OctoPower!
We have several computers at the house. The “big” computer is at least seven years
old. It’s “big” only in that it is an
old tower case from back when they made computers the size of dresser drawers
and it’s “big” because we hooked up a huge tv monitor to it quite awhile back. This computer has been through several
versions of Windows, each of which grew flakier until I finally tried Ubuntu on
this machine. That continues to work
smoothly on the old beast – except for some incompatibility with some DVDs. It suffered the loss of its ethernet port in
a lightning strike a few years ago. The
ethernet port connects directly to the motherboard so I didn’t see any practical
way to replace it. So now it connects to
the internet via a USB WIFI stick. Aside
from the fact that it is still serviceable, I keep it going to see how long I
can keep it going.
The other day I pressed the power button to turn it on and
nothing – absolutely nothing – happened.
No lights, no fan, nothing.
Probably the power supply I thought.
This was a good guess but I foolishly assumed that it would be a snap
out and snap in replacement. Hah!
This, this is what a power supply looks like. Except, here, this has been laid out for
viewing before being laid to rest:
Most, but not all of those cables were connected here and
there in the computer. When I saw the spaghetti
inside the computer that I would have to disconnect and correctly reconnect I
flashed back to an old Star Trek episode, one of the lesser episodes of the
original series, called “Spock’s Brain.”
Spock’s brain is stolen – right out of his head – by beings who need it
to be the “Controller” for their civilization.
Upon recovering it, Dr. McCoy’s surgical skills are temporarily,
technologically augmented to enable him to reinsert Spock’s brain inside
Spock. But the augmented knowledge
begins to wear off and he goes slower and slower…
I could just imagine myself grinding to a halt, connector in
hand, whimpering, “Where the hell does this one go?”
Eventually I settled for a tedious process of disconnecting
one cable belonging to the old power supply, locating a comparable connector
from the new power supply and connecting that – gradually replacing the old and
allowing me to remove the old one and replace it. Here is what it look like midway through that. The new power supply is sitting outside the computer
at this point.
What really tickles me about all this is that I got it right
all the way down the line: the right diagnosis, a compatible power supply purchased
on the first try, the machine started up right away and everything worked. So often technical adventures consist of,
like, six trials and errors and three ah-hah! Revelations before completing a
repair or install.
Here is the pc with the new power supply installed. All those cables coming out really do look
like the tentacles of an octopus don’t they?
