies have improved their earnings during the period,  it is believed the bulk of these earning increases is spurred by the QEs rather than the market recovery.   Now with the QEs about to be removed in June and the dismaying performance of earning revisions in April,  it is expected that the market will remain under tremendous pressure to improve its earnings & performance going forward.

(doubleclick picture to go the website)

2.  The companies elsewhere are not performing as well as those in the US 

3.  China presently has the worse economic report card so far; its dismay performance is likely to throw a spanner into any US recovery attempts.

Chance of Fed Removing or Lighten QT?

Many investors are hoping that Fed would remove or lighten the Quantitative Tightening (QT).  This is especially when Fed ended its first attempt at QT in 2019 earlier than expected because the market was not "gung-ho" about Fed's QT.  

Whether Fed would insist to carry out QT this time in June is not clear but at some point and time,  we know Fed will have to do QT to destroy the "printed money".  This time,  it might be a good window for the Fed to do so because the economy of Russia and China are all in terrible shape.  And a little setback in the US economy might not look too bad or out of tune or out of the order. 

In Conclusion

It is therefore expected that the US and the World market will continue to fall especially when the QT starts as scheduled in June.    The only hope for a market recovery is for Fed to remove or lighten the QT policy but Fed might not want to miss the window to carry out the QT.

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Update:  The Largest Single-day Fall (19 May 2022)

DOW failed to break the Head and Shoulder line (H&S) last night.    This caused DOW to fall more than 1,164 points or 3.57%.  Although it was not the largest single-day fall since the last Great Recession (2008/2009) in terms of percentage,  it was still the largest single-day fall in terms of points.   

On Oct 15, 2008, DOW fell about 724 points or about 7.7% in a single-day.

Going forward,  it is likely to see DOW continues to test the support level @ 31,000.

Not Officially a Bear Market

Although Nasdaq is officially in the Bear Market,  it is not the case for DOW and S&P500.  This is because DOW and S&P500 have never fallen below the 20% from its peak as shown in this chart.   

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Disclaimer:  This article is for information and educational purposes.   Readers are advised to conduct their own research and study to make their own investment decisions.

Reference:

Head and Shoulder Pattern

Only Shanghai had Surplus Among 31 Provinces in 1st Half 2021

23 April 2022

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1)   Update： 16 August 2022

In the first half of 2021, Shanghai was the only province that had a "surplus" of about 94.26 billion yuan in revenue collection.  The rest of the 30 provinces in China were in financial debt.  This is a clear contract to the year 2017 when 6 provinces,  namely,   Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Beijing and Shanghai had a surplus. 

Doubleclick to visit the webpage

The deficit was recorded despite the various efforts made by various Provincial Governments to cut down their expenditure as shown in this chart

The above 2 charts clearly express that China's economy is unlike before. They are now facing an economic downturn.  Many Provincial Governments are not self-sufficient,  requiring financial assistance from the Central Government.

Reasons?

Most Chinese Analysts avoided giving any reason for the revenue deficit choked up by various Provincial Governments.  But some trying to explain that the occurrence of this deficit is quite common.  They explained that this is a natural occurrence when there were policy changes in the deployment of funds by the Central Government.

However,  we are all aware of the following events which have taken place and were ongoing during these difficult periods:-

a)  Covid Shutdowns and Control Measures

The zero Covid policy brings about frequent shutdowns in various cities and rural towns and counties in order to control the Covid Spread. Someone estimated that this has cost China some $45 billion per month or about 3% of China's GDP;

b)  Power Failure and Electricity Load Shedding  

The country suffered a country-wide power failure and load shedding after they banned the import of Australian coal end of 2020.  Without allowing the power generating companies to increase the electricity tariff to cover up additional expenditure of importing the more expensive coal from other countries,  the generating companies resorted to cutting down generation capacity causing country-wide power load shedding.  These frequent power failures and load shedding must have hit many industries badly.

c)  The US-China Trade War

The US-China Trade War started around 2018 and continued into 2021 has caused many foreign companies to pull their manufacturing facilities out of China.  Such mass exits have caused many to lose their jobs and earning power,  reducing the Provincial Government's revenue;

d)  The Xinjiang Cotton Controversy 

Although the Xingjiang Cotton Controversy was known to the public around March 2021,  the event took place about a year ago in March 2020 when BCI, the Better Cotton Initiative took the initiative to suspend the licensing and assurance activities in Xinjiang.  This action by BCI could have caused many jobs in Xinjiang as well in other parts of China.

