As much as I like tinkering with them, I am glad I didn’t choose to go into the computer industry professionally. They can only hold my attention so long. This is especially true since I don’t play games. I say this looking at a shelf with about 80 Game CD’s on it. Only ten of which have we ever gone through completely. Usually I bought them for the eye-candy. “ooh, pretty!” A few of them used to get played on a regular basis, Warcraft 2 & 3, Age of Empires II. Heck, when the nephews lived in Anchorage there were about 20 of them that got played all the time in multiplayer mode. I don’t think but a few of them were played any other way. I think working on the house may have something to do with it too. Anyhow, I have not had any reason to go much past 1.8Ghz. HA You can’t revoke my geek card, it got taken away when they found out I hadn’t read all the Tolkien Novels. :-P Thus begins my most recent bitch n moan session.
It’s the damn HTPC I’m building. I had a 1.4Ghz Processor lying around, acquired a motherboard for it. All I had to do was repair the capacitors on it and I was in business.
The PSU Died on me. I had to RMA it. In 10 years of buying a lot of computer crap it’s the first thing I’ve ever had to RMA. I can’t say that I like it. So while the PSU is in the Antec Hospital, I’m using a spare. Strike one.
The capacitor repair goes funky. I grabbed the wrong caps. Unmount the whole computer, unwrap all the wiring take board back down to garage and re-solder correct caps. (I’m still not sure how I did that) Bring back up and test board before installing everything ball one?
Tests OK. Almost. Temp seem way too high. 24deg Celsius too high. Turn it off. Take off Heatsink. I’ll be damned. I’ve mounted that processor I don’t know how many times. The vulgarity of that statement crossed my mind too. So now that I’m trying to watch my spending, it decides to crack. Well fine Fa Q! strike two.
Try to find a compatible Socket A processor. Look on Manufacturers website info for the latest BIOS info. Hey, it takes up to a 2ghz. Cool. Ebay for $25 (HOORAY!) and a couple of days later…it won’t work. Look in text file of BIOS file. Revision 3 motherboards only. Ball two.
Now I’ve got a 2Ghz processor lying around. Hopefully all will go well from this point forward. I have a 1.2 GHZ processor coming. I know it’s compatible. So long as it works.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a board to go with the 2Ghz. Melissa’s computer is giving fits. Just need ram too. It would be nice to see the eye candy in Age of Empires 3,