and, for the technical leaners:

a tech meltdown.

i have a 32-bit windows box at home, which i've built and rebuilt over the years. i've chosen and replaced multiple motherboards, processors, power supplies and video cards as software demands have made my components obsolete. <-- this is the reason i reeeeeally dislike those who develop code in an unreasonable, irresponsible fashion: they are requiring you to upgrade your perfectly functional computer simply in order to make their software run better. jerks!

a routine mainboard driver upgrade has had a catastrophic domino effect. first, i "lost" my RAID controller (the tiny little splot of onboard software that lets your hard drives talk back and forth to your motherboard). to replace it, i needed to have the correct driver on a floppy. reboot the system and reconfigure. easy.

except the driver is on a flash drive. it needs to be on a floppy. the only available floppy was in the machine that failed. okay. we'll fire up TFG's old PC, and drag/drop the files onto the floppy. gong. disk format error. okay, maybe her A-Drive isn't working properly. i'll switch it out with the A-Drive in my machine, which i know works. Gong. same error. disk cannot be formatted/is write protected. which it isn't. the disk is new, picked up at a wonderful little PC shop in Corvallis.

sheesh.

i reset the CMOS (onboard blip of memory which contains the Basic Input/Output System) by moving a jumper from one position to the other, removing the motherboard battery to allow for dissapation of current, and resetting it. reboot. the computer now won't Post (initial startup procedure, prior to the OS boot). i can't get into the BIOS at all. the POSTcard (diagnosis card attached to the motherboard) indicates a processor failure. which i know it isn't. the processor works fine.

end result of an innocous driver upgrade? my motherboard is bricked. eighty-sixed. toast. shelled. modern art.

and now, i'm faced with replacing an already obsolete form-factor motherboard. my memory is good. top of the line. my processor is good. top of the line in its day (it's still drawing $175+ on pricewatch.com) my hard drives are next-generation SATA drives. my power supply and video card are less than six months old (the result of purchasing a game and being unable to play it).

so. i can buy a new motherboard for an obsolete form factor (ATX) and squeeze life out of the whole setup. play games for a couple more years, and surf the web and non-intensive work (photoshop, audio work) indefinetely. or, i can do a month of research on current form factors and their compatibility issues, shell out a couple thousand on entirely new components to "future-proof" the box. *as if there really were such a thing*

specs follow for the current setup, and a comparison for upgrading.

current box:
MSI K7N2 Delta ISLR mainboard (@FSB 400MhZ)
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ @2.167 GhZ w/copper heat dissapation
1G Corsair XMS dual-channel RAM (CAS pre/recharge timings 2-2-2-6)
Nvidia 7600 GS 512MB AGP (8X) Videoboard
Western Digital and Seagate SATA hard drives
Thermaltake 520W power supply
half dozen "quiet" cooling fans, cables, screws, et cetera
WinXP Pro
Cost at purchase/build: +/- $1100

cost to fix: +/- $60, plus downtime and geek aggrivation

upgrade-to-64bit-computing-box:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200708.ars/3

cost, minus stuff that will cross over to the new box (case, monitor, hard drives, dvd writer)
$800, with Linux Redhat Operating System: $0

cost of a new macintosh desktop, with components equal to or lesser than the above box:
$2500 plus consulting fees.
note: instantly-irritating, self-gratifying *i paid three times as much for the same gear that you did, except i have a nifty monochrome Operating System* territorial pissings come free with anything apple. blech.

maybe i'll read a book instead.