bigboxes
Lifer
Went to plug it in and the sparks flew and I saw flames inside. I immediately unplugged the sucker. There was a plume of smoke in the air. Fun stuff! Waited awhile and plugged it back in to fire it up. Dead. Bummer.
The bad news? It was my first power supply that I bought ten years ago for my first build. An Antec 300W model. I immediately went out and bought a brand new Antec Earthwatts 380W PSU from Fry's for $30 (on sale). It's this model: Newegg link The old pc booted right up.
I took apart the old power supply. I couldn't find any damage. No burn marks. No bulging capacitors. No scorched circuit boards. Nothing. Maybe the small white fuse I saw inside is blown. Maybe I'll replace that later just for fun.
Of that first system I've had the mobo died (Abit KT7A-RAID), the video card died (ATI Radeon 64 VIVO), the hard drive died (Maxtor 10gb), and the cd drive died (Yamaha SCSI). The ram (Kingston PC133 SDRAM 256gb x 3) became outdated. The sound card was some soundblaster knockoff that never worked right (crappy drivers). I don't use Windows 98SE anymore. I still use my Cooler Master ATC-200 aluminum case. That was a great case!
Anyone else get bummed out when your old parts die? I gotta admit that the motherboard and video card's demise made me depressed. I don't feel the same when my four year old DFI board died. Nor when my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers started flaking out. Nor when my Mitsubishi CRT started dying a couple of years ago. Nor when my 9800XT stopped working. But for some reason my the parts of my first build meant a lot to me. I still have my Athon Thunderbird 1200 cpu, but I'll never use it again because I have 3 faster Socket A processors vying for the one available motherboard. Sigh.
The bad news? It was my first power supply that I bought ten years ago for my first build. An Antec 300W model. I immediately went out and bought a brand new Antec Earthwatts 380W PSU from Fry's for $30 (on sale). It's this model: Newegg link The old pc booted right up.
I took apart the old power supply. I couldn't find any damage. No burn marks. No bulging capacitors. No scorched circuit boards. Nothing. Maybe the small white fuse I saw inside is blown. Maybe I'll replace that later just for fun.
Of that first system I've had the mobo died (Abit KT7A-RAID), the video card died (ATI Radeon 64 VIVO), the hard drive died (Maxtor 10gb), and the cd drive died (Yamaha SCSI). The ram (Kingston PC133 SDRAM 256gb x 3) became outdated. The sound card was some soundblaster knockoff that never worked right (crappy drivers). I don't use Windows 98SE anymore. I still use my Cooler Master ATC-200 aluminum case. That was a great case!
Anyone else get bummed out when your old parts die? I gotta admit that the motherboard and video card's demise made me depressed. I don't feel the same when my four year old DFI board died. Nor when my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers started flaking out. Nor when my Mitsubishi CRT started dying a couple of years ago. Nor when my 9800XT stopped working. But for some reason my the parts of my first build meant a lot to me. I still have my Athon Thunderbird 1200 cpu, but I'll never use it again because I have 3 faster Socket A processors vying for the one available motherboard. Sigh.
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