Posts Tagged ‘yoshi the computer monster’

No, seriously, WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

Um… hi. What started with taking Dinah into the shop to have her “lol red snow” display looked at turned into mother suddenly being stricken by “new machine fever” and next thing I know, we’re hopping freeways to get to Fry’s in Industry.

Yes, she has two machines, one of which she hardly touches because it is not within immediate earshot of puppies. Yes, she COULD just move that less-used machine over into the den, so she can bum around on the internets near said puppies. But… nope, she wanted a new one, with a quad-core processor (AMD thankfully, because I hate installing Intel, their CPU fans irritate the crap out of me) and a Blu-Ray burner. (Never mind that blank media for that is still expensive as hell right now. MUST HAVE ANYWAY.)

All new parts, and pretty powerful ones too, so this was not going to be a cheap machine… but mother’d just gotten her TSP payout from the Post Office and gosh darnit, she was gonna splurge on parts even if the world ended tomorrow. Yay. No, seriously, she was all “This is probably the last machine I’ll ever own, so I want a really good one!” like she’s gonna die in a month or something. Oi… I TOTALLY reserve the right to laugh at mother if she comes to me in, what, 4 years and tells me she wants to rebuild one of her other machines with the latest and greatest. Ya rly.

Also WTF mother why did you have to pick the $400 blu-Ray drive when you could have gotten an equivalent drive for $250? (One of them is LG, the other is Sony. Guess which one is the Sony drive. >_>) I know there is brand loyalty, but geeze…

Oh, the best part is when we hit the checkout. Apparently, mother forgot that her debit card has a spending cap of $1000, even if used as a credit card emulator. To save her the embarassment of having to put back half the parts so we can come back tomorrow for the rest I ended up eating half of the total cost (I probably shouldn’t have, she really needs to stop jumping on shinies without THINKING, but at this point I was really tired and just wanted this done, not to mention she immediately put back that $1000 and as soon as the transfer console resets I’ll get the $800 I’m owed for 4 months worth of back-contributions for pet insurance). If this were an episode of Countdown this would instantly get mother tapped for WORST PERSON IN THE WOOOOOORLD.

*ahem*

So, um… now I am home, and as soon as mother finishes feeding Evil Stepfather and the Pups of the Apocalypse and clears a spot, I’ll be assembling this monster. I’ll post specs if anyone cares, but it’s basically the same mobo as Synergy 2 with Blastoise’s video card (and, you know, a Blu-Ray drive).

Sometimes I wonder if my mother is, you know, the puppies-and-PCs version of the octuplets’ mother. As in, replace compulsion to have more babies with compulsion to buy more puppies/build new machines for the sake of doing those things. Hm…

Still an Act of Aeth until further notice

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

This damned machine whose POST errors (as in, I get no POST at all) defy logic…

I’ve been poking around about it, trying to avoid having to RMA the motherboard if I can help it. If you wish to follow along, it’s an XFX nForce 750a.

It’s… possible that there’s a jumper I overlooked. I won’t know until I get the machine “smuggled” back here (as in, transferred while mother is away at a bulldog meetup or something), but still… I’m going to look quite silly if I yank the jumper and I get a freaking POST, but at the same time it’s obviously a good thing since it means I can finally resurrect the machine and pocket the leftovers. :P

Because, you know, I would really hate to have a “1” in the column of “machines incapable of resurrection” tally. I’ve had a good record thus far in terms of building boxes that don’t die (permanently) and I’d hate to ruin it.

Still, if I’m being foiled by a damned jumper… well, to say the least, XFX is getting beeped on the nose for not clearly marking in their manual “HAY YOU MUST TAKE OFF THIS JUMPER RIGHT HERE OR ELSE NO POST FOR YOU.” Seriously. I know the necessity of being observant, but that’s just absurd. That kind of jumper (which I’m presuming is either a BIOS/CMOS reset or something along those lines) is, like, the equivalent of the “REMOVE BEFORE USING” plastic wrapping that you see on things like printer cartriges, and should clearly be marked as such rather than leave saps like me to bang my head against the desk trying to figure out why I can’t squeeze a POST out of an otherwise-functional box. RAWR.