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Update： 16 August 2022

The financial condition of China has deteriorated further in 1st half of 2022.  This time,  all 31 provinces and cities in the mainland were unable to make ends meet.   Guangdong, Henan, and Sichuan are the most serious with Sichuan rumored to be the worse for many years to come. 

Henan had bank runs in some local banks.  

Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hainan which used to be better provinces with higher revenues are now in the red. 

The financial situation of the 31 provinces is worsening as shown in the following table.

Source： Yahoo News

How Badly Will the World's Energy Supplies Be Affected by the Ukraine War?

It has been told many times by some that the World will be in trouble if they continued to oppose Russia in trying to take over Ukraine.   The Russian leaders have been quoted to say that Russia was only trying to solve a "domestic problem" in Ukraine.  Putin even called this  Ukraine military action a "special military exercise."  

Voices are heard everywhere, threatening those "unfriendly nations" who recently sanctioned Russia that they will get the worse when Putin asked them to pay their natural gas bill in "Roubles" instead of the Euros or US dollars.  

It is not the intention of this article to find out if such voices are correct or the unfriendly nations will get into real trouble.  It intends to present a correct picture to the reader for them to judge for themselves if such threats are real.

The Supplies from Russia

Russia is a country blessed with a lot of minerals and supplies that the World needs.   Natural Gas is one of them. Countries near Russia,  such as Poland,  Germany,  China are not only getting natural gas in LNG tanks but also piped gas through long pipelines all the way from remote Russian areas such as Sibireas.  Over 70% of the country's reserves are currently held by Gazprom, a Russian state-owned company.

How much Natural Gas is from Russia?

One can find this information from a lot of sources.  The ones shown here are from Worldometer.  The following picture shows the yearly natural gas production (in MMCF) of the 10 largest gas producers of the World.

a)  In numbers

<Doubleclick picture to go to the original webpage>

b)  in Pie Chart 

How the Russian Gas would affect the World Supply?

As can be seen from the above chart and table, Russia supplied about 14% of the World's natural gas.  The US and the rest of the World supply the remaining 86%.  With this kind of supply distribution,  it is hardly a conclusion that one can make to say the World's natural gas supply would be in trouble if Russia were to take drastic actions about supplying its natural gas.

Moreover,  the recent natural gas price hikes have already broken down the cost barrier and quenched the fear for many countries to consider bringing in LNG supplies from other countries instead of getting supply through the usual gas pipelines.

However, in whatever form the gas sanction or supply restrictions can be, they will not only bring temporary suffering & hardship to those countries who get direct supplies from Russia,  it will also hurt Russia's economy badly as well. Therefore,  it is never a wise decision to be made.

Update:  28 March 2022

China's Sinopec Bows Out Of Russian Petchem, Gas Projects

China has been taking natural gas supply from Russia, which is China's third-largest supplier of natural gas, after Australia and Turkmenistan, delivering 16.6 billion cubic meters (bcm) (pipeline plus liquefied natural gas [LNG]).  It accounts for 10 % of China's total imports. 

In Feb 2022, Russia, China agree 30-year gas deal via a new pipeline, to settle in euros.  Russia and China have been talking about this contract for the last 8 years,  Understand China signed the Contracts to reduce the dependency of supply from the "Quad".

Recent Russia's actions in Ukraine must have changed China's perspective.  China's Sinopec has just signed a 20-year contract to get about 4 mt of natural gas per year from a US company in November 2021.

<Doubleclick picture to go to the original webpage>

Sinopec was reported to have bowed out of $500 million Russian Petchem Gas projects just because one of the partners,  Gennady Timchenko,  has been sanctioned by the EU and Britain.  

<Doubleclick picture to go to the original webpage>

Update:  28 March 2022

Oil Production in Barrels per years by various countries

Similarly,   for oil production,  Russia supplied only about 11% of the oil requirement with the rest of 89% from other parts of the World as shown in this Pie Chart

a)  In numbers

<Doubleclick picture to go to the original webpage>

b)  In Pie Chart

Runtime Error 429 in Using Selenium Basic

5 March 2022 

Selenium Basic can be a very useful tool when one is writing an Excel VBA Macro to "scrape" data from a webpage.  

