Robert wrote:
i wish to test it all, everything, just not ummm extremely violently in terms of hard drive(s).
The ultimate boot cd: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
It has various utilities that will test the RAM, the motherboard, the disks... For some it uses Linux, for some DR-DOS.
and there is the old: Norton Utilities with the loopback plugs for verifying the serial and parallel ports.