** Good news...bad news....:) and :(

[Engineer]

Well, the two XP1600+'s that I started up last week are now online and just flushed a few WU's ...and should give around 10 per day total!

The bad news...my Celeron 1000 is dying and I'm not sure what to do to fix it...I've swapped the memory 4 times, reseated the CPU...hooked up another power supply...changed all IDE cables...swapped video cards...etc...etc...etc...including reinstalling OS, formatting and reinstalling OS....still, it will randomly hard lock...requiring power off to reboot. My guess...bad MOBO!

Tired of fooling with it for now....took some of that excess Overtime money and ordered another XP1600 system to replace it. I'll work on it later.......maybe I'll donate some of the stuff (Celeron 1000, heatsink, 128M PC133) to a crack rack ...if we start one!

Also, it's not overheating...it runs nice and cool....but it does have something to do with CPU load...it ran flawless for 6 months...then started locking....and got worse...worse...and finally, can't keep it going for more than a few minutes...sigh!

Well, enough for now....wasting CPU cycles! :Q

 

[m2kewl]

Overtime $$ is good

This guy's on a ROLL! :Q

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: m2kewl
Overtime $$ is good

This guy's on a ROLL! :Q

LOL! (My take home pay has been 62% above base pay for the last 4 paychecks - two months )

My wife would like to roll me right out of here! :Q

I was at a friends house yesterday...and saw his empty...WIDE OPEN...COOL basement...and drooled over it...not because it was nice...but because I though about all those PC's filling it up!

Plus...he has geothermal.....his electric bill runs 70 to 80 dollars MAX per month...and he keeps his house 72 degrees year round....I've got to look into that when/if my AC/furnace dies...

Heck, I hate something that don't work...I may play with the celeron shortly!

 

[Freewolf]

Sounds like mb going out

 

[Hellburner]

Do any of the capacitors look swollen?

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Hellburner
Do any of the capacitors look swollen?

HB, don't know yet...it's in one of those little shoebox cases (Shuttle SV24) and you really can't see it unitl I tear into it!

I used another case on its side to run the ATX power cable inside this case for power...it did run much longer before locking up, so I would guess it has something to do with a "POWER ON THE BOARD" problem...

I'll get into it later this week...got too many things to do!

 

[Swanny]

Good luck! Sounds like you're going to need that overtime money to pay to keep your a/c running full time:Q

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Swanny
Good luck! Sounds like you're going to need that overtime money to pay to keep your a/c running full time:Q

Advantage of living in the 5th lowest COST power distribution in the US

(Heck, when it's this hot outside, the darn thing runs all the time anyway....and in the winter, you make up for the summer extra AC by running the furnace less )

 

[mgpaulus]

Engineer,

How does your friend like his Geothermal? I looked into it for here (Colorado Springs, CO) as a retrofit, and ran into several difficulties. In a retrofit, they would have to come in and do 5 or 6 boreholes, which would tear up my yard. Also, apparently, you want an experienced geothermal team doing the work. This is definitely not DIY. And it's EXPENSIVE. I tried to get a quote from the one guy/shop that has done that kind of work here, and when he looked at my house, he gave me a rough estimate of $15,000. But he never got back to me with a final bid, and after not getting any info after 3 calls, I gave up.

The other issue seems to be that the heating/cooling characteristics of geothermal are slightly different, and it's much better if the house is designed for it. Your Central Air furnace puts out 160 degree air which cools by the time it hits its destination to the proper temperature. Geothermal only gets up to 90 or 100, so it has to run longer.

It sure does sound like a utilities heaven tho.