Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Apple is rebooting my Windows computer almost as much as Microsoft is now.

Today's reboot was brought to me by Apple...and my computer wouldn't come up after it.

Seems strange that the CPU fan died during this cycle...but eventually that's what it complained about.

But, seeing as it was down, I decided this was the excuse to open it up and replace the CMOS battery....and blow out some dust

It didn't help resurrect the CPU fan fault.

It seems to limp, guess I have to disable BOINC for a while.... And, see about getting a replacement fan for it.

Darn Dell seems to use some special, odd ball fan that is hard to find...doesn't even seem to be available from Dell. Good did identify some sites that carried pulls of the fan. So, I bought one. Kind of expensive...$119...though $58.33 is for next day shipping...which will hopefully put it on Monday (along with a few other items I'm expecting UPS to bring me that day).

Guess I need to see about getting a new computer, and not try to stretch any more life out of this one.

I suppose I might consider getting an iMac and VMWare to run the one Windows application that I know isn't available on the Mac, which I use daily (and have yet to find an easy way to convert from it...guess Microsoft needs to hold some of its users hostage.) Though I also have a few other Windows only things, that I may also have trouble giving up.

Of course, I do have that Gateway GT5636E.....

Though I'll probably want to buy different bits for it then....like a dual DVI video card. Though I guess I can scrounge the SCSI card....wonder if the other bits that I did get for it will still have a place in it then.