Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Day 51 the one where my computer did not work

2018: Day 51 the one where my computer did not work
Word count 131,182 + 1,014 or 132,196 of 1,000,000

Dear Reader,

This post started real time about thirty minutes ago. It was written and posted. No buffer exists anymore. Now is a time in the journey where things are written and then posted. That is not how this is supposed to be. I had a 24 hour buffer built up. The plan was to write 3,000 words per day and have enough time to review them before publication. Keep in mind that today was crushing in terms of things to get done. Writing just did not happen. Last night and this morning just did not yield any writing. Probably the thing that really impacted my writing was the problems with my new computer build. The Corsair 740 case looks great. The new Corsair 850 watt power supply looks great. It turned out that after everything was connected no video happened. Yeah —- you read that correctly the entire computer build did not turn out well. Things did not work. Everything was connected and ready to go, but no video happened.

My troubleshooting of this problem was very frustrating and ultimately defeating. First things first, I checked the power cable and then looked at the motherboard in frustration. At first, the problem appeared to be the missing CPU 4 pin power cable. That was easy enough to figure out. The Corsair power supply CPU cable splits form 8 to two 4 pin connectors. I had to watch a YouTube video to remember that nifty trick. My next effort involved the CMOS battery and some basic troubleshooting:

1. I powered off the computer and held the power button for 60 seconds. This step included unplugging the computer and just holding down the power button on the case for 60 seconds. After that step was complete the computer was powered back on and I checked for video.
2. The power cable was replaced. My brand new Corsair power supply came with a power cable, but it was easy enough to check to see if the power cable was bad.
3. The CMOS battery was replaced. This one was pretty easy and was made possible by the fact that for some reason I had one extra battery.
4. The CMOS battery was removed for 5 minutes. This step was pretty easy to accomplish. I unplugged the computer and then removed the battery and waited for 5 minutes before plugging it back in with the battery to see if things were working again.
5. A second graphics card was tested. It seemed like a good idea to remove the one graphics card and plug in my backup card.
6. A second monitor was tested. Maybe the computer was having trouble with my primary monitor. It seemed like a good idea to test out my backup computer monitor.
7. Both HDMI and displayport cables were tested. I tested a couple different cables that were working with other computers. None of that happened.
8. I checked the CMOS jumper to make sure nothing had gone wrong.
9. RAM was removed and replaced. I thought this might cause the motherboard to engage in some beeping or maybe do something different.
10. I let the box run for about 30 minutes. I thought maybe it just needs a minute to run. This step did not help. No video ever showed up on the monitor.

None of that helped. No video ever occured. Strangely no beeping ever happened from the motherboard. The whole process was very frustrating. That pretty means that my new computer case and power supply are going to have to hang out until I make a decision about getting a new motherboard. You can imagine that all of that testing took a fair amount of time and that is what cut into my writing efforts. For better or worse my desire not to fail at fixing the computer helped contribute to my failure to write 3,000 words today. This post may not even climb up to 1,000 words before it automatically posts at 22:22 PM.

This is the first time with a computer build that I could not make it work. Without any visual evidence of the boot sequence it is hard to troubleshoot. The steps outlined above are you basic information technology 101 troubleshooting for a potential motherboard failure. That is a rough thing to have happen. Upgrading to a new motherboard comes with a certain set of costs. I’m going to need to buy a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and probably a CPU water cooling block. All of those components could rack up a sizable bill in terms of computer parts. I’ll have to decide if that is where I want to spend my funds.

This post is pretty much being written real time. I’m hoping to string together 1,000 words to help keep my word count average from having to deal with a zero for the day. February was going to be my month to catch up. That appears to not be the base. It looks like February is going to just be a hard month for writing. It could be worse. I’m 51 days into this journey and no day has been missed so far. That is positive at least. Way more positive than any of my thoughts about my computer setup. That motherboard had worked, but does not work anymore. This entire post is dedicated to the micro-ATX HP motherboard that has no real model number or brand on it. It is about as generic as you can get. My next motherboard will probably be made by ASUS. It will probably be something from the X299 series of motherboards. They look very promising. The one that really has jumped out at me happens to be the ASUS Tuf X299 Mark 1 motherboard. It is an epic design that seems to be very well built. Whatever happened to my last motherboard probably happened in the garage. It say on a shelf for a couple of years. Maybe something got bent or a transistor fell off. At this point is hard to say.

Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs


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