My Flux Capacitor

My PC is four years old now. I built it from scratch back in March 2002. I got the parts that gave the most bang for the buck back then and have upgraded things as needed. This is just a chronology of my PC's parts changes.

Started with 512 MB ram. Currently holds 1 GB.

Started with a 60 GB Hard Drive. I have 2 hard drives with a combined 420+ GB now (The original hard drive died a slow death which was great because I was able to replace it before losing any data. I'll probably take it with me next time I go shooting and put some holes in it, you know, so my data is safe.)

Started with a 64 MB ATI Radeon 8500 video card. I sold it a few months later and replaced with it with an 128 MB ATI Radeon 8500 All-in-wonder so I could have TV on my pc. I love TV on my PC.

I have the original MOBO and CPU (AMD Athlon 1700+ XP) though I did replace the heatsink & fan on the CPU a few months ago. The fan died suddenly. Lucky for me my motherboard had a sensor and immediately shut down the machine.

I've upgraded to a wireless mouse but not the keyboard. The wireless keyboard I want is too pricey and overkill since keyboards don't have to move. I've also added a FireWire/USB 2.0 combo card.

I had an extra montior when I built it so I used it instead of getting a new one. A year later I bought a Sony 19" Monitor that only lasted about 2 yrs. So I went back to using my crappy old monitor for about 6 months until things got blurry and I bought a 19" LCD. I like my LCD. I hope it lasts. My eyes love me for it.

I started with 4.1 altec lansing speakers. I never did use 2 out of the 4 spears in 4.1, but since they had been only $22 I didn't care. The subwoofer died a slow death as well. I replaced them about a month ago. I now have some nice sounding Logitec 2.1 speakers. Muy nice.

The part I hated about my computer was the case. I didn't know much about cases and such when I built it and so I bought one I thought would be fine. It sounded like a jet engine. And it got worse over the years. I finally had enough right after Christmas and bought a new case for my PC. I got a Antec Lifestyle Sonata II case. It rocks and is SO QUIET. I transplanted my PC's entrails from the old case to the new case and the difference was night and day. Tara asked me what the new noise coming from the PC was. It turned out to be the muted noise hard drives make when reading/writing. She'd never heard that noise coming from my PC before. I also realized that my xbox (I have it hooked up to my All-in-wonder) has a fan I can hear.

So all was bliss for a few months. Then I started getting some fan noise again. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I tracked it down to the video card's fan. I took it out, blew some compressed air in there, added some graphite lubricant, etc. Sometimes it's noisy, mostly it's very noisy. So I took the fan off the video card, found the manufacturer info on it and found one place online that supplies such fan. Since I don't need a new video card I decided to just get the fan. It arrived yesterday. I will install the fan this week and see if my computer is silent once again.

I was thinking about the changes I've made to my PC. You wouldn't recognize it as the same PC I built 4 years ago. All the external parts were the ugly PC tan color when I built it. Now it's all black except for the keyboard. Some day that too will be black. The xbox is black. I also have a DVD Recorder/VCR device on my desk. That's black too. New hard drives and more memory. Once I replace the Video card, Mobo and CPU, I'll have rebuilt a completely new machine.

And in case you're wondering, Tara has a nice Dell. We bought it last May.
P4 3.0 GHz CPU w/ HT.
1GB RAM
460 GB SATA hard drives.
128 MB PCI Express Video Card.

She needs the power for her MaryKay emails. :)