Building a computer

A few weeks ago our desktop PC died. We knew it was coming. It was old and had been giving us problems for a while. So thankfully we had been budgeting and putting money aside to buy a new one this month anyway. Also luckily, it wasn’t the hard drives that went so we didn’t lose any data. (Though I haven’t managed to recover my email and other settings yet, but more for lack of trying at this point.) Oddly enough, the same day the PC died, our charger for our laptop died too. And then the phones went. This was right in the middle of trying to negotiate with the seller of our property.

Anyway, Kris, being Kris, could not wait until the day we had originally planned to buy the new computer (Black Friday, even though we’re in Canada often we can get good deals up here that day too). The place he planned to buy the parts from had a sale going on, so he went ahead and ordered the parts, with the plan to put them together himself, as he’s done with most of our previous computers too.

Meredith watched him taking apart the old computer with great interest. Luckily, we had an old computer lying around that Kris had been given to recycle, so we pulled it out and she stood alongside him pulling it apart.

She had fun unscrewing things, unplugging and replugging in the parts, twirling the fans, and generally just exploring the different components and asking questions. I think she is a little young to really get that what she was looking at were the parts that make a computer work, but nonetheless she seemed to enjoy the process.

When she was done with it, we offered it up on the local home schooling list for anyone who wanted to take it apart themselves and play around with the components. The boy who came with his dad to pick it up seemed pretty excited about the idea too.

I think Kris was waiting for his new computer parts the way kids wait for Christmas, and he was so excited the day they came in. He brought them home and opened them up and got right to work putting them together in our case. Again, Meredith wanted to help out and watch the process.

He finally got all the pieces in the computer, fired it up, and nothing happened. So he took it all apart again, adjusted some things, put it back together, fired it up, and still nothing happened. I wandered by and idly mentioned it was probably the power source, since that had happened with another computer of ours he’d built. I was mostly kidding, it was just all I had to offer with my limited experience. He assured me the power source was fine, called up a coworker, tried some more things, took it apart a few more times, cursed, and repeated a few times that he is now too old to be doing things like this and next time he would just pay the $50 to have them put the parts together for him.

Eventually, he took his power source in to have it tested, and as it turns out, it was dead. It’s actually probably the reason our last computer died (since it was one of the few parts he had taken out of the old computer). So, he ordered a new power source (and, of course, a few other techie toys as consolation for having to wait) and waited once again in anticipation for them to come.

This time when he put everything together again, it worked, mostly. Turns out one of the RAM sticks was faulty too. Luckily that was under warranty and the computer could still be used with the other ones, so Kris finally had his new toy to play with.

I was just happy to have my pictures back, though I don’t have any editing or organizing software on here yet. I think in four or five years, when this computer is getting old, it would be fun to have Meredith (and maybe Fiona) help a lot more if they want. Give her the pieces and help her figure out where they go and what they do, and if/when things don’t work the first time help her figure out how to narrow down the problem. Or maybe we’ll just pay the $50 and have it come to us in one piece and already working.

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