22nd June 2003, 12:16 AM
Anyway, I've done a bunch of checks today when I had the time. The good news is that both of my hard drives seem to work fine (though my main drive had to be set to "slave" in order to be read at all on this machine, but I'll attribute that to dumb luck, plus it's nothing that isn't fixable with a simple backup of all the files I want to keep (like my precious game save files, which I had thought lost, oh horrors) and a reformatting of the disk and setup (though that is a day's work, well, 30 minutes of actual work spread across a day's time of waiting :D).
Also, testing the video card in another machine, works fine, so that's not what went horribly wrong. There are only three things left that could cause an error like what I have, where nothing happens at all on bootup. It's either the motheboard (I'm hoping this most of all, it's one of the cheaper things I can get replaced), the processor (though on examination, it seems to be in working order), or the RAM (though I'm not sure that could cause this kind of error, and it seems in good condition too). If it's not that, then I accidently unplugged some stupid wire and missed it, or, and this is very likely, I'm just too stupid to figure out what went wrong.
In any case, tomorrow, in order to test the rest of this stuff, I need access to a P4 board to test the chip. For that, I think I'll go to the place I bought this stuff from (possibly a good idea from the start, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself, which I couldn't, but at least I didn't make the problem WORSE, I've learned enough that I usually can avoid thinking about doing anything that might do THAT). Hopefully the place I bought it from will be willing to test out the rest of the stuff to identify the problem. I'm sure hoping it's a very cheap problem :D. The last option ALWAYS works. I'll call my dad. He seems to be the patron saint of computers, using his mighty sceptre to cast out demons of stupidity, and laying his right hand upon computers to heal them of the damage stupidity has caused them.
Also, testing the video card in another machine, works fine, so that's not what went horribly wrong. There are only three things left that could cause an error like what I have, where nothing happens at all on bootup. It's either the motheboard (I'm hoping this most of all, it's one of the cheaper things I can get replaced), the processor (though on examination, it seems to be in working order), or the RAM (though I'm not sure that could cause this kind of error, and it seems in good condition too). If it's not that, then I accidently unplugged some stupid wire and missed it, or, and this is very likely, I'm just too stupid to figure out what went wrong.
In any case, tomorrow, in order to test the rest of this stuff, I need access to a P4 board to test the chip. For that, I think I'll go to the place I bought this stuff from (possibly a good idea from the start, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself, which I couldn't, but at least I didn't make the problem WORSE, I've learned enough that I usually can avoid thinking about doing anything that might do THAT). Hopefully the place I bought it from will be willing to test out the rest of the stuff to identify the problem. I'm sure hoping it's a very cheap problem :D. The last option ALWAYS works. I'll call my dad. He seems to be the patron saint of computers, using his mighty sceptre to cast out demons of stupidity, and laying his right hand upon computers to heal them of the damage stupidity has caused them.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)