In nearly eleven years of computing (yes, I know, mere beginner) I've
never had a single component die on me. Ok, one hard disk froze, but only
after I'd sold the PC it was in, and a sharp tap cured it & it ran fine
afterwards for as long as I knew the owner.
Oh, and then of course there was the time I tried to upgrade a friend of a
friend's RAM & HD. RAM went in fine... look at that massive 8Mb purr! Then
I got cocky and tested the new HD while balancing it on the side of the
case.
Yes, well, HD falls off into PC and... survives perfectly! Sadly the
motherboard didn't. Rumours that said friend of friend was able to get it
fixed under warranty don't make me feel any happier about the memory.
Anyway, the point is (there's a point?) in all those years I've never had
anything die in one of my PCs until just now. I fired up N2003, having
decided recently that to "celebrate" Papyrus's demise I really *must*
invest a little time in learning to race in packs without becoming Mr
Yellow Flag.
Well, I *tried* to fire it up. But N2003 wouldn't start because although
the drive was spinning, N2003 reported the disk couldn't be found. Worked
fine yesterday.
<shrug> I'll reboot in a while and see if something got confused or the
IDE cable dropped off. In the mean time, swap the CD to the DVD drive and
fire up the sim. Bingo! Off to Daytona we go. Into Qual, pull out onto the
track and...
What's that smell? Did Papy model tyre smoke *that* well? Why's the screen
frozen?
"Oh shit!"
I reach out and hit the reset button. The PC starts to reboot. But hang
on, why the f*ck am I resetting it? I know... it's BECAUSE I'M
PANICKING!!!!!
I reached out again and unceremoniously yanked out the power cable, then
ripped off the side of the case to see where the smell was coming from.
The CPU? The motherboard? Was this my chance to get rid of this annoying
NF7-S that's never hit 200MHz without throwing a wobbly? Had my 9700Pro
died and given me an excuse to buy a 9800Pro, or pre-order an x800?
Can't tell. Everything seems to stink of dead electronics. Not a good
sign... and neither is my headache. I must have absorbed almost as much
PCB as your average blue whale seems to carry around with it these days.
I get out the torch, peer around for burnt bits, use my nose to try and
locate the problem... making my headache worse. Nope, nothing. Ok, turn on
the PC with my hand poised on the power cable again... so far so good.
Lights, fans, boot sequence, stuff on the monitor.
Go on, let it boot... <waits> Boots fine to XP. Mmmm...
Oh, hang on. Now I remember the CD drive problem. I wonder if...
Yes Andrew. I wonder if removing the CD drive, then opening it up will
reveal a nasty bit of burnt plastic around where a small chip has
obviously died a very hot and spectacular death.
RIP one August 1998 vintage x36 CD drive, I commend thee to the landfill.
Or at least the nearest ecologically sound dump bin for electronic goods
(which then gets emptied into the nearest landfill, I'm sure, eventually
contributing to PCB in the groundwater, rivers, oceans, and whales. Mea
culpa).
This has been a totally pointless waste of bandwidth. If I never post
again it's because I've poisoned myself on exotic chemicals ;-)
Andrew McP
"Andrew MacPherson" wrote:
<snip Andrew's diatribe!>
> This has been a totally pointless waste of bandwidth. If I never post
> again it's because I've poisoned myself on exotic chemicals ;-)
It is obviously good stuff. Get yourself a decent supply and you'll have
rattled off your first novel by midnight :)
Cheers
Tony
In article <UH0oc.27$[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] (Tony Rickard) wrote:
> Get yourself a decent supply and you'll have
> rattled off your first novel by midnight :)
Heh. My first novel (well, the first one that stands even the remotest
chance of getting an agent even *slightly* interested) is still two
chapters short of the reshaped beginning it desperately needs. It's been
in that state for longer than I care to admit though. Maybe if I spent
less time trying to drive and more time inhaling dubious substances it
might have been completed years ago. Then I could get back on the
rejection circuit, which is almost as depressing as the GPL circuit ;-)
Andrew "Pratchett wannabe" McP
On Tue, 11 May 2004 09:47 +0100 (BST), Andrew MacPherson wrote:
[interesting hw story snipped]
> This has been a totally pointless waste of bandwidth. If I never post
> again it's because I've poisoned myself on exotic chemicals ;-)
Thanks for the post, andrew, gave me a good laugh! I nearly burnt a
dual smp motherboard to bits by forgetting to install the plastic
insulators that would keep the mobo from making contact with the metal
case... amazingly, both the mobo and all the components on it
survived. The only thing that died was a hw testing pci card at a
local shop I took the pc to when it wouldnt do so much as give me a
POST beep ;-)
uwe
--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
GPG Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61
"Burn" it to CD :-}
--
Pete H
GPL, NR2003, LFS suck .... you in
"Andrew MacPherson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
> In article <UH0oc.27$[email hidden]>,
> [email hidden] (Tony Rickard) wrote:
>
> > Get yourself a decent supply and you'll have
> > rattled off your first novel by midnight :)
>
> Heh. My first novel (well, the first one that stands even the remotest
> chance of getting an agent even *slightly* interested) is still two
> chapters short of the reshaped beginning it desperately needs. It's been
> in that state for longer than I care to admit though. Maybe if I spent
> less time trying to drive and more time inhaling dubious substances it
> might have been completed years ago. Then I could get back on the
> rejection circuit, which is almost as depressing as the GPL circuit ;-)
>
> Andrew "Pratchett wannabe" McP
In article <[email hidden]>, blah@don'tsendspamhere.com (Pete
H) wrote:
> "Burn" it to CD :-}
:-) Don't worry, I have more than a few backups of that particular data.
One CD lives permanently in my coat pocket in case the flat burns down.
Which reminds me, must remember to turn all my PCs off next time I go out
;-)
Actually I rarely leave *anything* electrical on when I go out. This
incident has reminded me why it does no harm to be paranoid.
Andrew McP
