The site’s now back up and running after a hiatus of a few days owing to a blown power supply.
I was playing a game of Unreal Tournament the other night when the ‘ol computer went clunk and stopped dead. I paused a second waiting for it to explode, but it just sat there. Guess the excitement of a seven year-old shooter was just too much for it. I spent the next day or so stopping by hopefully pressing the power button, to no avail.
Eventually started troubleshooting, and picked the what seemed — given the clunk and the fact that it didn’t do anything when the power button was pressed — like an obvious choice. I pulled the power supply out of my trusty 9 year-old Packard Bell PII 300, plugged it in and the ‘ol PC started right up. (I got a lot of flack way back when over buying a Packard Bell instead of something like a Compaq because Compaq was top-of-the-line and everyone knew Packard Bell was junk. However, I have a Compaq PII 300 of similar vintage to the Packard Bell sitting on my desk and when I tried to raid it for a spare power supply, I discovered that the state-of-the-art for Compaq in 1998 was to use ISA slots and ancient AT power supplies. Fortunately, the Packard Bell had an ATX. Vindication!)
Bought a new power supply for 30 bucks at Micro Center and installed it last night, with a three-hour break in the middle to pick up the new Harry Potter.
Finished the job about two AM last night. I suppose the Compaq has one advantage over cheaper hardware: I could probably replace that power supply in about fifteen minutes but had to completely remove the motherboard and standoffs in my PC to do so.
Anyway, more to post soon . . .
Loonmagnet 