Do not buy anything you find in the return pile at Micro Center

[pseydtonne]

Just don't. I don't care how pretty it is. They put things in fresh shrink wrap to confuse you.

I was at MC looking for a simple 300-watt power supply to replace Maggie's. Within five minutes, I'd selected one and helped an English dude find one. (Didn't anyone tell him about the 115v/230v switch?) Then I gathered some other parts (thermal grease, thumbscrews, more thumbscrews, a nicer-looking CPU cooler) and headed to the RAM sector. I could only find 128-meg sticks with CL2 or 256-meg sticks with CL3 in the 100MHz SD variety. When I saw a baggie labeled "Clearance Item 128MB CL3 PC100" for $18.96, I jumped.

Of course it didn't work. "Operational and complete" is utter bull. This is the first time I'd seen RAM fail the boot memory test.

Everything else worked fine. The power supply is not only significantly quieter, but so is the new CPU cooler on Maggie's P3. The drop in volume is probably more than 5dB, but I have no metering equipment to prove anything. Now Maggie's computer rocks: P3 866MHz 133-MHz bus, 384 MB RAM (she had 128 when I first got my hands on the machine in July), and a stylin' cylindrical CPU cooler. Now all it needs are better intake filters, and maybe pop-up pistons.

MC also had copies of Douglas Adams' CD-ROM game Starship Titanic for eight bucks, strategy book included. I had heard about this game back when it came out, before I had a machine I could play it on. The premise is that this was a luxury spaceship that disappears on its maiden voyage, then it sucks you into it after it crashes into your house. Your goal? Move from a steerage-class ticket to first, of course. Oh, and other stuff will happen I'm told. Much of the game involves trying to communicate with sentient robots.

I had no idea the effect a new power supply would have. I'll have to get a fresh one when I buy the motherboard and sundries for my next machine.

Anyone else have a geek-success weekend? I read that ectophylla rescued a tower fan from utter doom, so kudos go there.

MC now sells red and blue thumbscrews for tower cases, but they were out of black ones. Will I ever make this box a deadlier goth?

I just noticed that Maggie has already posted about the computer upgrades. Ah well...

-the system is not down nor is it of a down and put those chop sticks down, Dante

Comments

Terry Jones is always a parrot

[captain-flannel.livejournal.com]

Ellen got me a Video on Terry Gilliam. It talks about that game and they Interviewed Terry Jones, and he said "And I said to Douglas 'I am not really sure I can play a parrot.' and he replied 'Terry, you have always played parrots.' and you know, he is right!"