Upgrades to Computer and House

Consensus of the computer situation led us to just get a new motherboard and processor.

From what I read it’s probably the processor that died. Not for sure though. So it’s on to a new build of computer for me 🙂

The Athlon processor world has changed dramatically over the last few years. Our now “old” processor is an Athlon XP 2100+ … at Fry’s, where we get most of our computer stuff now that they are in the shopping area we do go to often enough, they don’t have the XP series of processor. On pricewatch.com that processor series is still available in online stores, and I’m sure it’s available elsewhere, but I came to the conclusion earlier today looking on pricewatch that we didn’t want to go with a Socket A processor necessarily.

Sempron has replaced Athlon XP … they are afordable. They run on a 400mhz bus. I didn’t like them much by looking at them. I wanted something good. The Athlon 64 series is more a multitasking processor series.

So we ended up going to Fry’s and looking at their stock and looking at their ads on products and putting 2 and 2 together came up with 5. 🙂 We did upgrade to a board that runs an 800mhz bus, but it’s still Abit and we got a three year warranty with Fry’s on it, extra, so we could deal with them directly if it goes fritzy on us.

Fry’s was running a deal in their ad for that board and the Athlon 64 3000 (OEM) processor for less than buying them seperately.

Now I have to put it all together and make the hardware all play nice with each other. I am hoping the PSU will be good enough. If not, it’s back to Fry’s in the next few weeks, or online, to buy a different PSU. The one we have is a Vigor 500W, made by MGE company. It’s not that it’s bad, just don’t know if it’s superbly good enough for THIS new board.

The memory we got recently should work great in this board. It can run at full speed with this better processor.

So it goes down to this: Already, before, we wanted to upgrade the video card still and get a new hard drive to add to the system, and a DVD burner.

Now it’s back to square one, no new video card even 🙁 But eventually we’ll get one. I’m left with either the old processor dead or the old motherboard dead. Whichever one it is, depends on what we’ll do.

We’ll get a cheap case and get that board running right, and find another Socket A processor to put in it, run the old stick of memory that was cheapy and made it not run right, if we get a new PSU then the one I have currently can go on that board. If it’s the board that is the trouble then we can get that fixed via Abit for fairly cheap, not having to worry about turnaround time if we have another system running.

So what this all means is we’ll be trying to get two desktops running, that old board to be a backup system in case of problems with bigger desktop. It’ll be a testing ground too, and a place for spare parts to hang out. It’s a good board, NF7-S … just that the processor isn’t as highly powered in the Socket A series. So we have a new better board in that arena and I am biting my lip awaiting the time to get going on it, it’ll have to wait until Monday.

I’m up in the middle of the night typing this. I awoke after just a little bit of sleep and can’t get back to sleep. I watched some TV, watched HGTV “reDesign” which is one I’ve seen before, but I didn’t mind re-watching it tonight/this morning since it’s one that I really liked what Kenneth Brown did, custom wall builtins, drawers to hold vinyl records in that. An eastern beach sort of theme. It’s not disimilar to what we want to do in our “dining room” just with different color scheme, to get builtins flanking the fireplace, which will hold dishes, TV, audio, books, other kitchen stuff, and more.

Next on HGTV was “design on a dime” and they did a makeover of a large kitchen for a family that used it alot, using a “tuscan” theme, and did a lot of furniture building … it fit into the theme of what we are trying to accomplish here as well, just not “tuscan” but “country, french country, arts and crafts movement”-ish.

Before all that was a “designer finals” episode which I had never seen before. It was a studen designer doing a room as a “jazz lounge” theme for a couple with a love of Jazz music, two dogs that love the bay window in the room, and they also needed it to have a desk and computer. The student designer really did a great job, and it was inspiring to me. I felt like getting up and painting and sawing and … all that.

So I eventually did get up. I hung a picture in the hall. There was a little wreath there and other hanging things under it from something that used to be there. I have a large poster in ornate frame of a Monet painting. It used to hang in our bedroom and had been sitting on top of something in there since we moved furniture around and didn’t have that space for it available anymore. I looked at it, and thought about it and got up and put it in the hall. It fits. I’ll rehang it on Monday a bit higher though. It’s inspiration to me on how to do that upstairs hallway. Light blues and creams. 🙂 It’ll brighten the space up considerably. Hurray for that!

So my mind is racing around with many ideas tonight and I just can’t sleep. So I sit here at Frank’s laptop on the dining room table, a glass of Sweet Tea by my side, and three of the cats lounging around on the table with me.

Yeah, the cats are on our table. Can’t really keep them off. I shoo them off if it’s clean and if we are working on it with food and all that. It’s hard to keep them off it though. Cat’s go where they want to when you aren’t around anyhow. So that’s that. They love the table. So do I. 🙂

Speaking of the table, I made a list of all our furniture that I love and want to keep. It wasn’t very large. I wanted to see what pieces we had that are valuable to us. This table and chairs are one of the big things. We got them from Costco online some time ago, Italian made Scandinavian Pine. Not fancy, just simplistically beautiful. Thick ladderback chairs and thick farmhouse legs on the table. It’s bigger than the other tables we’ve had for eating on. It’s not expandable. I’d like one that is, but I also know how to marry other tables into the setting when need be, so it’s not crucial. I don’t have plans to replace this table, and don’t want to even do it. It could be a nice island in another kitchen someday though. 🙂