arandia.net

My new PC

This is my new Shuttle XPC SS51G. I've been thinking for a long time about how sucky things look when I play City of Heroes. So, for a while I've been yearning to see how things actually look in the game. One way was to have someone else take pictures of me in the game and post them on the web. Another way would be to buy a computer.

Now, I'm a Mac fan and that's no secret to people who know me. I guess the PC equivalent of Apple is, ahem, Dell. I work with Dell all the time at work. We're a mostly Dell shop. I work with Dell workstations and servers. And I know that Dell ain't no Apple. But, I'm attracted to the idea of just opening a box, plugging stuff in, turning it on and being happy. That's exactly the experience you get with a Mac. And Dell is almost, no, not really, but more like that in operation.

Well, I got these friends who are all tech savvy and are asking me why I don't build my own since, admittedly, Dells do suck. The thing I don't like about that idea is because of all the hassle. There's the hassle of shopping for components and trying to get the best deals. Then there's the hassle of assembling things. And then installing the operating system.

So, I'm chattin' with Marc and he tells me to go the Shentech. The conversation looks sorta like this:
majcher: http://www.shentech.com/
majcher: buy a shuttle case, some cpu/drive/memory, and you're done.
me: that's what you do?
me: well, that's easier than shopping.
majcher: that's what i do.
me: these shuttle cases aren't cheap.
me: what good are they?
majcher: the shuttle cases have all the motherboard and wiring and stuff built in, so you don't have to screw with that.
majcher: also, they're really small, cool, and quiet.
me: I see.
me: less hassle
majcher: lots less hassle.
me: so getting a $50 case is full of hassle.
majcher: full of hassle.
me: hasslefull.
majcher: but they love it in germany.
me: I see.

So, I go the Shentech and order the XPC SS51G and an Intel 2.8aGHz P4 533FB and 512Megs of RAM and an 80GB hard drive and a nifty Visiontek Xtacy Nvidia Geforce 4 video card. The shopping cart total is over 600 bucks and that scares me away. I leave the site. The sticker shock gave me an anxiety attack. I can't spend 600 bucks on something I don't need. This doesn't make sense. And I'm buying a PC. I hate PCs. Why would I spend 600 bucks on that? Then the conversation goes like this:

me: I got up to 600 dollars and the anxiety started happening.
me: in the shopping cart.
majcher: get a grip, man.
me: can't deal with it.
jorm: joel, do you have an income?
me: oh yeah
me: tons of income
emers8n: you can write it off, dude. business expense.
me: I guess so. I could use a writoff.

And so I charge it to my credit card. This was Wednesday so I was fully expecting stuff to come by Friday.

Then the hassle began...

First, when I get home from work, there's a call on my answering maching from Shentech. Turns out that they can't charge my credit card because I used my work address as the shipping address and the credit card company doesn't know that I work there. So, the next day, I have to call up my credit card company and tell them to add my work address as an alternate address. Having done that I email shentech back that I had accomplished this and gave them my credit card company's number so they can confirm it. And I call them. By the afternoon, it was done. And I get an email that stuff had shipped.

But not all the stuff. Only 3 of the 5 pieces had shipped. Not only that, the UPS tracking code seemed to indicate that stuff hadn't really shipped yet.

Friday, the stuff arrived. And to my surprise, it was all the stuff. Turns out that Shentech is in Queens, just around the corner, roughly speaking. Just over the GWB and acrossed the Bronx and I'm in Queens.

Not really interested in putting it together. My friend, Frank, was more than happy to borrow a screwdriver and use a bit of elbow grease to assemble it together. We had a CDrom drive just lying around(we had bought workstations for something and it turned out that they needed DVD drives so we bought the DVD drives and had spare CDrom drives). And when it was done, we turned it on. And nothing happened.

And so the next bunch of hassle begins. We begin taking everything apart and putting everything back together. Reseating the cpu. unplugging and replugging every component. Using 3 different kinds of video card and also the onboard video card. Slipping in different RAM that we had lying around. But each time when we turn on the machine, the fans whirr but on the monitor there was not one pixel lit up. And that was how I spent work on Friday.

I get the thing home and try a couple more times. I have nothing plugged in, no video card, no cdrom, no hard drive. Just cpu, ram, and motherboard. I was using the onboard VGA. And still there was nothing.

I go to the shuttle website and it turns out that it's very finicky about the types of stuff you stick into it. So much so that they have these lists of supported hardware. My RAM was not on the list.

