Jimmy's Desktop (Jun 03 ~ Nov 06)

After 3 years of faithful service, my desktop died on me last night. Ok, it had several problems from the beginning, including regular BSODs while under heavy loads. But it was still a computer that served its various purposes well.

That desktop was my first attempt at fixing up my own computer. I researched the various parts that I would have to buy, reading reviews online to find out if they were good buys. I compared prices over several weeks to make sure I got equitable prices from Sim Lim Square. I educated myself on the various connectors and technologies available.

I ended up with an upper-mid-range system. I was quite pleased with it as I spent less than a thousand bucks. Then all the problems started coming up. OS troubles. RAM clock speeds that were not sync-ed with the CPU bus clock. Graphics card would sometimes fail its drawing operations and crash to desktop or restart the computer. I spent more weeks shuttling to Sim Lim to diagnose the problems. It was a good thing I was serving NS then: I had loads of expendable income. What I finally got in the end was a functional but temperamental computer.

Recently though, more problems started cropping up. When a botched installation of Microsoft's .NET framework kept interfering with my graphics drivers, I decided that the best workaround was a clean format of my hard disk. The formatting was quite painless, though it's always weird to reformat your computer and seeing it quite different from the computer you've tweaked to your liking. But just 3 days after that reformat, my computer died.

The diagnostic LEDs at the back of my tower points towards the RAM as the problem. I don't mind heading down to Sim Lim one day with that one stick of RAM to find out if it's really the problem. But it's really too much hassle on week 13. After the exams, maybe.

For now, I'm left with my trusty laptop and more price lists from Sim Lim. Maybe I'll fix the desktop. Maybe it's not the RAM. Maybe I'll find enough money to fix up another desktop. -Jimmy