Blog.MrHacks.com

Finally, an article about Technology!

I haven’t been able to talk about technology in so long.

I love my computer. It’s the closes thing I have to having a car at the moment. During the latter part of 2006 and earily part of 2007, I spent a little bit of money each month collecting parts to build my own computer. Sort of like a gear head saves up money to build their own hot rod…or like that Johnny Cash song “One Piece at a Time”. Helping me out with the inital construction of this do-it-yourself project was a copy of Building a PC for Dummies.

Since 2007, I’ve been using this computer. But like any machine, parts eventually breakdown, need to be replaced, upgraded, or repaired.

So at the beginning of this year, I decided to make a Wish/Todo List of things that ought to be upgraded, fixed, or replaced, mostly in the order of the things that needed the most attention. I wasn’t looking to make a street machine out of an economy car (especially since I don’t have the budget to do that), I just had a gut feeling that in order for me to protect my investment, I should do whatever I can to make it last as long as it could. Especially since my computer is the nicest and the most important thing that I own.

The hardest part about maintaining my computer is finding a computer store. There is no CompUSA or Circuit City anymore. The lack of small computer shops also doesn’t help, especially with Big Box Stores like Best Buy dominating the market.

It also doesn’t help that Google search indicates there are about 64 nail salons within a five mile radius of the nearest intersection near my home and only about 7 places to get your computer repaired, of which only 3 have a selection of parts that you can browse around and look at. Throughout the St. Louis area, there are probably about 25 places where you can get your computer serviced, most of them Best Buys. The rest of them are for companies that maintain corporate business machines. Of course, where you can find a computer shop of any kind, more than like there are probably about 20 places to get your nails done within a quarter mile of each of those locations. So much for women with ambitions. (Fathers: Get your daughters involved with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math! The world needs more geeky women especially if you have to go across town to get your computer fixed but theirs a nail salon on every street corner.)

Anyway, the first thing I wanted to do was replace the things that were not working anymore. Since Ebay was where I picked up many of the parts, I though I would go there.

The first part to break down was the DVD-RW. Prior to its breakdown, I mainly used that to play CDs and DVDs. Originally it was an internal drive with a custom external case which was removed to be installed internally. There was no SATA port on it, it still used the bulky IDE ribbon. Of course, since I’ve been doing quite a bit of maintenance on my computer the past couple of days, I am seriously considering making a backup of the files on my harddrive which is getting full.

But something must have happened over the past couple of years. As many of my recent eBay purchases have been duds. I’d expect this kind of behavior on Craigslist. Though I picked up a replacement on eBay for my DVD-RW, accessories were not included. Of course, no one bothers to write “Fragile” on the softbag (rather than a flat-rate cardboard box) that items come in. Yeah, I know I’m not buying parts on Amazon, but seriously. Who ever keeps packaging these items has never met my family who for some reason has a tendency to toss unmarked fragile items.

Anyway, I ended out having to pay another $20 at Best Buy for an SATA ribbon so I could connect the device to the motherboard. (Yeah, $20! It’s not even made out of gold. Speaking of which, I need to find that website I heard on the radio that has HDMI cables for cheap since the ones at the shops are intentionally overpriced!)

As much as I am glad to have replaced this part, eventually, I’d like to save up for a Blu-Ray device. But Linux has yet to crack Blu-Ray completely.

Item number two on the honeydo list was a memory upgrade. About the time I had wanted to do this, Circuit City was going out of business of which the local Ciruit City had the memory that I was interested in was also closing up. So by the time I completed this task, I ended out having to buy the new memory for less on CompUSA.com. Still, having one less place to spend my Saturday afternoons completely sucks.

Third item was installed last night. I knew the day would come that the graphics card would need to be replaced. I put it off for as long as I could, especially since the past few months the bills have sucked out any opporitunity to make a computer repair possible.

If the economists are wondering why consumers aren’t at the shops buying things, they apparently haven’t been paying attention to the bill collectors like the folks at AT&T who have been sucking people dry in order to take the government stimulus money that was suppost to be used for going out and spending things. I mean, whose not going to notice a stedily increase on their phone bill by as much as 18 cents in one month on top of the overpriced service they already have? At any rate, the recession has been a major contributor to the posponing of a couple of items on my list.

