[ComposiMo]

Well, apparently my computer justcouldn't take it anymore, and decided to commit suicide or something.

So yesterday, we were having an above-average thunderstorm, and this morning, i arrive at the shop to see my computer off... odd. So i figure we just had a power outage, and so i start it back up, and everything seems to be running fine. After about 3 hours, it was still ok, but there was a weird burning smell coming from something, and so i prompty ignored it, and went to lunch.

When i get back from lunch, my comptuer is off, but no one elses is, and so i went to go try to start it up, and nothing.... nada... zip.

My power supply was red hot. oh Goody!

So i went to one of the other computers in the shop, stole a power supply, and installed it... well, now it boots up, but doesn't get past the "windows boot" screen... it flashes a blue screen for about a milisecond, followed by a black screen with letters, and then shuts off. They do it too fast for me to see what they want to tell me... perfect.

My day sucks at this point. So, now i don't know whats wrong with it, and since i'm not a computer guy, i have a habit of throwing parts at the problem, and seeing what goes away and what new problems i can encourage.

So i ordered a new computer case with water cooling, new really cool looking 670watt power supply, new AMD something or other processor, motherboard zippity-doo-da thing (supposed to be REALLY good though), 400gig HD, 2Gigs of Ram, and a new mouse.... and then i'm going to add my DVD burner, and my video cars for my monitors to it, and voila! no more problem...... i hope :lol:

I'll be really mad if my mouse is the culprit... damn mice, always messing things up trying to find the question...

...what question, eh?

Exactly...

 

[ComposiMo]

Oh, and now i'm on a cheapo laptop with a hiijacked Linksys card for the woreless router in my house, and the card and computer apparently doesn't have enough range to reach my room... i have to be out in the kitchen to go online.... grrr.

And i'll have to use this stupid thing for the rest of the week while i wait for my parts.

An improbability factor of 24656782354:1.. :sigh:

 

[invalidcomfort]

haha, poor john, his tinsy little compooter isn't working wright.

E gads dude, you just dropped like 600$ on some fucking kickass components.

YEEE HAW!

 

[Jonny_Black]

haha...well at least you know where to shop....got to love newegg.

I should have told ya about getting a better PS after you got that kick ass video card. hmf ohwell. my bad.

 

[toxiclows]

Yeah Newegg rocks... i buy 99 percent of all my shops parts from them and they have not let me down yet in 6 years..

Chris

 

[djhankb]

John u should get a MAC ;-)

 

[Angry]

Mac went p4 based, probably not worth it any more LOL...
j/p Its the OS that makes a sys...

I have to have 2 450w PSUs to run my sys, but thats because thier both elcheapos and my 6800 sucks the 12v rail dry for some reason.

 

[ComposiMo]

Jonathan: Actually, i dropped nearly $1700 on new gizmos... The motherboard is nearly $300, and the processor was about $600... i'm done buying computer stuff for at least another two years i hope.

Jonny_Black: Well darnit! You shoulda said something! haha! j/k... the new powersupply is really cool though. Instead of having a set number of cables come out of it, the cables plug into the PS, so if you aren't running power to something, you don't have to have the cable in there cluttering up anything.... and it looks cool, which is of course the most important criteria for choosing a computer accessory :lol: As long as the vod card is ok, i'll be ok... gotta have the dual monitors

Toxic: Yea, Jon showed me the light on NewEgg... 5 monitors, two computers, 3 video cards, 2 laser optical mice, and a like 800 gig or something external drive later, and i'm still more than happy to buy from them I almost bought my TV from them recently, but i found a better and more convenient deal locally.

Henry: Actually, i almost did... but maybe in the next generation. As long as it'll run my windows programs, i'll be cool with it, but its ok, I like windows mecause thats what i know at the moment. I don't want to have to go out and leanr a bunch of new things right now.

Angry: The power supply i got is SUPPOSED to be able to power 2 of those 6800 vid cards, with room left to spare to power the processor and cooling system, and the rest of the box with no bogging... dunno how realistic that is, but i don't have a vid card nearly like that, mine is just a basic nvidia dual-monitor setup (afaik anyway... Jonny_B probably knows more about my vid card than i do... haha!)

I'll take some pics of it and post them if/when i can get the computer back online. The biggest thing that sucks, is i wasn't prepared for the downfall of my computer, and while i have written down passwords and stuff for most of my stuff, i have some recent stuff that i didn't have written down... man, i suck at th3 life.. haha!

Oh well.... it'll be worth it in the end i suppose.

 

[Charles]

Computers rock. Lightening sucks.

Unplug your PC and any other high end electronics during lightning storms.

 

[ComposiMo]

Neat idea, but that means unplugging it every day at around 3:30-4:00pm here in Orlando... lol. In the summer we get these daily storms, and man, they can really get your attention. heh.

What i di, was i bought a couple of UPS Battery Backups with built-in surge protectors,and i'm going to hide that behind yetanother surge protector.... and every accessory or wire going into the computer will be behind a double layer of surge protection... thats the best i can do i guess without unplugging... cause that would just get downright annoying :lol:

 

[Dodo]

You could always put in lighting rods around the building.

