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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
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Thursday, June 05, 2003
The Family Room Computer is Operational I don't know what's so nice about computer upgrades and builds. Perhaps I like how everything goes together so well from different manufacturers abiding by certain "unpublished" computer standards. Perhaps I like the new fan whine signature after they power up. Or perhaps I just like running a new and fresh install of a virgin OS that doesn't have a registry the size of a New York phone book. The AMD 600 (overclocked from a 500) now sits in the family room and acts are the webcam server, and walk-up computer. It's connected to the stereo and is networked to all the home computers, and hence also acts as the MP3 file server. Today or tomorrow, I'm connecting cable to the AIW video card, so it will also act as our TeVo. I also plan on piping the video out to the television which means we'll now have DVD upstairs. Such joy in the simple things... Building a Computer for a Friend Building computers is a hobby for me. I actually enjoy it, as is evident in all my posts. Building computers from scrap parts is fun, but I find the most joy building computers from brand new components. I'm building an AMD 2400 XP for my friend Mark. It sits on an Asus board that's referred to as the "Deluxe" model. I've never built a computer where I had to remove the standard ATX faceplate and replace it with one that came with the motherboard. This Asus mobo has everything but the kitchen sink! It has two network cards (not sure why), two firewire ports, four USB ports, serial ATA (which isn't being used), and a whole slew of other features. It's also getting a Sapphire ATI 9500 video card, and a Lite-On burner. For RAM, it will be sporting 512 MB of DDR 2700. Late last night, I pieced this thing together. It was beautiful. I can't believe that I actually stayed up from 11PM to 1AM putting this thing all together. I'm just obsessive and can't stop. After making sure I had all the jumpers set correctly and all the Firewire and USB ports connected properly, I decided to fire it up to examine the BIOS. I was almost set back that the thing POSTed perfectly! No error beeps or anything unusual... until the monitor warmed up. The monitor displayed a kaleidoscope of garbage that literally made my jaw drop a few inches. WTF? I reset and tried to get into the BIOS, and still received the same garbage! I removed the card and reset it, did a few jumping jacks and other IT voodoo tricks like reinstalling the card while chewing on a garlic clove, and nothing changed. I finally uplugged the power, went upstairs and set my alarm (sometimes this has solved some of my IT problems), and turned on the kitchen faucet. I also opened the side door while chewing on some gum, and went back downstairs hopping on one foot (this worked for another IT issue I once had). I fired the fucker up, and none of the voodoo tricks worked... the monitor still displayed junk. I'm not sure how to trouble-shoot this. I'll probably have to dig an AGP card out of another computer (what a hassle) and see if it's the video card. Actually, I hope it is, since trying to troubleshoot the other components is so damn time-consuming. I hope it's not the mobo, since that will require tearing everything else apart. FUCK! As much as I enjoy building computers, I don't enjoy trouble-shooting brand new builds. I despise it. I might just unplug all the firewire and USB peripherals, as well as everything else and just start with a mobo, harddrive and video card. If it is, in fact, the video card that's the culprit, I'm going to drop my load on it before I sent it back to Newegg.com. posted by Dino at 8:57 AM (permanent link) |