Anywho…

I really need a restock on my mini-fridge, except lawl transportation issues. Maybe I can try to divert to the market tomorrow after volunteer service. Aw, who am I kidding… can’t leave the Pups of the Apocalypse alone (not even with Evil Stepfather) for too long or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. Or so mother claims.

Being a third-rate resident in my own house sucks.

There is no… logic.

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Bren’s box = ACT OF AETH.

Completely stumped.

I have basically rebuilt this machine and I cannot get a bloody POST. Everything is seated and plugged in properly. WHAT GIVES?

And, like, these are perfectly good parts… of course, TigerDirect is all “NO RMA FOR YOU” but I would have pocketed the leftovers anyhow. And cost be damned, this is, like, about pride of workmanship at this point.

So, yes. Act of Aeth.

Um… for the time being, I’ma see about getting an HDD enclosure so I can at least extract the files off the hard drive… and somehow smuggle the guts of Synergy and her failed-resurrection over to my house (probably get them transported while mother’s away at a bulldog meetup) so I can hack away at this without having to cook up excuses to get summoned over here.

Really bizarre stuff, this is. WTF.

A Yoshi is stumped.

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Fellow system builders! I require your input.

Synergy (Bren’s machine) refuses to POST. Clearly she’s getting power, since lights and fans are turning on. Apparently over the past several months there were sessions where she wouldn’t POST, but hitting the reset button would make her cooperate… a rarity at first but over time became more frequent. I just heard about THAT today.

At my expense*, I replaced the motherboard (and with it, CPU and RAM), upgraded the power supply (original was a 430W, new one is 550W), switched the RAM slots, switched video cards (both the original and mine are 7600GTs), tried plugging the monitor into every freaking port, tried different monitors. Bad RAM has been ruled out (Bren’s father has a thing for collecting weird tools, lucky me he had one of those memory testers).

This was starting to get a bit silly so I booted up Dinah to google and such. Poked [info]seraphzero and [info]pigeonguided for second and third opinions. Attempting a different outlet to rule out bad wiring on that particular source = fail, no POST.

It’s, lke… GRR, there should be nothing preventing this freaking box from just POSTing. That’s all I want, just a POST, because if I can get that far, everything after is easy or at the least much more manageable.

Could it be as Pigeon suggested, that this could very well be a case of, well, something gone bad in the case wiring and I need to literally replace the box? (oh lawd, bad pun alert.) I mean, frontside case wiring doesn’t look too stable as is… it could be something got bent or whatnot enough, but… man, I’m going to feel a bit silly if this IS the case. (pun! again!)

Or, mayhaps… this is all really an Act of Aeth?

* Yeah, I shelled out for the parts. Service plan? I’m the freaking system builder, I AM the service plan. And, for the billionth time, I’d much rather spend my monies on making sure House Cantlay has usable computers and such, than to support mother’s absurd puppy habit, because at least House Cantlay’s residents aren’t going to be a bunch of drama queens if something goes bad, unlike mother who would (and HAS) declare me WORST PERSON IN THE WOOOOOOORLD over something like bad RAM. Seriousy. If I did nothing to help while their central desktop machine was down, I think my conscience would try to butcher me in my sleep or something. Besides, I get to pocket all the extra salvageable parts AND I get free food and the illusion that I have semi-normal parents for a few hours. So, it’s worth it. >_>;

A Yoshi is tired and maybe a little annoyed. Perhaps I shall bum around with Chrono Trigger DS until I fall asleep or something.

caaaaard get

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Holy crap, guys.

9800 GTX+?
MONEY WELL SPENT.

*cookies for Pigeon, Xenos and Bobby*