 

[rex2nr]

I can see John up on the roof welding those in as the storms arive, lol.

sounds like you're going to have one nice computer there.

 

[Charles]

Surge protectors don't do a lot for lightning near-strikes. A UPS will help. There are UPSs that convert AC to DC then DC back to AC. I forget what they are called, but they do isolate the equipment completely from lightening. We used them in the hospital I managed.

For phone lines (which can also transmit lightning to your equipment) you also need to isolate them with a well grounded network access point.

You can also put the equipment on one circuit and just flip that switch. A hard switch like that will isolate the equipment pretty good.

 

[ComposiMo]

I finally was able to log onto their site and figure out what i ordered... lol!

the key parts:

Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor

Memory - CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel

Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD4000YR 400GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 RAID-specific Hard Drive

Motherboard - ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

I bought a few other things like a new mouse, power supply, etc... I can't wait for it all to get here... this laptop sucks.

The UPS i bought allows the network cable to be plugged into it, so i guess that'll isolate that nicely... we'll see.

 

[Charles]

Which UPS did you buy?

Sounds like a good setup. It wouldn't be a bad idea to put a mirrored drive in that puppy for fault tolerance.

Are you a gamer? If not, you definitely have more HP than you need on that sucka! Nice. Just don't rice it with neon.

 

[jfrolang]

To keep all of your microsoft files useful, you would probably want to run windows. Macs will run Windows now, but if you're gonna do that you may as well stay with PC. The OS is what makes the system, imo.

 

[djhankb]

Well, MSWord Files, JPEGs, MPEGs, etc can all easily be transferred to a Mac. Microsoft provides an office suite for apple, which is 100% compatible with PC office. Outlook email may prove to be difficult to migrate. I don't think there is anything on a mac that can read outlook's proprietary .PST file format.
However there may be a 3rd party utility that will do it.

Anyway, The best part about macs is that there isn't any viruses or spyware written for them, so I don't even run antivirus on mine. And i've been running OSX for like 3 years with NO PROBLEMS!

On occasion you will run into a website with a movie that you can't play, but that's about the most of the incompatibilities I run into.
There aren't a lot of games and stuff for the Mac, but if your not a gamer it's not a big deal.
The software is SO EASY to pick up and start using, it's all very well written and I almost NEVER run into software bugs and glitches. I remember my windows machines used to have to be rebooted all the time to clear up memory issues, etc. I have had virtually none of that with my Macs.
They're a little more epensive to get into compared to a PC, however Apple is currently selling a "Mac Mini" which is about $500-600, I have one of these as well, and it's a great machine.
They have recently switched to using Intel processors, and they will run XP just fine if you want to have that too, for the couple times you may need to swtich over to windows to get something done.
All in all, I would reccomend a mac to anyone. If you're looking for a laptop, the Macbook is pretty well priced and has a good amount of horsepower too.

If you have any more questions, fire away, I'm a Mac network engineer. I really think these are great computers...

-Henry

 

[ComposiMo]

Charles: I got a Belkin F6C1500 1500VA UPS... I have no idea how good or bad it is, but it sounds decent i guess. Yea, i was thinking about doing a RAID/mirror drive, but i didn't feel like spending another $175 or whatever on another drive. I still have my old 80gig that i'm going to use as a in-box backup drive though that i just manually back-up with.

And no, i'm not a gamer... actually, i get bad motion sickness when playing/watching games like Halo, Doom, etc... dunno.. i'll just stick to Gran Turismo... hehe. But what i DO enjoy, is CAD, and graphics programs that do a decent job of bogging things down when you're messing with something intensive.

As for the neon.... well, its a good thing you didn't see my old case This one has lights in it, but it is more of a 'gamer' case, with built in watercooling and stuff:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811107001

 

[Charles]

If you are not computer savvy and used to Windows, then changing to a Mac will require a bit of a learning curve. But it is a great PC. You could also just by the PC and load Ubuntu. Easy Linux install and comes with OpenOffice (for MS Office files), Gimp (for image files), Evolution (for MS Outlook files), And Firfox (for web browsing). It's a great little install for those who don't know much about PCs or Linux.

You can even download and burn (order order) a CD so that you can try out the Ubuntu without loading it on your PC. You just run it off the CD. If you like it, you click a few times and it will be installed on your hard drive.

Then there are other free and robust apps for it:

Antivirus: GriSoft AVG Free
AntiSpyware: ewido free

And lots more.

If you are a gamer (doesn't sound like you are and neither am I), you would want to stick with Windows. My understanding is that the major games out there are not Linux friendly.

May want to give it a try.

 

[ComposiMo]

If all i used the computer for was internet and email, that would probably be a good option (Ubuntu)... but i need windows for all of my other software... SolidWorks, Rhino3D, PhotoShop, Flash (and the rest of the Macromedia suite), PhotoImpact, Illustrator, etc... I'm not too keen about trying to buy all new stuff for Mac... hehe.

What can i say, i'm a lemming...