Went out last night to the Admiral Dunk and bumped into a guy called Steve I knew years ago. Like 8 years ago. Commented “I’ve known him since I was 16” and someone said they were a little concerned that I knew him when he was 16...with a knowing wink...evidently it didn’t occur to them that I was 24 at the time. Age frequently makes me mirth all over the place. Sorted (YAY!) my random BSOD issue. The Silicon Image SATA Raid controller required disabling. Soon as I did that I got a lovely stable (ish) PC. Well, apart from the Nvidia PATA controller now being broken, that is. So I can’t install the network drivers on the CD because...er...they’re on the CD. Which is unaccessible without the PATA driver. Sometimes, Windows is deeply retarded. Like when I reinstalled over the weekend using a USB keyboard. And it popped up a confirmation dialog box about a driver that it was going to install. A driver it thought it’d install before the HID ones. Therefore I couldn’t click or hit return, all I could do was stare at the stunning ingenuity of Microsoft before running off and finding a ps/2 keyboard and restarting the whole thing again. So. I have an IRQ conflict that’s stopping the lovely PATA device from starting. Or more accurately, there’s not a spare one going. So I disable some stuff, remove my D-Link wifi card, but still, computer says no. I might just install XP64 and be done with it. Vista is very shiny and lovely and shiny. Aero is a bit gorgeous as interfaces go. It’s sitting on one of my partitions, humming away lovingly. However, it can’t find either the Broadcom 5751 or the D-Link G520M network cards. Either of them. And both of them are supported, supposedly. Gah. I might give up this hardware lark and become a milkman... Admiral Dunk was fun. Danny and Sunin and me and Lloyd and Mogs assaulted random people we knew. Mr TheCanadian David turned up (invited him to the Octoberbash although knowing him he’ll forget). And yeah, Steve, who is one of Sal’s exes IIRC. He was chatting up a Canadian who we’d all seen walk in a few minutes before and Danny was dribbling at, so I popped over and said hello and got everyone talking to each other. Which was fun Drove back with Sunin, got chatting about magazines and stuff, showed him the old copies of shOUT I had kicking about so he could see what I used to do when I was ickle. “Oh my god, 1994”. Damn I feel old. Even if I’m not... Forked out £79 for a proper PSU with all the proper connectors and proper fans and stuff. Installed some case fans too. Plugged it all in and let her rip. The mobo had a “Cool’n’quiet” feature that basically means it’s almost silent when it’s not doing much. It’s so gorgeous. Tonight I’m going to put all the old bits into manny and see if a new PSU brings it all back to life. If so, I shall rejoice and dance round things before considering what to do. Do I sell OldPixel or do I keep her around as NewManny and put OldManny into a case for the grandmother? How much would I get for OldPixel? Athlon XP3200+ (2.2ghz) 1gig RAM 120gig HDD GeForce MX 5200 Dual boot custom cut down version of WindowsXP and Fedora 15,000 photos (giggle) I’m guessing not too much, whereas it’s a fucking fast PC Again, I’m thinking of buying a new TFT and just putting it under the livingroom table for guests, all wifid up. Either that or I might give it to OB in exchange for his old one and do the same with his old one. The New Pixel is rather gorgeously fast though. Can’t wait to give it a proper spin. Dual Opteron 248 (2x2.2ghz) 4gig ECC RAM 250gig SATA RAID (supports SATA300 but my ickle drive’s not that quick) NForce4 chipset GeForce GS 6300 Triple boot XP, Vista and Fedora (or will by the end of the day ) I’m considering not putting XP64 on it and merely setting up some virtualisation software (Xen) under Fedora, running XP in a window in XGL would be lovely.