WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

I finally got my PC going but it was a hard slog and expensive!!

I looked on the web at UMart, Gamedude and The Disc Shop. It looked as if Gamedude had the biggest range and was more likely to have something suitable for me.

I needed a motherboard supporting: AMD64 Socket 754 CPUs, a PCI Express graphics card and preferably using nForce 4. Gamedude was the only one with boards like that.

I drove the car up to Springwood only to discover Gamedude is closed until this monday. I must have missed that on the website. I went next door to The Disc Shop but they didn’t have anything at all. I rang Rebecca and she gave me the address for UMart in 8 Mile Plains nearby. I drove up there and had a look around the shop and asked them, but they didn’t have anything either! They said they could order it in if I wanted. That’d take too long and it’s far from where I live anyway.

I drove back home and decided at the last minute to check out The Disc Shop up the road from where I live. They had an Asus K8N4-E motherboard which fitted all my requirements. Amazing! Even the guys in the shop were surprised that the Springwood shop didn’t have anything but they did. I grabbed that and a new Power Supply which has 24 pins on the connector.. just to be safe. Rebecca also wanted one of their Snoopy webcams. They are $29 and it’s a plush Snoopy doll with a webcam in his black nose. So cute! I grabbed that as well. $200 all up for that trip.

I grabbed some lunch and headed home to put it all together. After lunch I put the new motherboard and Power Supply into my case and replaced all the other components. I booted up the PC but…. nothing. No POST beeps. No display. Nothing. Nada. El Zilcho, etc. … CRAP!

I took my whole PC into the shop to show the guys and they tried replacing each part (Graphics card, memory, CPU) until they got a POST display. The CPU. They put in an AMD64 Athlon 3000+ CPU and it worked! Gah! I went up to the front counter to get a new AMD64 Sempron 2600+ CPU to replace mine which was the same. There’s another $105. Sigh.

I took the CPU home and put it in my PC and booted up. Nothing. Nil. etc. You get the idea. CRAPOLA! I’m going crazy. I took the PC back again and got the guy there to boot it up. He got no display either and put in another 2600+ and got nothing and that was a brand new one out of the box too! We agreed you just couldn’t get two brand new CPUs that didn’t work. So what? He Tried a few spare Semprons and it finally showed a display and POST when he put in a 3100+. Hmm. He put in the 3000+ instead and that worked too. He checked the AMD website and it says the motherboard works with Semprons as well as Athlons.  Obviously it doesn’t. Well it works with a Sempron 3100+ but no slower than that. So I was left with the only option. Upgrade the CPU to a more expensive one. He took back the 2600+ and I decided to go with the Athlon 3000+. At least it’s not a cut-down CPU like the Semprons and I know it works. This time I got him to put it in and boot it up to test to be sure. It worked. Funnily enough when I first bought the new Sempron 2600+ I thought "Maybe I should get them to put it in to try… nah! It will work!". It didn’t. They even suggested I buy an Athlon 3000+ since they were coming down in price, but I didn’t want to spend the extra moolah. Looks like I should have and saved myself so many trips!

I drove home and plugged the PC in with all it’s myriad of wires. Booting. Beep. Looks good. Hang on a sec! It says it only has half a Gig of RAM in it!! Oh noes! When they tested the RAM they only put one of my sticks back in the box. A quick phone call confirmed it and I went back yet again to the shop.. grabbed the RAM stick and headed home again. I told them this time they were lucky it was only 20 minutes until closing time and I would not be able to return At least they gave me a little discount on the new AMD64 Athlon 3000+.

Okay. Got home yet again, put it all together with the right RAM and it booted nicely. Everything ran fine, but I don’t want to leave drivers for another motherboard in the PC with the new drivers, so I formatted C: drive and reinstalled Windows XP. I’m still busy installing all my applications again.  Sienna had missed me all day. I was going to keep her company but had to spend so much time driving around the damn place, so I spent the evening with her. I made some homemade pizza and we played some games. Now she is asleep on the lounge so I figure I have some time to get my PC going. Lots to do!

Video Talk has never been so much fun!

Features:

• Sonix Series CMOS chip 35k pixel
• Resolution of 640 x 480.
• 5 layer glass lens with manual focus.
• USB interface.
• Hot plug and play.
• Video frequency format - 24bit real colour, view angle 45-60 degrees.
• Recording software included.

The last couple of days Sienna has had a fever and been vomitting. Poor girl. It really upset her and made her cry.

Rebecca took her to the doctor and he said it looks like she has a bug which is going around at the moment. He prescribed some Maxolon to stop the vomitting and said to keep up the Panadol and fluids.

I bought some Gatorade home.. berry flavour. She really likes it and it keeps her cool as well as keeping up her electrolytes (whatever that is).

They had a special. $1.98 ea or two for $3.00. So I got two.

She seems a bit better today. Not as hot and a bit more active too. She slept for a lot of yesterday. I guess the emotions were running hot as well with Blake leaving. She can probably pick up on that.

I’m off in a few minutes to Gamedude to see about getting another motherboard and power supply. UMart doesn’t have any in stock. The Disc Shop doesn’t seem to have any either. A pity cos Gamedude is way up in Springwood. Maybe in February I can go for a drive to Logan and return the faulty motherboard for another one.

