![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The System is dead. Long live the System.
Apr. 1st, 2005 10:30 pmYep, my poor wee laptop died last night, somewhere in the midst of reassembly. It was on briefly while partially disassembled, so I could check that I had reconnected everything properly, but I turned it off to finish putting the covers back on. That was the last time I saw it operational (sigh...).
Fortunately, a used system I had seen in a pawn shop earlier that day was still there today. The system boasted an AMD Athlon chip, an Epox EP-8KHA motherboard (which was pretty skookum 4 years ago), 256 MbRAM, a sizable monitor, mouse, keyboard, a DVD player, a CDRW, and a registerable copy of Windows XP Home. Not bad for 140£! (Yes, finally I have a keyboard that lets me type the '£' symbol.) A few bits of upgrading later (including 256 more Mb of RAM and a wireless network card), and I have a system that nearly performs as well as the laptop did for less that 220£, or about 500 dollars CDN (Dammit! No dollar sign!).
That does set me back some, but not as bad it could've been. I lucked out; a comparable system in the local used computer store costs around 250£. And operators of the pawn shop seemed like trustworthy people; I even get a 3 month warranty on the system. As far as disasters go, this one was dealt with fairly easily.
UPDATE (April 6, 2005): I had to shell out another £40 for parts. I couldn't find ANY XP compatible drivers for the onboard sound and my MP3 player absolutely despised the on-board USB 1.0 ports (so much so that it would lock up the system), so I got new boards to deal with these issues (quite successfully). I also picked up a mini chip fan to replace the one I *thought* was making all the noise. I missed on that one, though. Next I'll replace the case fan; I'm really, really, hoping it isn't the CPU fan making all the noise (as that will be, given the position of things in the case, a bitch to replace).
Fortunately, a used system I had seen in a pawn shop earlier that day was still there today. The system boasted an AMD Athlon chip, an Epox EP-8KHA motherboard (which was pretty skookum 4 years ago), 256 MbRAM, a sizable monitor, mouse, keyboard, a DVD player, a CDRW, and a registerable copy of Windows XP Home. Not bad for 140£! (Yes, finally I have a keyboard that lets me type the '£' symbol.) A few bits of upgrading later (including 256 more Mb of RAM and a wireless network card), and I have a system that nearly performs as well as the laptop did for less that 220£, or about 500 dollars CDN (Dammit! No dollar sign!).
That does set me back some, but not as bad it could've been. I lucked out; a comparable system in the local used computer store costs around 250£. And operators of the pawn shop seemed like trustworthy people; I even get a 3 month warranty on the system. As far as disasters go, this one was dealt with fairly easily.
UPDATE (April 6, 2005): I had to shell out another £40 for parts. I couldn't find ANY XP compatible drivers for the onboard sound and my MP3 player absolutely despised the on-board USB 1.0 ports (so much so that it would lock up the system), so I got new boards to deal with these issues (quite successfully). I also picked up a mini chip fan to replace the one I *thought* was making all the noise. I missed on that one, though. Next I'll replace the case fan; I'm really, really, hoping it isn't the CPU fan making all the noise (as that will be, given the position of things in the case, a bitch to replace).
