Aug 20 2006

36,346 yen later… (major tin foil hat warning)

Published by Rich Pav at 3:45 pm under General

I have a new motherboard, CPU and C: drive. The closest store that does repairs wanted to charge 8000 yen and spend a week to figure out what broke. It goes without saying, but since my current mobo and CPU weren't bought within the two weeks, they're both obsolete. So not matter what part is fried, I'm going to have to replace the whole shebang.

So I saved myself 8000 yen and spent a little extra to buy a motherboard that can take a Celeron D today and a Core Duo later. I'm spending this beautiful summer Sunday to reinstall Windows and all my software.

Can I end with a little bit of geek bitching? This newfangled mobo only has one IDE bus. Like we're all supposed to throw away all our IDE drives and replace them with SATA. And no onboard firewire either. Both problems can be resolved by buying PCI boards, but most new mobos only have 3 PCI slots. Is it just me or were older motherboards more user friendly?

In the end, none of the cheap and easy solutions worked. I tried:

  • clearing the CMOS
  • replacing the mobo's battery
  • detaching everything not needed to boot into bios

I wish I knew if the old mobo is OK. Someday I'd like to put together a PVR for the living room.


No tag for this post.

Supposedly similar posts:

  • None Found

13 Responses to “36,346 yen later… (major tin foil hat warning)”

  1. # daz UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Internet Explorer 7.0 on 20 Aug 2006 at 5:22 pm

    Ouch, when stuff breaks on pc's it can take most of the main componants out at once. 1 ide is crazy, although I have 2 sata drives.
    Have you lost all your data on the hd that broke?


  2. # Rich Pav JAPAN Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 21 Aug 2006 at 12:21 am

    All my ATA drives are OK. And I figured out what to do with them–find cheap external USB enclosures and use them for backup.


  3. # Maciej UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 21 Aug 2006 at 12:16 pm

    Rich - sometimes you scare me.


  4. # Rich Pav JAPAN Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 21 Aug 2006 at 12:18 pm

    Boo!


  5. # Mark UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 21 Aug 2006 at 12:56 pm

    My celeron board had 4 IDE channels (8 drives). Those were the days!


  6. # Rich Pav JAPAN Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 21 Aug 2006 at 12:59 pm

    I guess the new measure of studliness is the number of USB ports. I have 11 now–one for each inch of manhood.


  7. # Kyle Eppard UNITED STATES Mac OS X Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 21 Aug 2006 at 2:19 pm

    You're sick. lol That's a lot of usb ports. I was overwhelmed when I saw that I had 8 on my new pc…


  8. # Ben UNITED KINGDOM Mac OS X Safari 419.3 on 22 Aug 2006 at 5:01 pm

    Damn, now I've spat hot tea all over my keyboard.
    Curse my childish sense of humour.


  9. # Long Fong UNITED STATES Windows Server 2003 Internet Explorer 6.0 on 22 Aug 2006 at 9:21 pm

    So you are going to have that beach video up soon ne?


  10. # Rich Pav JAPAN Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 23 Aug 2006 at 10:06 am

    I hope I'll have time to work on it this weekend.


  11. # sakuradamon UNITED STATES Mac OS X Safari 419.3 on 23 Aug 2006 at 11:09 am

    still waiting for the BRUTAL LUNCH Vid…


  12. # Rich Pav JAPAN Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on 23 Aug 2006 at 11:19 am

    I should shit that one out. I keep trying to get the editing right but I'm never happy with it and give up.


  13. # mike UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 on 23 Aug 2006 at 12:00 pm

    take your time with it, don't feel obligated. its cool enough that you are puting something out every now and then!