Today we made our final farewells to Blake. He is flying down to live in Sydney permanently. We wish him all the best and send our love. He will be missed. I know Sienna will miss him too.
Since Rebecca will be moving out soon I won’t ever see Blake again.
Rebecca’s mum and dad picked him up this morning to take him to the airport. I had to work this morning so could not see him off at the airport. With all the stuff going on at work I’m not game to ask for more time off. Besides, I am filling in for another workmate who is on holidays so I am covering 7am to 5pm this week. Long, tiring days.
This Saturday I will have to buy a new motherboard for my pc. I will get a new power supply as well in case mine is not new enough for these new types of motherboard. It’s another $200 or so but I really need the use of my pc at the moment.

I rebooted my pc this morning after being on for a few days. My bluetooth phone couldn’t connect to the pc and a reboot usually fixes that.
It rebooted and the POST check RAM counter stops at 1024K. I tried removing each RAM chip but got the same results. I even tried Rebecca’s RAM chip but it’s still no good. She’s dead, Jim!
Since my pc was the new Internet gateway we’re offline until I can set up Rebecca’s pc with the adsl connection. At least I can post blog entries via email on my mobile.
While I had her pc open I put the old server 40Gb hard drive in Rebecca’s pc so she can copy down some music to it for when she moves into her spinster pad. (is that what you call the opposite of a bachelor’s pad??).
I was about to flash the firmware on my mobile to a newer version to hopefully fix all the issues I am currently having with it. That’s why I needed to reboot in the first place.. to get bluetooth to work and let me synchronise my calendar and contacts on my mobile before updating it.
Sigh.. this month keeps getting shittier and shittier!
Adsl modem .. dead. Mouse .. dead. Pctv card .. dead. My pc (motherboard?) .. dead. My marriage .. dead.
Keep piling the shit on, 2005! I love it more and more each day!
I think I already requested a refund on this year, right???

I asked my teenage son what he wanted for Christmas, he told me he
wanted a savage garden. So I told my husband to stop mowing the lawn.
Suited him fine, gave him more time to watch the cricket.   Although my
ankles got itchy while putting the washing out, at least my son is not
making extra work for us.  Teenagers are wonderful really!

Christmas comes along and he asks me for some spider bait.  A little
weird seeing he requested the wild back yard in the first place, but I
figured the lawn was quite overgrown now and he never did like creepy
crawlies.  He’d much prefer to play computer games and listen to music
with his friends in his room.

I went to the Hawkins Landscape Supplies but all they had was bug spray.
With a bewildered look, he graciously took the bug spray and then told
me to get him a silver chair.

Off to Amart I go.  They only had wooden chairs, so I asked the fella in
the outdoor section if he could help me.  He told be to go to the record
store. Rude young man, I told him I’d take my business to IKEA! 

They were not much help but I found a chrome chair.  That should do, my
son was never that fussy anyway!

He put the chair next to his study desk.  Things were a little cluttered
in there but he always had friends sitting on his bed while they played
computers, so I figured he was just being considerate. He’s a lovely
boy!

He then asked me for a green spoon! I thought he was starting to get a
little demanding about presents this year, but then again, he is a good
kid, his grades have been slipping a bit but he never gets in trouble at
school and his friends are all well behaved - except Daniel!

So I go off to the Bed, Bath and Table and look at the cutlery. There
were some Lime coloured salad servers, so I ask this lovely young girl
if she thought my son would like them.  She laughed out loud and said I
need to look for Grinspoon, go to the record store.

How rude, is this the new modern way kids tell us to ‘get lost’? Doesn’t
matter anyway, I found a nice gift shop with novelty wooden spoons - I
got one with a smiley face on it!

My son thanked me for the spoon, did not seem so impressed with it, then
asked for some M&M’s and made some funny hand gestures. Easy, I got him
a big bag of them next time I was at Coles. He and his mates scoffed
them down with some coke while playing computers in his room. It’s good
to see the chair being used!

I later heard he and his mates (including Dan), talking about having
powder fingers and going on some odyssey! I was shocked.  He showed no
signs of drug abuse. It must be that no good Dan kid.  Oh Danny Boy!

I sought some advice and that night at dinner I spoke to him.

My church group said that it is a normal reaction for teenagers to deny
any involvement with cocaine when confronted and to throw a huge tantrum
when told that Drugs Anonymous can help.

They said his behaviour will change.  And it did. He would not come out
of his room, he stopped talking to me for days. I thought ‘enough is
enough, we need a truce’. Clearly Drugs Anonymous was not going to work
and he seemed so happy recently so I decided to surprise him with a
gift!

I’d recently heard he and all the fellas down in his room talking about
female singers who they’d like the most.  Jennifer Lopez seemed to be
very popular with the boys so I bought my son her latest CD and a poster
of her - a real big one to cover the whole door. Hadn’t I done well?

Well, when I gave it to him he told me I don’t understand him anymore -
she has clothes on and after all the other stuff he asked for why did I
bother with HER music?

I just do not know what to do.  Christmas was meant to be a lovely
bonding time for the family, having picnics and opening gifts given with
love. I haven’t heard him play the CD I bought - maybe he sold it to buy
drugs?

My husband thinks that I’m paranoid and going mad and that our son is
perfectly normal. Its a topsy turvy world, what am I going to do?

No HNY message from me this year. Maybe you’ll get one if things improve in several months.