In the past,  one will have to use "imacros" which is a special paid software for scrapping data in Excel because one cannot often use Excel's built-in "data queries" to extract data from a webpage.  These webpages are usually written using VBScript,  Javascript or other forms of HTML tools.  

Please click the picture for more information

The VBA that is used to extract data from a webpage using the normal tools can run into a lot of problems and often took several processes just to complete a simple task. Selenium Basic, on the other hand,  can cut the Excel macros down to just a few lines for the same kind of work.  For example,  it allows users to copy the whole table & then paste it onto Excel as an Excel table instead of a jpg picture.   It is much more efficient;  also, the VBA macros will run much faster,  limited only by the network.

Error Messages

The only snag about using Selenium Basic is the lack of support documents, especially about how to handle script errors.  This is because Selenium Basic is still in the early stage of development.  One of the errors that come up recently is the Run time error 429 as described by a forumer in the "Stackoverlow" forum:

Click the picture to visit the article

What is Error 429?

Error 429 is a common error occurring when one tries to automate office or other similar works. According to Microsoft,  this error when occurring in Microsoft Office VBA work could be due to the following reasons:

• There is a mistake in the application;
• There is a mistake in the system configuration;
• There is a missing component;
• There is a damaged component.

Microsoft suggested a few solutions as shown on this page.  The solutions can be summarized in simple terms as follows

1.  Check & verify the office application is working;

2.  Re-register the applications;

3.  Check & add the "CLSID key" to the Registry if there are missing in the Registry;

There are other methods suggested which the readers should read in detail. 

How the Error 429 happened?

It happened when one is trying to use special automation software called "Auto Power-On and Shut Down" to turn on and shut down the PC at a specific time automatically. This software has been used before for Excel macro many times without any hitch.  The Excel VBA macros were also tested to run well on another computer.  on this PC in question,  Windows Excel will startup but it would stall whenever it reached the following VBA script.  

• driver.Start "Chrome"

The solution

The re-registration of the software "Auto Power-On and Shut down" as advised by Microsoft solved the problem.  One will need to run the following script in DOS-Prompt as an administrator:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Auto Power-On and Shut Down\Auto Power-On and Shut Down.EXE /regserver

In the above example,  the software,  "Auto Power-On and Shut Down",  was defaulted to be installed in C:\Program Files (x86)

 

Reviving ASUS eee901 NetBook PC for Data Scrappings

5 March 2022

# eee901, Network, SSD upgrade,  mSATA,  mini-PCIe,  Windows

This ASUS eee901 was a very popular netbook PC about 10 to 15 years ago.  It was one of the cheap netbook PC that uses SSDs for memory storage.   It was very hackable and many hobbyists like to do all sorts of modification work using this PC.  

Because the netbook uses only 5 Watts.  I bought a couple of these for stock data mining which required the PC to be operating 24/7.  When the SDD finally failed to work and plenty of free stock screening websites are available free for downloading,  I decided to retire them some 5 years.

Lately,  I took up the interest to do stock data mining again. This time is for data that are not available anywhere on the Internet.   The choice then was between buying a new netbook or upgrading the eee901 with a faster and bigger SSD.

What SSD Were Used?

These ASUS netbooks use a special SSD called mini-PCIe SSD.  These SSD has a similar form factor as the mini-SATA (mSATA) SSD.  Mini-PCI SSD is not easily available and mSATA SSD cannot be used to replace Mini-SSD directly in the ASUS netbook.

The Final Choice

.I decided to revive the eee901 for the following reasons

1)  Netbook has now been replaced by the tablets which run on either Android or iOS.  They are not good for running the Excel macros which were written earlier for data mining;

2)  There are adaptors available to convert mSATA SSD to mini-PCI SDD for use in eee901.  The adaptors are fairly cheap.   The SSD replacement and upgrading work is estimated to cost less than SGD$30/=. It is much cheaper than a new netbook;  moreover,  I have a few spare mSATA SSD lying around and I can use them for the upgrading work.

