I've been better...

[cabbitzilla]

... but that was before I got hysterical yesterday.



'm not happy. Not atall. Many MANY thanks to rowandoll, who patiently talked me down out of hysterics yesterday, and did her very best to help me. Unfortunately, the problem seems to be specifically hardware, which is supposedly MY forte.

Given the events of the last week or so, I'm now utterly convinced that I'm carrying an immense kharmic debt... given how hard it's striking, I must have been the biggest slimeball ever last go round. Yes, I now believe I was a marketing director working for Sega.

Anyway, here's the status report. I'm keying this all in ahead of time, as you'll discover.

• About a week ago, the Athlon 2000+/Windows XP Professional machine that I do most everything on blew out it's power supply unit (PSU). This was met with rage and frustration on my part; the loss of what is my primary workstation was NOT fun.
• I yanked that machine out of my setup here, ordered the pieces I need thanks to some timely donations, and switched the majority of my function over to the Macintosh G3 - it's the heart of the home network, functioning as router and gateway unit to the DSL modem, so I was able to at least get online.
• During evening chatter with friends via messengers, a long-time friend lobs a potshot at me about my running string of hardware issues. Reminding him that damned near everything in my setup is second (or third!) hand gets ignored. And then /I/ get ignored.
• Looking to boost my flagging spirits, I found a really nifty site with all sorts of vid clips and shockwave files, and was cheerfully downloading the ones that I liked... which in hindsight was a COMPLETELY idiotic thing to do...
• I maxed out the primary drive in the G3, not thinking to check how much space I had left. I was enjoying the clips and completely forgot that the drives in the Mac are fairly small. When I realized what I'd done, I had less than two megabytes of space left.
• Yesterday: Finally waking up to the fact that I'm in very dangerous waters, I start hastily deleting things and dumping files over onto the NT Server machine... I'd managed to clear about 105 mb, and then the screen greyed out and the Mac crashed. Hard. I've only seen Novel servers crash this badly.
• Attempts to reboot the Mac prove fruitless; the primary drive's apparently got major issues. Panic hits in a solid wave.
• Though the panic, I couldn't remember how to force the G3 to boot from a CD. Managed to be coherent enough to call rowandoll, leaving a message on her answering machine pleading for help. Calling her was much less expensive than trying to find a phone number for wibbble, who lives overseas... and with both the XP machine AND the G3 down, I've got -zero- 'net acces. (The NT Server flatly refuses to cooperate with the DSL modem. The linux machine acts like it's configuring and working, but the DSL modem never ticks.)
• Federal Express shows up with the ordered PSU and processor cooler. I thank the man five of six times, until he flees in terror. Set it aside; right at that moment, the Mac was ALL I was thinking about
• At this point, I'm in tears. For those that're unaware, I'm generally housebound most of the time. I've got a social activity on Tuesday nights with a gaming group, and the rest of my social life is online... along with most of the people I consider family.
• Another hour passes; I've finally gotten the sobbing mostly under control. Ending up face down on the floor after hyperventilating will do that. Yes, I really do go completely to pieces sometimes, and this was one of those times. I'm in much better shape today, at least emotionally.
• Rowan calls, having gotten home from work to find a message from a quasi-hysterical doll on her answering machine... I'd not completely disintegrated at the point of my initial call. She patiently talked me down out of the worst of the panic and helped me get myself back under a modicum of control. She reminds me of the pathetically simple key combination to get a G3 to boot from the CDROM... hold the 'C' key while the machine works. I was so glad to have the information that at the time I'd not even considered feeling like an utter moron. :p
• Booted the machine up from the CD, and via the drive utility discovered that the primary partion for the G3 was FUBAR. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach turns to outright nausea. Somewhere in here, the G3 stops giving that multitonal 'bong' sound as it powers up.
• Rummage through my collection of bits and pieces, locating a just over 3gig drive that seems functional. Shut everything down and open up the G3. Carefully unhooked the wires and power harness that were in my way, and started shuffling drives around. My hope at this point is that I can install OS X on the new drive, mount the old drives, and salvage the data there.
• Carefully hook everything back up. Doublecheck that everything's plugged into the right spots, and that nothing's been missed. Close the panel. slide the machine back into it's spot, then hit the power button... expecting to boot off the CD and begin the install proccess. Instead, I get... nothing. The machine powers, the drives spin up, but I get NO monitor feed. At all. No beeps, no tones, and the drives just idle. Houston, we have a 'no boot' situation.
• Repeat hardware checks, finally resorting to putting the drives back in their original spots; I no longer give a damn about the data loss, I just want my baby back. The 'no video/no boot' condition continues.
• Pounded my head on the desk as the panic hit /again/. Reached for the phone and called Rowan again... and again she very patiently talked me down. She'll argue vehemently, but it's my considered opinion that she should be up for Sainthood. Cope with it, sis.
• Long conversation ensues. The net result is the powering /off/ of the G3 to let it sit overnight and maybe magically decide to work. PS2 is fired up with Kingdom Hearts; I desperately need to thump the snot out of SOMETHING. Look up after a bit, figuring it's about midnight, and shut things down to wander to bed... discovering that it's actually 0415 in the AM.
• Restless sleep. If you can call it sleep. More like sequential catnaps. Morning arrives... while I don't hold much hope, I still try to power up the Mac. 'Not much hope' turns to 'no hope at all'; condition persists. :(
• Pull the G3 out of it's spot and swap in the repaired Athlon, hooking it in. The expectation is that I can get it configured to use the DSL, at least getting ONE machine back up online.
• You had to know it wouldn't work, right? Given the preceeding mayhem, it's almost a given. Getit all configured, and discover that the entire machine crashes if the DSL's enabled. We're not talking program fault... it reports an error with lsass, and then informs me that the system will shut down completely in 60 seconds. No option, no choice, just blammo. Which puts me back to square one, and explains why I'm keying this mess in ahead of time. I'm hoping to lob this through that 60 second or so window.

