Last week it happened again. I returned from work to discover that
my computer was off. This is a Bad Thing.

I always leave my computer on. I base this policy on the advice of
my grizzled
old computer veteran of a father, who once explained to me that
maintaining a consistent operating temperature was probably better
for solid-state computer parts, rather than unduly stressing them
with repeated on/off exercises.

I don't know how reliable that advice is in this day and age, what
with all the fans (4? ... 4!) cludging away inside my
computer. That's a lot of moving parts that didn't exist back in the
Digital Jurassic Era, when the advice was given.

Still, the computer should have been on. And it wasn't. Long-time
readers of this weblog know what I'm leading up to — another
chapter in the continuing serial drama of Little Nemo in the Land
of Obscure Computer Mis-hapery.

“What
the ... not YOU again?!”

I first tried simply turning it back on. I mean, why not? It was
off, right?

This yielded an ... interesting ... result. The computer would
come on for a second or two, and then shut down again. A little
twiddling with devices, peripherals, internal connections and such,
and I was able to extend the boot by a few more seconds. A sacrifice
of a goat or two, and I could even get it as far as the BIOS screen,
before the little Silicon Satan burped itself back out to Digital
Oblivion.

I should point out that this turn of events was, sadly, not
unexpected. My chief offline activity over the past nine months or so
has been pulling apart my computer, examining it bit-by-bit,
reassembling it in every possible configuration imaginable, throwing
in the occasional expensive new part ... and standing back in
slack-jawed amazement as nothing I did ever seemed to work.

Oh, and swearing. Lots and lots of swearing. I could write a
sailor's dictionary with the phrases I invented.

But this time, I'd had it. Dammit, other kids have computers that
work — why can't I? I briefly talked myself into
committing family heresy and buying an entire prepackaged system; but
a geekish friend of mine talked me down from it, and by the time he
and I had made it to the computer store, I was in a “bare-bones”
system kinda mood.

By the time we were actually in the store I had reverted
back to the traditional family stance of “just gimme yer damn
motherboard/CPU combo, odd-smelling, bearded freak!” I got it
... along with a new CD-R device, since somewhere along the line it
had died too.

My friend gets further honorable mention, by the way, because on
the way to the store we stopped by his house ... where we discovered
that his month-old computer had abruptly and mysteriously died as
well. Fiddling at it for the few minutes brought forth the
realization that, if anything, it was in a less responsive
state than my drooling imbecile of a PC. Totally catatonic. Flatline,
baby.

Sometimes I amaze even myself.

But wait: that's nuthin', man. The geek-clerks at the store
I frequent have a terrific habit of testing the equipment right
in front of you, before they sell it. This was a Very Good Thing for
me, since it took the geek-clerk in charge of my sale at least three
tries to find a motherboard that worked.

Even then, he had to flash the BIOS in order to do it. All the
while, another geek-clerk at the register to my immediate left was
suddenly unable to get his motherboards to test right.

I was beginning to feel like a Marvel™
villain. Were my mutant powers finally emerging? I made a note to
myself to try levitation at the earliest opportunity ...

But not before I had a computer up and running. I dropped all my
computer parts (old and new) on my friend's living room floor and
implored him to put it all together for me. Under the circumstances,
it was the only sane thing to do. Besides, I had to go to work.

He slapped it together. It booted and ran. He called me in
triumph; but I refused celebration, vowing to see it in operation
first before performing any ritualistic joy-jumping.

Of course, such celebration would be premature. My friend had
gotten the machine up and running all right, but hadn't left it on
long enough to prove anything other than that. This time, the damn
thing stayed up and running for a whole five minutes before clonking
out in my presence.

I was at a loss. Practically everything about the system had been
changed over from the point that my initial troubles began. Only the
hard drives and a TV-tuner card were left over. The case, video card,
motherboard, CPU ... even the damn monitor was different, and
still the freakin' thing was a crip!

I let loose with a few of the choicer phrases from my sailor's
dictionary, and the two of us decided to go out power supply shopping
the next day. Hell, what else could it be?!

I got a call from my friend the next morning. He had had a
“thought” sometime in the middle of the night:

“What if it just wasn't
getting enough power?” He asked.

“I don't ... whaddaya mean?”
I replied. “The CPU? It's got a 350-watt power supply.”

“Yeah, but ... what if the
power supply wasn't getting enough juice?”

“...?”

“I'm talking about the surge
protector. Most of 'em are crap anyway; what if all the other
peripherals attached to it were siphoning power away from the
computer?”

“It's possible. But I had
never heard of anything like that.”

“Well, I tried it. I've had
your machine up and running for two hours now. Crunching video, even.
And it's still going strong.”

And that was it. All this headache and hassle, and that was it. I
took the PC home, peeled off some of the peripherals, plugged it in,
and it's been going great guns since late Sunday. I have a feeling
the little twerp's gonna run until Doomsday
now.

Four motherboards, three video cards, two cases, two CPU's, and
one completely shorted-out 512Mb DDR memory card down the road, only
to learn that it wasn't even a computer problem to begin with —
at least not one that originated in the computer. It was
lame-ass, Mr. Killjoy surge-protector all along.

I guess it makes sense. When I first moved into this 1880's era
duplex of mine, I was taking care of all my computing needs on a
humble 150-watt, Pentium I system. Somewhere along the line I bumped
up to 250 watts, and then 350 watts. Plus a raft of wattage-sipping
peripherals.
In this primitive, pre-technical-era homestead of mine, and it's
conspicuous lack of wall outlets, was a digital Ragnarok inevitable?

If I read
this right, then yep, it was:

... switch-mode power supplies are
more sensitive to source impedance than source voltage, and the
increased impedance inserted into the line by the transformer may
actually hinder the power supply by restricting the current
available.

Then again, I know I have at least one electrical engineer in the
audience. Am I on the right track with this?

At any rate, this gives me a gut a feeling that my Long Digital
Nightmare is finally over (at least for me — my friend's PC is
still DOA). I've also got a fairly slick AMD
Sempron 2200-based system out of the deal. Once I got past the
initial “Sempron?
What the hell's a Sempron?”
phase of the upgrade, I've been rather impressed with that scrappy
little chip.

Although, come to think of it, I could use a faster
one ...