Ought-8

New year, new blog entry, new... something. Re-new-all? Something like that. I haven't really been effective at using this space much in the past few months. There are a couple of reasons really - mainly I haven't really been enthusiastic about trying to use my computer. That and other toys have shown up at home (a DS Lite, the Wii from Santa) and the computer has been getting short shrift.

Soon should change. The biggest issue with my computer has been an electrical instability problem that really came to the fore after my original video card gave up on me. That card, a BFG6800GT-OC was an excellent card when I bought it. Plus it came with a lifetime warranty. So mid-2007, it's RAM died and it was replaced. The replacement wouldn't boot into WinXP properly, so I got a 7600GS to replace it. It worked well but the computer would suddenly shutdown in the middle of games. That is the electrical problem - when the CPU/GPU/Fans/HD draw a certain level of power, the motherboard can't take it and dies. I suspect that this was a manufacturing defect, given the quality of the parts and power supplies I used. I had problems from the first day setting up the machine, but the problems are really noticeable now. So I've ordered a new replacement AMD Socket 939 motherboard. Turns out there are very few choices of new 939 motherboards, with an AGP slot, left. This is an MSI with a VIA chipset. I'm hoping that the performance is similar but more stable.

The other thing I did to improve computer usage was to buy a nice LCD monitor during the "boxing week" period. Got a nice (21") but not cutting Samsung SyncMaster216BW. Spent less than half of the old 17" CRT it replaces, but certainly looks better. This thing looks much better than what I had. Gaming - I didn't notice the difference. Except it is brighter and sometimes the colours don't appear to converge properly in CS:S, but that's okay.

So hopefully the posts will be more frequent. It is a good thing to write a little every day. It would be good if that writing had a specific purpose or some other redeeming (monetary) quality to it, but one can't have everything.