Which reminds me... Lady Elance? I desperately need to borrow wibbble some time soon; hardware matters are not really Rowan's province. While she's very knowledgeable on operations, and even some hardware points, this one's beyond her. It's the first real trouble I've ever had with the G3; until yesterday, it had been the most reliable machine I'd ever owned, even adding in my (rapidly diminishing) PC bias.

I... don't know how folks are going to reach me to help, though. I'm still a bit baffled on this one. The window isn't enough to log into a chat service /or/ check my email. My plan at this point is to take one of the much smaller systems in the 'too old to be useful' pile, install Windows 98SE, and pray that it will be stable enough to get online and get the help I need. That's going to be my project tonight.

At the moment, someone's just showed up at my door, intent on taking me to a movie. As frustrated as O am, I'm going to take them up on it.

Comments

[wibbble]

Hardware isn't really my speciality either - I've just picked up a lot through exposure.

If you're not getting the startup chimes, then something is Really Seriously Fucked. It's nothing to do with the drives - the startup chimes are the Mac's POST, and even if it fails you should get a sound (possibly a car crash sound, or 'duh-duh-duuuuh'). If it's not making that sound, then I'm uncertain - possibly the motherboard's totally fucked, or it could be as simple as having slightly tugged the motherboard PSU connector out.

When calm, check every connector and remove any extra hardware. You just want the boot drive and the CD-ROM plugged in, and the only PCI card should be the graphics card. If you can get the system up bare bones, then you can work on other stuff later.

I hope you can get online enough to see this, and to find answers. Check http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ - they might have some mention of this in their forums.

Also...

*hugs you lots*

Tell the hardware that if it doesn't behave, I'm going to have to go over there and kick the fucking shit out of it. And if I kick the fucking shit out of hardware, it /knows/ it's hard the fucking shit kicked out of it.

*hugs*

Good luck, and keep me updated.