The next day I go to Best Buy to find the RAM that was on the list and the only RAM that was on it was this Kingston HyperX RAM that cost like 200 bucks. Sheesh! But I was at that point sick of buying things online and not having the instant satisfaction of having it right then. So, I buy the RAM.

I plug in the super expensivo RAM and switch it on...and nothing.

I surrendered. Monday, I would call up Shentech and Shuttle and tell them that their stuff doesn't work and I'd be sending stuff back.

On Monday, the next bunch of hassle begins...

On Monday, the next bunch of hassle begins with first talking to Shuttle tech support. After much rigamarole with describing the situation and a little more testing. Shuttle tech support seems to think that the motherboard is bad which was the consensus amongst my friends. So, I call Shentech technical support to tell them what the Shuttle tech support said so I can return this thing and exchange it for stuff that works. The Shentech tech support guy gets back and informs me that it may not be the motherboard that is bad, but that the CPU that I had ordered, the Prescott, was not compatible with it.

What??? Shentech's website says "CPU Socket 478 400/533MHz FSB" and Shuttle's website says "Intel Pentium 4 socket 478 2.80 GHz". But, I guess, these do not pertain to MY "Intel Pentium 4 socket 478 2.80Ghz 533Mhz FSB" chip.

So, that's the next hassle is that this chip is incompatible with the board. But the Shentech guy assures me that upgrading the bios will allow me to use this chip. All I need to do is find another chip so I can install the updated bios to use my chip.

Find another chip??? As if I keep spare chips in my wallet for just such an occasion. Or that people have extra chips just lying around like so much used kleenex. Yeah, it's just lying around. I tell the Shentech guy to just find me a chip that is compatible with the Shuttle. I just want this all to end.

And sure enough, they don't have any in their warehouse. They're all out and they don't know when they'll have any come in. So, I give up on them. After work, I go to PC Warehouse. No, not the online store, but the physical location they have here in New Jersey. I look for the non-Prescott Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz 533FSB but there is none to be found there either. I settle on a 99 buck Celeron.

I take it home, stick it in, and VOILA! it works.

We're in the home stretch folks.

The last bit of hassle is the operating system. I happen to have pirated copies of Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro. But neither of these burned cds is bootable. And I have only a USB floppy drive and I only have 1 floppy disk.

I have the images of the 4 floppys to the Windows 2k install. I'm trying to figure out how to burn a bootable cd with all those. But that doesn't work. I have these redhat 7.3 cds lying around. And they boot up. Obviously the cdrom works.

I get online and find that you can download and make all sorts of bootable things. I download FreeDOS and manage to install it. Then there's the XP Pro boot disk that works but I don't have an XP Product Key. I look for a keygen which isn't much of a problem with Google. And I run it. And none of the keys it makes works. What a piece of crap. And so I go to hackerdom central, astalavista.box.sk, and I get another couple of xp keygens. And most of those keys don't work. Until I find one that works.

And XP installs. And it doesn't boot up.

Today at work, I call up Shuttle again and I ask about this bios updatey thing and the Prescott chip and they inform me that under no condition does the XPC SS51G work with the Prescott chip. So, I bought the damn chip and I'm never ever going to be able to use it. Oh well. So, I give it to a coworker and tell him to give me a hundred bucks if it works. I don't want to scam him.

I re-fdisk the drive and reformat it, and reinstall XP. And then it boots. I install all the drivers with the cd that comes with it. Then I put in my super cool video card and it works. Woo!!! I was on a streak. So, I turn on Internet Connection Firewall and connect it to the network. And it works!! Woohoo!! Then I go to windows update to download in install all the latest security updates. And it tells me that I have a pirated copy of Windows XP and that I should turn myself over to the authorities. DOH!!!

So, to make a long story short, today, I went back to Best Buy and paid another $200 bucks to buy XP Home edition. I've installed it, activated, and I'm doing the updates. Hopefully, there will not be anymore hassle for a while.

THE END?

Next time, I'm getting a Mac!!!

Fahrenheit 9/11

I finally got around to seeing it. Wow, really really emotionally manipulative.

But, factually, I guess it told us stuff we already knew. It was just jarring to see it showing in moving color pictures.

I guess I'm just so used to having my news filtered for me.

At the end, I think that I felt like I was living in a reality that I really didn't want to live in. I turned to my friend and said, "I really want to see Spider-man now."