The curse

[davidn]

Me: I have an inexplicable urge to work on Crystal Towers 2 again after not touching it for ages. Playing Ratchet and Clank all week's given me even more ideas to start putting in and then have a crisis about the likelihood of ever completing.

Computer: GROOOOOAANNN sudden silence.

Me:: Well, the noise from the power supply fan's improving at last. Wish I could say the same about the startup time.

Computer: Give me a chance, this hard drive's nearly six years old, you never clean it up, and American electricity's all weird.

Me: Just have to check my email first... and private messages... and then look at my Friends page... and the Clickteam forum... and... that's a strange sort of smell. It must be the students downstairs barbecuing something. Possibly tyres.

Computer: (Seems happy enough.)

Me: There, I've opened MMF2. I think that deserves a biscuit.

Computer: EXPLODE!

Given that this is virtually a repeat of what happened the last time I tried to pick this up again I'm now convinced that there is a curse on this project and it's doomed to just be a nag in the back of my mind telling me to complete it and blocking all future game-making attempts forever. After the screen froze, went black, came back in again and finally died, I quickly dived under the desk to disconnect all cables coming from the case, noticing the suspiciously burning hot patch at the back of the top, and dragged it out on to the desk to have a look.

The problem is definitely the power supply, judging from the horrible smell and the way that it had a surface that you could have fried an egg on - it seems that the fan just gave out after only a couple of years of happy spinning. (They really don't seem to make computer parts like they used to - the Amstrad under my desk at my parents' house is still going strong with no replacement parts since 1987). I was actually rather happy to see that the rest of the inside had not in fact melted, and even though a power supply failure is a dangerous thing to everything else in the computer, I think that the rest might be all right.

Not knowing anything much about the technical side of power supplies before today, I looked up the measurements and statistics of the depressed electronic squid that's now sitting on the coffee table and ordered something from Tiger Direct that seemed comparable but slightly more powerful and robust. I've gone for the Corsair VX550W, expensive though it is compared to my other parts, and I'm linking to that particular review of it because of my fascination with them being able to enthuse so much about a power supply that they sound like the cast of Top Gear going on about the latest Aston Martin.

The order will probably be here in about a week, by which time I'll have forgotten everything else I was going to do today.

Comments

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

Some friends of my parents moved to the states a few years ago, and they said that the only way they could keep their computer running at the height of the Texan summer was to keep a desk fan pointed at it whenever it was switched on.

[davidn]

I did sort of try that when my processor fan failed - pointing a desk fan into the open case makes it run at a very nice temperature! I can't do it this time, though, because unlike the CPU my power supply didn't have an emergency shutoff when it was too hot and opted to cook itself instead.