Friday, I finally found a case that I liked for my newish living room PC, the one that uses a 40" LCD TV as a display.
This ought to be easy. I thought an hour, maybe less. No no no.
When I got it home, I discovered that it wasn't an ATX case. No problem, I thought. I'll bend it (and snip it) to my will.
I like to do my surgery in the kitchen. There is a big white counter and I can make a mess if my wife isn't around. But the snipping and drilling part was going to be both messy and dirty, so I took the empty case to the garage, where I have a work bench. I spent the first 30 minutes uncovering the top of the bench and making a little room to work.
My tin snip tools are ancient rusty memories of their former selves. They aren't very sharp. The curly metal pieces they produce are, however, so I spilled a little blood for the cause.
This became a lot more exercise than I had planned on for the day. The trip to the garage became a frequent round trip, carrying the case back to the kitchen to find out what I'd done wrong, marking the case, back to the garage, more snipping, sweating, and blood.
Yet finally I emerged triumphant. I had a case, not very pretty now, but still a case, and it would all fit! I sort of hoisted it in the air, next to my garage bench......
What I had not counted on fell to my feet with a metallic crash. What was that, I thought? Oh, it's my hard drives in their pretty little carrier, the one I had screwed them into but also the one I forgot to screw down to the case.
Two 1TB drives meet concrete from 5 feet. Concrete wins, of course.
At this moment, I realize why I am a software guy, and not a hardware guy, and that it will take more than an hour to work my way back to where I was this morning.
So I put it all together. It was like a funeral. I knew something was dead, and yet I hoped. On bootup, I heard the dreaded click click click and knew that there would probably wouldn't be a body suddenly sitting straight up in the coffin. Neither drive would boot, but, hey, one of them had no OS! Oh there it still hope.
I found the drive that didn't go click click click and tried again to boot. No boot. In fact no display. Oh, I guess the video card needs power. Oh sure, that's it. Now I got a display but still no boot.
Here's the amazing part. I found my Windows disc and put it the drive. I put my hand over my eyes when I did it, but, miraculously, Windows found a drive and offered to install. I accepted.
Tonight, I'm back where I started on Friday morning. Of course the motherboard isn't lying bare at the bottom of the cabinet that houses the components. I have a PC again, and I have TV. Life is good.
A hard lesson.
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Topic: Concrete (Read 1951 times)