kingandy: (Frowny)
kingandy ([personal profile] kingandy) wrote2005-03-20 12:02 pm

(no subject)

Right now I'm in Ilkley, at my Mum's house.

A couple of months ago my PC here gave up the ghost for some unknown reason. First I thought the fan had gone, which caused the processor to break, so I bought a new processor and fan. Preliminary testing (plugging the fan in), though, produced the same result as the old fan - no whirry, just a jerk and stop - so I concluded there was a problem with the motherboard.

(Was that the right conclusion? Or would a broken CPU affect the power to the fan? I don't know enough about how the various components interact.)

This has proved annoying, as despite several donations of old, functioning PCs none of them have the right expansion slots on the mainboard. My old PC has three different kinds of expansion slots and all three are used (graphics card in the AGP, sound in the ISA, network cards and a USB card in the PCI). Plus, I've now misplaced the replacement CPU.

It is not really pressing; I don't spend enough time in Ilkley at the moment to really miss a functioning PC here. It was really only for browsing the web without bothering my Mum, after all. But my sensibilities are offended by the amount of tech that's lying in my bedroom, most of which is functioning perfectly for want of a vital component or two. It is an annoyance.

[identity profile] blue-room.livejournal.com 2005-03-20 12:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Mark W: You could always find a place that re-builds PC's for charities and people on low income. I'm pretty sure they'd love to have a bunce of random motherboards and the like.

[identity profile] kardrath.livejournal.com 2005-03-20 01:58 pm (UTC)(link)
You checked the power supply? That's what I'd be expecting with those symptoms. Be careful though, a dodgy PSU could have fried all sorts of other things too.

[identity profile] chrisdavitt.livejournal.com 2005-03-21 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I agree. A PSU problem matches your symptons and more than half of the problems I've ever had with hardware can be traced back to a dodgy power supply.