But as much as I have tried to put off any repairs, eventually there comes a time when the computer itself has had enough. Thus, yesterday the GPU had konked out.

I wasn’t at all surprised. Things were starting to become terrible. Anything using Flash would lock up be it Videos on YouTube, Games on Newground, or music on Blip.fm. Even using small low-memory tasks such as the text editor would not respond to typing words on a keyboard immediate. Eventually, the computer started to restart and the screen would freeze. After about two years of using this component daily, which had a regular temperature of about 70° C (so hot, I took one of the pannels off the case just to have cool air on the outside keep the rest of the computer from being damaged) the device finally died. Ironically, the same day, on of the fans near it had also burt out. But this fan was not as important. It seemed to be better at turning the computer into a dust magnet.

I am no stranger to burnt out graphics cards. Though I’ve never play alot of high graphics games (though I wish I could), a bad graphics card on the second laptop that I owned warented its need to be sent to San Jose for repair. It was the fact that my computer got to go places and I didn’t that was part of the inspiration for me to build my own computer. It has also inspired me to question computer repair in general.

This morning for example, I have discovered that the battery on my motherboard that keep the internal clock running has died. (Damn the luck!)

Why is it that the message that indicates the battery is dead looks like this:
Warning! Now System is in Safe Mode.
Please re-setting CPU Frequency in the CMOS setup
F1 : to continue DEL : Bios Setup

I’ve visited three websites that have confirmed that this warning is a sign that the clock battery is dead, though on one of them, one guy decided to overcomplicate things and blame it on an overclocked graphics card. (Which is unlikely since I’ve only had it for about 24 hours now.)

No one seems to be able to to explain in plain English this concept of overclocking. I have no interest in overclocking. Overclocking can be expensive, dangerous, and cause damage to the rest of your computer. As much as hardcore gamers are interested in overclocking their hardware, everyone else who just want to use their computer and enjoy doing things–including gaming–is not interested in burning computer rubber.

Since my primary interest in a new graphics card was to get things working again, and since serendipitously I had been browsing graphics cards on eBay a few days before this incident, it was my good fortune that I was able to find an ideal graphics card on sale at Best Buy. The best part about it is that the temperature on the new graphics card has not exceeded 47° C.

Crisis averted, so far. I just need to replace the old clock battery and thing will be peachy keen.

There is so much about my computer that I don’t know that is not mentioned in that little booklet on how to hook up the motherboard. There is no troubleshooting section. There is no FAQ. The only anwsers that are available are online…of which if you don’t have a computer available how are you suppost to get those answers.

There needs to be a big book of things about your computer and the mainstread book industry, the niche book industry, and the guys who run technology websites don’t bother to metion.

Sure their are a dozen books right now that will tell you things like how to get Twitter to work on your iPhone, but for everyone else like myself who could care less and can actually know which part is breaking down and making that burning toast smell inside your computer there is no book. There are message board, but in the rare case that you have a rare problem that you know the cause is that you didn’t overclock anything and that the solution is NEVER let the guys at Geek Squad (more like Theif Squad) look at it and decide to send it to their one-size-fits-all repair center that fixes everything else but that particular problem.

There haven’t been too many books in English or in the United States that tell you these things. You read stories bout how some guy in China killed himself because he lost an Apple iPhone prototype while in Africa they are taking in the electronic waste. It’s as if our only purpose in this part of the cycle is to take consume the items made in China only to “recycle” them into the trash to Africa. Nothing to learn, nothing to save. Just consume it.

One of my intentions for this website, and the revamping of this blog, was to explain technology in plain english. Explain how things work, what those BIOS warnings were talking about without trying to blame the user for something the really never did. I mean, you are a smart person. You found this blog. So you must be doing something right. Why not tell your friends?

I just hope that by writing more about technology it will lead to bigger things, like writing books…perhaps the book about computers.

It’s so easy for people to be controlled and to stay in this bubble of not needing to know thing that they should know or knowing just a little bit not to be taken advantaged of.

There should be more books on how things actually work inside your computer. It shouldn’t have to take a college education to learn what things are and how to use them.

When things go bad, do what is right!

Tags: at&t, Best Buy, blu-ray, Circuit City, CompUSA, ebay