The search started with the strange smell of burning plastic as we sat on the sofa. It took a few minutes to pinpoint the source as not being in the current room and not from the cellar, which only left upstairs. I ran my hand to the back of the tower case and felt the fan of the power supply still going strong, but when I opened up the side of the case it was obvious where the problem was.
The heat sink and fan had become unlatched and instead of sticking like peanut to butter, it was dangling by the power cables. Happily it continued to spin, blissfully unaware that it was just moving around semi-toxic fumes at this point.
The processor has nice burn-out brown stains on both sides and there’s a lovely matching one on in the middle of the socket. The colour of burnt toast. The cheapo plastic socket has a broken retaining clip so it’ll take more than a new processor to sort this out. But I can’t complain, the computer had lasted a good 9 years of solid use. Repairing/rebuilding is a pointless option so I’m considering the future.
The days of tinkering with PC hardware has passed for me. Vista doesn’t interest me and I don’t have time for Linux. I do enough work at work and I just want to relax and enjoy at home, working on whatever projects I want to work on, not having to read through mountains of FAQs before I can get to the FAQs that actually relate to what I’m trying to do. So I’m considering a Mac, accepting that the main grudge I have against them are the users and their rabid behaviour.
But that doesn’t mean I’m still not a geek at heart. The new solution I see involves a second laptop and an NAS unit, something for file sharing and backups. Any insight into similar setups and experiences are appreciated.
You could always get a new XP computer, you know…
Uh oh… looks like a co-blogger. Do you do anime?
Steven, Dave is an old friend of mine from childhood. He’s probably not gonna do much anime blogging but will round out the Geek factor here a bit 🙂
Steven, I haven’t watched decent anime in a while, but mostly that’s been due to lack of time. If I remember history, I’m the one who got Aziz hooked onto Robotech. And hopefully he should still have the Robotech Art 1 book I gave him. In a few days I hope to have material for a more anime post.
FhnuZoag, I still have my old XP license from the recently deceased desktop and will no doubt use it again. But I’ve got XP on the existing computer and don’t intend to do anything differently with that. I see this as a fortunate tragedy, an opportunity for something new and different.