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It seems that all I’ve done over the last few days is build computers.

I upgraded my Dad’s, which is always fun. By fun I mean a journey into the depths of despair and beyond, because inevitably it won’t work. Although it seems that we always manage to figure it out in the end. For example, the XFX Nvidia 650i Ultra board we used for the upgrade came with its CMOS jumper set to clear. That threw me for most of the evening; I haven’t seen a board with CMOS jumpers in ages.

I left the house in a cheerful mood, because everything seemed to be well and good. Until today, this is, because the machine died this morning. So, a new motherboard has been ordered, and I’ll fit that tomorrow.

Then at work I built my new workstation machine, because that’s significantly quicker than waiting for Dell to get their finger out and ship a similar spec. Fitting the Abit P35 Pro motherboard into the Arctic Cooling Silentium T1 Pro case was a bit of a nightmare, and I had to forego their clever velcro hard drive fastening mechanism in favour of the old fashioned drive-bay approach, because the motherboard’s power connector was in the way.

Still, it’s a lovely bit of kit, and seems to be suitably speedy. And my Asus MW221U screen is lurvely.

Then I come home, and I have to swap out my dead Fatal1ty F-I90HD board for the Asus I liberated from my Dad’s machine pre-upgrade. I should probably have seen it coming with a name like Fatal1ty, but the VGA port died, and then the whole thing decided not to boot. So, back to Ebuyer it goes, and I’m happy with the well tested Asus board.

During the extraction of the Fatal1ty, I gouged a large chunk out of my finger. Not on the case, incidentally, but on the blanking plate for the motherboard (you know, the one with all the holes on). And it struck me that, maybe, you have to have a good bleed into a case before the thing will actually run correctly. A little ritual bloodletting during construction hopefully means your PC will lead a stable and happy existence.

Maybe I’ll bleed into Dad’s machine when I have another go at it tomorrow.