Well, after all that...

[elfs]

Well, after all that, it was just the cable. I replaced it with a $7 cable from CompUSA and everything came up, nice and neat. No throws, no exceptions. Yay!

The box is still slow as a dog, takes an hour to burn a CD, can't do DVDs, can't do 3D graphics in real time. Ah, well. At least I don't have to buy a new box. I'd much rather save my money for an Archos or an Intuos anyway.

Comments

[fallenpegasus]

I'm glad it was that easy.

[arlon.livejournal.com]

Come on, you've been working with electronics to know that it's always the cheapest component to die first when it's not an obvious fix.

I've had cables go bad on me before. I've never been able to figure out how a cable could go bad, but they do.

*HUGS*

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it was just the cable, more often than not its something I least expect that fails. ;)
I think Matt and I have tracked down the fact that I can't install Win2K or XP on my comp to my CD Rom (!?!). I did a bare bones (of hardware included) install when I wiped and reinstalled everything a few weeks ago and could only install Win98 and Linux even though I tried both Win2K and XP (I only really care about those at this point because I need either of those to termserv into work). But my cables have all been replaced recently and everything besides the actual case and the CD Rom is only approx 2-3 years old. My CD Rom however is at least 8 if not 9 years old, its an old 16 X generic CD Rom. I've had occasional problems with it reading CDs so I figure its starting to go. Its either that or my case/powersupply, which I should prolly replace also, except that its painted and I don't want to get rid of it (sigh).

I totally know what you mean about wanting all new hardware though. I'm constantly replacing bits and peices that may or may not be actually compatible with each other. Its frustrating to be never be up with even the median edge, and just once I would like to have a computer that someone else certified was perfectly put together (without my subsequent scraped knuckles and beating my head against the wall). Matt feels the same way. But since the cost is so much more, its not possible for us yet either. =/ But I hope you can get your dream comp sooner than later. ^____^

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. It's nice not to have lost all of my, um, stuff.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, in my case they do undergo some mechanical stress. The $20 CD-Rom burner is one of those SCSI-over-IDE bizarrities that, if run in pure IDE mode (which you can if you're using it only for reading) will get locked into a mode that generates huge numbers of interrupts and slows the box down to a crawl, so I swap it out when I'm not burning for a nice RO 48X drive.

Oddly, though, it was the other set of cables that failed.