The only Snag

The eee901 PC has two SSD;  one 8GB master SSD that is accessible after removing the cover;  the other is the 4GB slave SSD that is hidden inside the PC.   When the new adaptor SSD is used to replace the 8GB Master SSD,  the PC will recognise only the new adaptor SSD as a slave.  The BIOS will always give this warning error about "master SSD not found" whenever the PC is booted up.  The warning error cannot be defeated because it is an error message.   It will stop loading up the Windows.  This is not good when one is trying to automate the PC to start up windows and run the excel macros automatically.   

Installing the adaptor SSD to replace the hidden 4GB will solve this startup error but the adaptor SSD must be shortened because the hidden 4GB is half-height.  It is around 50 mm long whereas the new adaptor SSD is around 70 mm long. 

Can the Adaptor SSD Be Shortened?

Yes,  it can.  One must use 1/2 height mSATA with a short piece of PVC plastic added as shown in this automated picture.  There is just enough room in eee 901 for the installation of this new and shortened adaptor SSD

How to Install the Inside the eee901?

Here is one of the video

Enhanced Performance

Users will find the replacement Adaptor SSD running much faster than the original SSD.  This is because the mSATA is of the more advanced Technolgy.  The mSATA's speed can be several times that of the original SSD.  

With the larger capacity SSD,  one can use the original Windows 7 with the response and speed,  at times,  even better than the Intel E8400 PC with the hard drive.  Some has tested eee901 using Windows 10 but the response was a bit sluggish as reported because Windows 10 will require 3 GB RAM to run efficiently.  The eee901 only has a maximum RAM of 2 GB.

DIY Protective Covers for Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Sensors

19 February 2022

About 1 in 10 people will have diabetes. This number of diabetes is expected to double in future years.  It is a serious disease that will cause death if it is not properly managed and controlled.  The disease is more commonly found in aged people.   People get diabetes when their blood glucose is too high.  This glucose in the blood is commonly referred to as blood sugar, 

This article will not go into details about controlling and managing blood sugar as there are lots of good articles written about this on the net.   I just want to share about how to DIY a  cover for the Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Sensors when one happens to wear one.

What is Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)?

There are generally 2 common types of methods to measure the level of blood sugar at home.  One of them is by using a glucose meter with a special test strip;  

the other is by using a special sensor that has to be planted on our body.   

The former is most commonly found at home and have been used for years.   The latter is only available in recent years.  It is by far the most effective way to control and manage the blood sugar in our bodies.  More details about CGM can be found here and elsewhere on the net.   This article will only talk about how to best secure and how to DIY a cover for the  CGM Sensor when it is installed on our body.

Why the need to secure the Sensor?

Usually,  the sensors are provided with means to secure the sensor to our body as one can see in the above picture,  But it does not look really very secure.  It is not that it will fall off that easily;  it is just the feeling of most people who wear them that the sensor could just "shear off" when it hit against something like a door jamb.  Besides,  there is always this sensation of arm-sore that will not go away even after days of wearing the sensor.  This could be because the needle of the sensor could be moving around when one is flexing the arms.  

As such,  one can find a lot of companies selling specially made covers or patches to secure these sensors.  They are not cheap either.

How to DIY the Cover?

There is actually no requirement specified by the manufacturer nor there are any standards available for the design of the sensor cover.   It is generally felt that the cover should have the prerequisites:

a)  It is waterproof;

b)  It must have a strong adhesive to stick firmly.  Easily replaced.

c)  It must not cause skin occlusion 

It must be waterproof so that water will not soak the sensor or its adhesive base when one is taking a bath.  It must have a strong adhesive itself to stick firmly to the skin & easily replaced.    Most important of all,  it must not cause skin occlusion which will often cause skin irritation,  leading to skin rashes or inflammation.  

Searching around,  we found the 3M micropore tape or similar most suitable for the DIY as it fit the 3 prerequisites.  The 3 M tape comes in 4 sizes,  the 3",  the 2",  the 1" and the 1/2".  The most common one found in the self is the 2",  the 1" and the 1/2";  but,  the most suitable one for use as a cover for the sensor is the 3" type.    

How to Use the Smaller size 3M Tape?

The only way is to join the pieces together using the following step by step.  In this case,  the most suitable one is the 1" type.

