The magic smoke got out

I was looking at something on the web last night when my monitor displayed it's "no signal" message (which is normally seen when I shut the system down) and I smelled something wrong. We shut the computer down (cattitude has quicker reactions on this, unplugged it, and waited a bit. Then he tried booting it with the monitor disconnected, in case the problem was there.

The beeps were wrong. Power off again, quickly. I used Cattitude's machine to send adrian_turtle a quick email message, soaked my feet while reading some Bill Bryson, and then we went to bed.

This morning, post-caffeine, Cattitude opened my machine up. The magic smoke had come from the motherboard.

I'm getting a new machine. Actually new, as distinct from "take Cattitude's previous machine when he needs fancier graphics for the current Windows games." We have other plans for today, but if I can figure out what I want in a PC, we can order it today; until it arrives, I'll be either sharing his PC or borrowing his laptop. As Adrian pointed out, it's a good thing we're a multi-computer household, or I'd be getting grumpy or fidgety about lack of connectivity. Especially since I'm expecting a contract by email, and do a lot of my socializing either by email or IM.

The new machine is going to live on my desk, not under it, because we think that the proximate cause of burned hardware is how much dust got into the machine while it sat on the floor.

I may download Gaim to this machine, or I may just wait. If you need to talk to me, you either have or can find my phone number. I'll be checking email much less frequently for a few days.

The magic smoke got out

I was looking at something on the web last night when my monitor displayed it's "no signal" message (which is normally seen when I shut the system down) and I smelled something wrong. We shut the computer down (cattitude has quicker reactions on this, unplugged it, and waited a bit. Then he tried booting it with the monitor disconnected, in case the problem was there.

The beeps were wrong. Power off again, quickly. I used Cattitude's machine to send adrian_turtle a quick email message, soaked my feet while reading some Bill Bryson, and then we went to bed.

This morning, post-caffeine, Cattitude opened my machine up. The magic smoke had come from the motherboard.

I'm getting a new machine. Actually new, as distinct from "take Cattitude's previous machine when he needs fancier graphics for the current Windows games." We have other plans for today, but if I can figure out what I want in a PC, we can order it today; until it arrives, I'll be either sharing his PC or borrowing his laptop. As Adrian pointed out, it's a good thing we're a multi-computer household, or I'd be getting grumpy or fidgety about lack of connectivity. Especially since I'm expecting a contract by email, and do a lot of my socializing either by email or IM.

The new machine is going to live on my desk, not under it, because we think that the proximate cause of burned hardware is how much dust got into the machine while it sat on the floor.

I may download Gaim to this machine, or I may just wait. If you need to talk to me, you either have or can find my phone number. I'll be checking email much less frequently for a few days.

New smoke

We have ordered new magic smoke.

In fact, we have ordered almost a complete new system (I'm not replacing the monitor or keyboard, and while I do want a new trackball, I'm going to get that from a store where I can try them out). The hard drive from the previous system will be installed in the new one long enough for us to pull the data off of it, onto the backup drive, and then onto the new system's day-to-day drive.

The new hard drive is 250 gigabytes. The backup drive is half a terabyte (enough bigger for incremental backups to be straightforward). Newegg was offering a discount if we got that particular combination, making it cheaper to do this than to buy the slightly smaller pairing (400 gig and somewhere from 180-250) that we'd originally had in mind.

This is my first actual new machine: we'd gone from sharing computers, to several iterations of cattitude deciding he needed a better machine (usually for graphics) and me inheriting the still-functional older machine. So we talked about what I actually want, including lots of memory and ease of backups, and what I don't (fancy graphics and sound), and worked from his knowledge of the current hardware market to design a system.

I will still be a bit fidgety until it's here, assembled, and has the software installed. But it's a new machine, it's mine, and it will have all the magic smoke in the proper places.

New smoke

We have ordered new magic smoke.

In fact, we have ordered almost a complete new system (I'm not replacing the monitor or keyboard, and while I do want a new trackball, I'm going to get that from a store where I can try them out). The hard drive from the previous system will be installed in the new one long enough for us to pull the data off of it, onto the backup drive, and then onto the new system's day-to-day drive.

The new hard drive is 250 gigabytes. The backup drive is half a terabyte (enough bigger for incremental backups to be straightforward). Newegg was offering a discount if we got that particular combination, making it cheaper to do this than to buy the slightly smaller pairing (400 gig and somewhere from 180-250) that we'd originally had in mind.

This is my first actual new machine: we'd gone from sharing computers, to several iterations of cattitude deciding he needed a better machine (usually for graphics) and me inheriting the still-functional older machine. So we talked about what I actually want, including lots of memory and ease of backups, and what I don't (fancy graphics and sound), and worked from his knowledge of the current hardware market to design a system.

I will still be a bit fidgety until it's here, assembled, and has the software installed. But it's a new machine, it's mine, and it will have all the magic smoke in the proper places.