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My PSU Hell

Sunday, 3 October 2004 eyebrows hardware suffering

Arent computers great?

Just the way they work all the time without fail… Oh no, that’s right, they fuck up all the time!

Here is another perfect example of such a beautiful working computer.
For details’ sake I’ve got a Antec TruePower 550W power supply in my computer. £100 in the shops.

Now picture this. I’ve just installed Fedora Core 3 Test 2 on my lovely spangly computer, and I’m playing poker while I wait for up2date (fedora’s updater program) and BANG. Everything dies. Not just that but my UPS is going mental saying there’s a huge overload and everybody’s going to die.

As you may be able to imagine: the profit that I had finally accumulated in KPoker was the least of my worries now.

I soiled myself.

Now, never one to be put off by sparks coming out the back of a PC, I decided that I would throw a few insults in the general direction of my lovely blue box and try again. Oh how I tried. I blamed the plug’s fuse, the cable, the multitap, even the carpet. I then realised it had tripped the mains switch under the stairs, so off I toddle to reset it again. I then sit back down having wrestled my way past 3 kitchen stools to give my computer life again, turn the UPS back on and BANG. I wasn’t very impressed.

It takes a lot to impress me, but the mere fact that I’d just lost my right eyebrow to an electrical fault is still not going to make the grade. I was miffed.

I thought for the sake of my computer components it might be a wise and noble idea to unplug the drives and the motherboard to save them future zappage.

Back under the stairs, past the stools, over the rainbow and back to my wheelie-chair. BANG. This wasn’t my evening. Not only had the PSU of my dreams deserted me in favour of a better place but I was now some misfit with half a left eyebrow remaining, destined to walk the barren dessert of life sneered at by society.

I finally remembered I had another 2 PSUs and swapped the 550W behemoth for a mincey 340W, which will have to do the job until I get a replacement unit (ha ha, i said unit) from ebuyer.

Goddamn PSUs.