1)  Cut 3 pieces of 1" tape;  each tape is best to be roughly about 3.5 in length;

2)  Laid the tape on the glass.  In this example,  a mobile phone was used;

3)  Lightly place the 3 pieces of tape,  overlapping the edges as shown attached.   Apply some pressure over the overlapping edges to stick the pieces together;

4)  After that,  remove the tape;

5)  Cut a small round piece of plastic using a small bottle as the template as shown as stick the round piece right in the centre.  the plastic round piece should be larger than the adhesive of the CGM sensor.  This is to ensure the tape will not stick to the sensor and the adhesive and the tape can be easily replaced if necessary;

6)  Trim the DIY sensor cover and place the cover over the sensor as shown.

 

How Best to Test & Calibrate a Blood Pressure Meter?

3 February 2022

A blood pressure meter is a common household item nowadays.  This is especially so when there are elderly people in the house.  

In the old day,  we used to have a mercury type of pressure meter which they called "sphygmomanometer".

Today,  most of us will use an electronic type of blood pressure meter as shown below
The good old mercury type of pressure meters are still being used by a lot of medical personnel because it is still the most reliable and accurate pressure meter around; whereas, electronic meters will often need regular calibration and routine checking.

This article will show how one can accurately check the accuracy of an electronic meter.

What's Needed?

How to Connect up?

 1.  Connect 8-mm Silicone Tube to the mercury reservoir as shown

2.  Connection the 8-mm tube to the T-Joint

Testing 

As shown in the video,   this Omron Blood Pressure BP742 meter under test has an accuracy of about +4 mm Hg or 3% of reading @ 131 mm Hg.  it is slightly off the manufacturer's limits of +- 3 mm Hg or 2% reading.  However, it has an accuracy of -1 mm Hg or -1% of reading @ 100 mm Hg which is better than the manufacturer's limits.

Diastolic &  Systolic Pressure Readings

To complete the test,  one should also place a stethoscope underneath the handcuff to listen to the heartbeats to check the accuracy of the systolic and diastolic pressure..  

During the working process,  one can hear the meter pumping up the pressure to the handcuff and the heartbeat sounds through the stethoscope as the pressure is building up.  When the pressure goes higher than a certain set of systolic pressure,   the meter will stop pumping.  This is when one could not hear any heartbeats.  Thereafter,  the meter will slowly release the pressure and the pressure readings will drop.  Note down the reading when one first hears a heartbeat. This is systolic pressure.  With further pressure drop,  note the reading when one no longer hear the heartbeat sounds. This is your diastolic pressure.  Compare this two readings with the readings recorded by the meter.  They should be within +-3%.

Calibration

Unfortunately,  there is no adjustment allowed in this Omron Blood Pressure BP742 meter as shown in the following picture.  It would appear the calibration has to be carried out by using some kind of software and this can be done only by the manufacturer as explained by the author of this article...

How Much is a Sphygmomanometer?

The market is selling a Sphygmomanometer at a price of around SGD 40/= to about SGD 300/=.

Repairing Philips Electric Shaver Model C644

 

24 January 2022

This Phillips Shaver was found not working.   The blade will move but if one starts to cut the hairs,  the cutting blade will stop moving.  One can still hear the motor spinning in the background.   If one removes the blade from the unit,  one can see that the blade rotator will spin but it will stop if one tries to use one's finger to stop the rotator from spinning.   

Why?

The blade rotator is slipping.    It is not "catching" firmly onto the rotor of the motor.   The rotor catch must be loose.   This article will recommend a fix.

Disassembling

1.  Removing the Blade holder

The blade holder which is in the form of metal clips must first be removed.  To remove the clips,  one must use a small screwdriver to free the top catch from the 2 catch holders as shown in the attached picture. 

2.  Remove Motor Chamber's Top Cover

Once the blade holder is removed,  one can easily remove the motor chamber's top cover by prying open its bottom using a small screwdriver.  The cover is shown in the following picture.    

3.  Remove the Sliding Adjuster Assembly

Next is to remove the sliding adjuster and the slider ring as shown.  

When removing the slider ring,  watch out for the spring-loaded plunger underneath the ring.  Make sure the plunger won't spring out.   If the plunger is lost and missing, the sliding adjuster will not work properly.

4.  Remove the Switch Cover

Once the slider ring is out of place,  one can start to remove the top cover or the switch cover from the shaver by using a small screwdriver to pry open the cover,  starting from the bottom and working the way to the top until the cover is completely removed.

The Parts

Why Blade Rotator is Loose?

