Two is the number of ATX power supply boxes I lost in the last thirteen months. Three is the number it is about to become.
They used to last longer. In fact, I never lost a power supply before the Athlon. Of course, I never used an ATX power supply before the Athlon, so the theory that the Athlon related hardware is a power devourer I counter with the theory AT supply boxes are just stronger than ATX ones. But both are inadequate here.
Truth be told, I keep the Athlon running for much longer periods than I ever did the Pentium MMX that came before it. I do remember, however, keeping said PMMX on for 16 days one time, when the computer was still called "D.Rod.net" (because it looked cute on NetMedic). It survived, and still does. Average uptime for the PMMX while in my hands was 14 hours a day; it now runs at least 8 hours a day. All in the same power supply.
The Athlon's first power supply died after 46 days of running non-stop. Those were the days of downloading Chobits on WinMX (and enduring the eternal queues, which explains the 46 days). After that, I played it safe for a while; I was done catching up with Chobits anyway, so I only needed to download a new episode each week, which never lasted more than four days. Once Chobits was done, months came of playing it very safe for the lack of reason not to. I had every English digital fansub of Chobits known to man, and no more HD space to fit anime in. "Why not burn it all to CD?", you ask. That was another problem. Interlude!
I did not want to simply put all those .avi files into CDs. What is the fun in that? I wanted something cute. I wanted to convert them all to MPEGs and make VCDs! And, if I had not wasted way too many CD-Rs in the process, I would burn the .avi files as well, since VCD has lower quality (although that is debatable). But I lacked experience in this converting business. Let us say, I wasted two CD-Rs with Chobits episodes that cannot be watched properly on any TV. After that, I learned to use the CD-RW. It took me exactly one year (yes, 365 days from the first attempt) and more failures than I remember to finally figure out the settings to make a watchable VCD out of those .avi files. And when I finally did... I was entirely out of CD-Rs (remember the Playstation ISOs episode from January and February?). The odissey for proper CD-Rs is another story, which is yet unfinished: I still am all out of CD-Rs. Interlude done.
I hope you did remember the Playstation ISOs episode from January and February, because that was the cause of a second power supply dying. And this one after merely 15 days going non-stop. That was tremendously frustrating. "15 days! The other one lasted three times longer!" It was replaced. But... guess what!
For assorted reasons, Asgaard has been firefly-esque lately. Some nights it is kept on, others not, but never longer than 5 days in a row. Eventually, the power supply's fan started making stupid noises. Tap here, angry look there, it would go away. Until today. The noise was more stupid than the Volcano 7's. The smell of something burning confirmed it. I turned it off, losing my place in the queue for that very rare file I am downloading on WinMX. "Cool down a bit, we will talk later." Turned it on again, stupid noise, no wind.
"I am so sick of you." How many million transistors do I have in this Athlon chip smaller than my palm? It is grotesque that the 8th generation of electronic device is put to halt by a defective fan of 2nd generation of electric/mechanic device! I opened the supply box, tapped the fan, forced it back and forth, and ptooey, it seems alive again. Naturally, one of those things that will only work on this angle (yes, angle: 30 degrees or so, diagonal). As soon as I put it back to the 90 degrees it is supposed to work on, it fails. Once again Asgaard needs to be torn apart to function.
Now, the conclusion of this. The AT cases and their respective power supply boxes (and I had many, many AT cases) were all by different manufacturers, from the days were cases were imported or produced by some small company that took the risk. Then one company came forward and got bigger. That company is Troni. Troni is today responsible for a virtual monopoly in the business of computer cases and related pieces. It is no wonder that these three failing power supply boxes were by Troni. No bigger wonder that my previous ATX case, that could not hold an ATX motherboard, was made by Troni. Monopoly. I can counter Microsoft's by using Netscape, Linux, piracy. I cannot counter Troni. In this country, I am stuck with the low-quality products they force into the market they dominate.
It is a lose-lose situation. They will go on dominating the market because they sell their cases for a comparatively low price. Low price, in comparison to a case of real quality. But people here buy computers with "onboard video card, 32 Mb of shared memory", and wonder why their games run so slow, and are very sure they need a Pentium 4 2GHz to run them properly. I really do not expect them to care about the quality of the cases their puny motherboards rest inside. And to them, keeping a computer on for more than 4 hours is beyond absurd. "If you're not using it, shut it down." A computer is not a manual loom, I do not need to be sitting in front of it with my hands on the keyboard to be "using" it!
So tomorrow I need to take this power supply to the techs. "Hi, it died again. Do you have something strong this time?" "Sorry, we know how that is, but our supplier only has this model..."
Posted by Etienne at May 20, 2003 01:19 AM