2006
12.10

Wiki humour and broken computer

By: Oktalist
Category: Funny, Hardware, Real World / Tags: no tag / Add Comment

This from some random blog. Made me laugh.

Important announcement: does anyone have an ATX12V power supply that I can use quickly to determine if it’s my PSU that’s broken or if it’s something more serious? That’s the one with two MOLEX connectors, one 20-pin and one 4-pin. It shouldn’t matter if it’s in a computer, I can bring mine round, swap it out quickly, test it then swap it back in. The CPU clock speed of the PC I’m typing this on is measured in megahertz… *cries*

6 comments so far

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  1. bLaXe said: 2006.12.10 13:40

    How true – he is a cunt :)

  2. bLaXe said: 2006.12.13 21:20

    Did you ever get you computer fixed? If not you can come and hijack one of my PSUs to test if you want.

  3. Oktal said: 2006.12.14 23:45

    Ah, cheers. I just found a suitable PSU in the garage, no idea where it came from or if it actually works, but I get the same symptoms when using it (power light on, fans on, disks spin, screen stays in power save mode and no POST beeps) so it looks unlikely to be the PSU now, and I can say the same about the motherboard. So that leaves the RAM and CPU, and I can get Matt to test my RAM.

    I dunno what happened to it, one day I was happily typing away on Notepad (yes, it’s got Windows… I need games), also had two Explorer windows open and nothing else, then it just died, exhibiting the symptoms listed above. Sucks. It was very warm with my electric heater, and the CPU didn’t have any thermal compound…

    But I’m quite looking forward to having to get a new CPU now (if it is the CPU that’s buggered). £60 for a 3.0GHz Skt478 P4 won’t kill me, and that’s a 25% speed increase from what it is now. It would be the third CPU I’ve bought for that PC (I broke a pin on the first one… hella lame).

    I’m getting 512MB PC3200 CL2 Corsair performance RAM and 250GB IDE UDMA/133 HDD for Christmas, to replace my 256MB PC2100 generic RAM and 20GB slow-ass HDD, so I’ll have much joy when I can get it working again.

    P.S. When I said MOLEX I meant, of course, the motherboard connectors, but you knew that.

    Also, what are you doing for Christmas/New Year?

    Also also, editing comments rocks.

  4. bLaXe said: 2006.12.19 17:18

    20GB disc – how do you cope? My lappy has more than that ffs!

    I imagine I will be in the pub at xmas/new year, probably The Vic. Might have a small gathering at home one evening – there’s lots of people I haven’t seen in ages…

  5. Oktal said: 2006.12.19 18:09

    I had borrowed Matt’s dodgy 200GB disk (dodgy in that it had failed before, probably had lots of bad sectors, etc, so I couldn’t store anything important on it) but it died a few days before the PC died.

    I now believe I’ve traced the problem to the CPU so I’ve ordered a new 3.0GHz one.

  6. Chris Harcourt said: 2006.12.21 15:09

    I was thinking about upgrading the CPU in my desktop (S478 P4 @ 2.8GHz) to something newer (it’s a very early P4). Trouble is, as far as I can tell the later P4s generate lots of heat.

    At the moment my PC runs fairly hot but pretty quietly. It’s hot, but perfectly stable (uptime > 3 months). I think a lot of the ambient heat is from the 4 hdds in there. If I stick a better, hotter CPU in there I’ll have to do something about more cooling e.t.c. so I decided not to bother.

    I’m planning to upgrade to a nice shiny Core2 based system in the new year. But this might end up being an HTPC. I don’t actually need anything faster in my desktop (no games, remember). OK, it would shave a couple of seconds off compiling the projects I’m working on but I think I can live without that. A kick ass MythTV box? That’s another matter…

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