Interrupted by power supply issues »
PHILIP STORRY - NOV 28, 2008 (01:32:07 PM)
The power supply on my home machine died, which is why I've been absent.
I did buy a netbook to tide me over - it's lovely, but in all the fuss I completely forgot to drop back here and blog about it
ETA: Note that I bought the Netbook because I wasn't sure that it was only the PSU that had died, as described in a comment on this entry. Sorry if that caused any confusion!
The netbook is an Acer Aspire One - the 120Gb mechanical HDD version, not the SSD version. A great little device, which really fills a niche between my phone (for email and comms on the go, but not for any extended use) and my PC (which is about as portable as a bedside cabinet). It runs Linux, but I've replaced the shipped distribution with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is an utterly fantastic bit of software - more on that later!
It only has 512Mb of RAM, but that doesn't seem to matter. It's fine for most things you'd use it for - but I must admit I've got a 1Gb stick of RAM for it, as it was only 15 quid!
(15 quid for a gig of RAM. How times have changed...)
Anyway, my PC is back up and running now, so hopefully I'll remember to blog more in future. Or I could just start blogging from work, but I don't want to do that as it's too distracting!
Comments: 2
COMMENT: ANDREW POLLACK
NOV 30, 2008 - 12:49:50 AM
COMMENT: PHILIP STORRY
DEC 1, 2008 - 09:31:48
I didn't know at the time that it was only the PSU. It was still providing *some* power - LEDs on the motherboard lit up, fans did an initial revolution when the power was plugged in. But one of the power lines was evidently knackered. The power button did nothing, for instance.
However, there's no guarantee that's solely a PSU issue - nor that if the PSU died, it wasn't down to a spike that also took out the motherboard/CPU/RAM.
I don't have a spare PC around, or a laptop. So if the PSU worked, I was fine - if the PSU didn't, then I was probably going to have to replace the motherboard, then the RAM/CPU, and so forth - all depending on what beeps (or lack thereof) I got from the motherboard after replacing the PSU.
Replacing the motherboard was my worst case issue - I didn't feel like watching Windows run through all those tedious Plug And Play hardware installation wizards - so to minimise that I'd want to get the same components if possible. However, despite it being a fairly common Intel board, most of the cheaper stockists were awaiting stock at the time.
Faced with the possibility of a very long wait, I ordered the Netbook at the same time as the PSU - it would at least give me basic internet access within my own home if the situation turned out to be the worst case...
Luckily, replacing the PSU did the job.
However, it's a budget PSU, so I needed to put it under full load to make sure it wasn't a duff unit. This sadly meant many hours of Team Fortress 2, which is a game I'm not mentioning on this blog in deference to a very nice man who reads this blog and once struggled with an addiction to Team Fortress Classic...
(I'm fairly sure that the new PSU is fine, given the number of hours it's had to run now... But one more test can't hurt!