Roxanne and the Red Lights. in Whey and Sonic Screwdrivers.

Actually, it was Kelly Quark that had the right lights, but I couldn’t resist the title. I spied a DRAM led flashing red once, but more importantly there were two red LEDs on her video card that were solid red. Which, of course, I didn’t notice until I tried to boot her last night and there was no feed to my monitor. I heard the typical Welcome to Windows boot sound through my speakers, so I knew the system was otherwise running okay.

Now, Kelly is almost six years old, but she really doesn’t need an overhaul. Her AMD quad-core is humming along nicely, and I was neurotic and maxed out the board with 16 gigs of RAM. Overkill? Oh yeah, overkill. If I were to replace the motherboard/CPU, I’d probably end up keeping the same RAM. RAM speeds just don’t matter that much. If anything, I’d start replacing the hard drives. I’ve had hard drive crashes in the past, and believe me, it’s the one component you just don’t want to die. I actually have two solid state drives, and one “traditional” hard drive. One of the SSD’s is obviously the boot drive; I was neurotic and set the paging file to the second one. You want that fast read/write time for your paging file. The third drive still has half a terrabyte free. I remember a time when memory was at a premium…

Point is, I’m not rebuilding Kelly over a busted video card. Since I’m a packrat, I was hoping my previous rig, Roxanne Covalent, still had her video card in her. She’s had her power supply scavenged, but she’s otherwise still operational. Athlon 64 processor and 3.5 gigs of RAM are fast enough for a Windows XP rig. I’d just need to toss in a PSU and a video card, and she’d be good to go, even if she’s eleven years old.

I was going to dramatically be all AND YES, ROXANNE STILL HAD HER VIDEO CARD, but well, she did. Still, I did the classic take-it-out-and-put-it-back-in with the Kelly’s video card. Aaaaand did some way overdue dusting. Kids, if you don’t have a clear side to your rig like I do, you can’t see all the massive dust build-up. Upon reinstallation, Kelly’s video card was still a dud.

For the nerds, Kelly had now-dated Radeon 4870. Ran any game I play on high settings, but I don’t play bleeding edge games. Roxanne’s end-of-life card was a GeForce 9400 GT (an upgrade from a GeForce 6600). Roxanne’s card is a significant downgrade from Kelly’s, but I don’t really game much anymore. So, whatever, I’ll ride it for a while. Since naming and number schemes seem to mean jack shit, this is what I used as a reference: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html It’s like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”, all the numbers are made-up, and the points don’t matter. Seriously. I miss when we could rate CPU’s by raw megahertz and stuff.

Obviously the old card works. Huh. I wanted to be all romantic like “Roxanne’s last gift to me” or something, but I didn’t set it up right. ROXANNE WAS MY FIRST BUILD AND SHE’LL ALWAYS BE SPECIAL TO ME. So there. : P

As an aside, yes, there’s a pattern to my naming scheme. My first computer was Lisa Electron. Then Roxanne Covalent. Then Kelly Quark. Whatever my next build is, I’ll have to be something more scientifically specific than a quark. If this makes no sense, you fell asleep in science class. Frankly, Kelly has an amazing case and I see no reason to completely start over. Solid, lots of fans, lots of thumbscrews, lots of room for expansion. When I replace the motherboard, I may just call her Kelly Quark 2.0. Or Kelly Quark-A, a la Enterprise A. I’d swear I replaced her power supply in her first year (never skimp on a PSU, buy something like a thermaltake), so she’s already Kelly Quark 1.1. Does this make her Kelly Quark 1.15? Or does that downgrade her to 1.05?

Okay, now I’m babbling. I’m just glad I can crack open my desktop and fix my own problems. Shit man, I once fixed Candi’s laptop. It “died”, and I was all “Hey, lemme try replacing the hard drive.” Did it work? OH YEAH. People get too impatient with technology. It’s generally only one part that’s broken, not the whole thing. That’s how Apple is ripping everyone off by convincing them their products can’t be fixed. Okay, now I’m REALLY babbling.

Last updated July 12, 2016