There was no screw or other means to secure the rotator to the motor's rotor.  It is suspected that there is a "catch" built into the rotator because one can feel the "click" when one inserts the rotator back onto the rotor.   

The "catch" must have failed to catch firmly onto the rotor because the rotator was found to be quite oily.  In this case,  the owner must have overlubricated, sprayed too much WD40 or otherwise and accidentally allowed the lubricants to get into the rotator. This must have caused the rotator to fail to "catch" onto the rotor.   The slipping of the rotator will occur when the blade met some resistance.   

Knowing this to be the problem,  cleaning up and soaking the rotator in solvents such as thinner or acetone solved the problem.

What if the Rotator still Slips?

One will have to replace the blade rotator if one can find the spare part;  if not,  the only alternative is either to "stuff" in between the rotator and the rotor with a tiny strain of small electric wire.  The other way is to permanently fix the rotator to the rotor using superglue.  The use of superglue should be the last resort.

Reassembling

To reassemble back the shaver,  reverse the disassembling steps.

How To Assemble a PC? (Lesson No 3)

 21 January 2022

In this lesson,   we will install the motherboard and other PC components.  Take this motherboard as an example.  

The motherboard is made by Gigabyte and the model number is as shown which is GA-H61M-S2p.  It has the following built-in

1.  4 SATA 3 Gb/s output ports for disk drives and DVD ROM;

2.  8 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (4 ports on the back panel, 4 ports for front panel)

3.  1 Ethernet LAN Port

4.  1 VGA Port (D-Sub port)

5.  4 Expansion Port ( 1 PCIex16 for graphic card, 2 PCIex8 and 1 PCIex4 port for other cards

6.  1 x PS/2 keyboard port & 1 x PS/2 mouse port

7.  3 x audio jacks (Line In/Line Out/Microphone)

To install,  one would need to go to the motherboard webpage to download the following

1.  The User's Manual

2.  The following Drivers

a. Realtek HD Audio Driver

b.  Intel Management Engine Interface

c.  Intel Management Engine Interface

d.  Realtek LAN Driver

e.  Intel® Rapid Storage Technology

f.  Intel SATA Preinstall driver

g.  Intel VGA Driver (for Ivy Bridge CPU)

The manual will be required for the installation of the various casing connector to the motherboard.  The drivers will be required after one has installed the Windows operating system.  Without these drivers,  the windows will use the standard driver which might not give optimum performance.   One would need to select the OS to download the correct type of drivers.    

There are several versions of the windows operating system.  The latest one is Windows 11.    The more common ones are Windows 10 and Windows 7.    Windows 7 is no longer supported by Microsoft.  One can still install and use it.  

As this is an old motherboard,  it has no drivers for Windows 10 or Windows 11 listed on the manufacturer's webpage.    For those who prefer to install the Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating system on this PC,  they would first have to use the drivers for Windows 7 first.  Windows will install the drivers if they are usable;   if not,  the new ones will be installed automatically when one do a windows update after the PC has been set up and running.  

Physical Installation

A) Motherboard Installation

1. First, install the Power supply Unit if it has not been already fixed onto the casing;

2. Then,  one will need to install the backplate;   after that,  the motherboard. 

The motherboard will have 6 screws to secure it firmly to the casing.   Once the motherboard has been installed,  one can start to plug in all the cable connectors.

The cable connectors are all "keyed" in such a way as to avoid any wrong connections.  The only connectors one would have to watch out for are those Front Panel USB and casing connectors.   One will need the User's Manual to connect up these 2 connectors properly.

1)  Front panel USB Connector

These connectors are often supplied with individual connectors,  one for each cable.  There are 10 pins for each USB connector. Each set of pins can connect 2 USB ports.   One will have to identify and install the cables properly according to the diagram.  The wrong connection could cause problems and may even spoil the USB devices or motherboard. 

2)  Front Panel Casing Connectors

Similar to the front panel USB connection,  the wiring might come in a different combination.  One will need to identify which cable will be going to which pin.  The cables are always marked according to function;  for example,  Power LED,  etc.

B)  Hard Drive Installation

Here is a tutorial video for the installation of the hard drives

C)  Windows Operating System

Here is an example of how Windows10 can be installed free

A copy of the windows 10 for evaluation can be downloaded here for free