Edit0r’s Bloog

So, my Master Plan™ is coming together now. I should tell you all about it. But not now.

Just kidding, here goes! It all started a few weeks back when I asked Sarah what she would like for Christmas. Being the TV fanatic she is, she asked for a hard disk TV recorder. Well, thunk I, this is gonna be a bit out of my price range. So I had a look on the ‘net, and lo and behold… I was right. But then, bright idea! I could just build an el-cheapo media center which would do everything she wanted! At this point, I’ll cut a long story short and say that I went massively over budget, and so decided to build the machine and sell it for a profit.

The original specs:

• Intel Celeron 2.53GHz
• MSI socket 775 motherboard
• 512MB DDR400 RAM
• 40GB hard disk drive (IDE)
• 1 digital TV card
• media card reader in floppy bay
• TV out connectivity
• Swanky desktop case

Apart from this, the thing also had to run as silent as possible, so I bought a “silent” power supply. I think at this point another list is in order, this time of things which went wrong:

• The case I wanted was for BTX motherboards, so I had to buy one which wasn’t as nice
• The case came with a funny shaped non-standard shrunken power supply
• The power supply I ordered was frickin’ noisy, so I wouldn’t have used it anyway
• The motherboard claimed to support the processor I bought, but, in fact, didn’t
• The TV tuner did not come with a half height PCI bracket, as the seller claimed, so I couldn’t fit it into the case
• The hard disk drive I bought was on its last legs, and proceeded to die in the middle of installing Linux MCE
• The motherboard did not support TV out properly
• Some funny was up with the RAM. It worked in all machines except this one, though, so I suspected it was the motherboard (and before anyone asks, no, this was not a high density/dual channel problem)
• In an attempt to get the RAM to work, I tried to flash the motherboard BIOS…

Ah yes, flashing the motherboard, something I’ve never had a problem with before. Okay kids, here’s some advice: never ever flash a BIOS from within Windows using WinFlash or similar. That’s just asking for trouble. In this case, I managed to recover the original BIOS because I told it not to overwrite the Bootblock, therefore giving me a failsafe in case things went titsup (which they did). Cutting a long story short here, MSI’s stupid little LiveUpdate tool continually supplied me with the wrong BIOSes for my board, and at one point I had to force Bootblock execution by shorting out high address pins on the EEPROM chip. Fun times. Not content with getting the machine back to its original state, however, I tried again with yet another BIOS, this time ending up with a *completely* dead board. I don’t know for sure why this happened, as I told it specifically not to overwrite the Bootblock, but my guess would be that the incorrect BIOS was tripping up the the board at an extremely early stage, and some incredibly careful timing would be required on the high address pins of the EEPROM to rectify this. So now I had two options: send the thing off to get the EEPROM desoldered and replaced (damn you MSI and your lack of PLCC sockets!) or just buy a new board (and new RAM, as the MSI board was an old one which took DDR400 RAM with a socket 775 processor). I opted for the new board and RAM, simply because I was sick of this pile-o’-turd excuse for a motherboard. To top this whole escapade off, I also received a miniPCI motherboard diagnostic card when I ordered one for normal PCI. Aaaand, the turboflame lighter I ordered was bigger than I expected and didn’t fit in my pocket. Grrr…

Okay, okay, I know some of these things I mentioned were due to my own lack of foresight/attention to detail, but most were mistakes on the part of the seller. Sure, the whole motherboard debacle was completely Edit0r induced, but it wouldn’t have happened if MSI’s website gave me a list of all their BIOSes and let me choose the right one. This has never failed in the past.

So what’s the status of all this now? Weeeell, all the faulty/mis-ordered equipment has been returned, and replacements *very carefully* bought. I’m awaiting a motherboard, RAM, and two TV tuners still, but they will probably turn up in the next few days. I can only hope the sailing is somewhat smoother from this point onwards…

In other news, I’ve been trying out Google Checkout, and from what I’ve seen it looks very much like PayPal but… not evil. I’ve added a donation thingme to the sidebar on the right, though I doubt if anyone will use it. Really, just don’t, it’ll only encourage me. And down that path lies destruction…