An ongoing series of Usenet posts wherein I describe my latest
escapades collection electronic shit people throw out and reuse it for
my own collection.

This month... NOTHING!

Although I did pass up three (THREE!) flat-screen 40"+ TVs (including
one fairly nice Sony Bravia). Am I growing up? Or is it just that I've
finally run out of space? Surely there must be just a little more room
in the closet for another two or three televisions/monitors?

More seriously, my Win98 computer is having issues; random crashes and
the like. I suspect bad caps but I haven't really done much in the way
of troubleshooting. My heart's just not into it. I spent so much time
getting the thing to run and to have it go tits up just a year or so
after completion just hurts. Worse, I probably exacerbated the
situation whilst trying to install a second hard-disk.

It's a shame. I only discovered the problem the other day, when I went
to turn it on to maybe install a soft-synth (although, seeing as I
still haven't dug out the installation media for that software, I may
have been putting the cart ahead of the horse). A weird flicker at the
BIOS screen was my first warning; the hard-crash once Windows98 loaded
made my heart drop. No soft-synth... and no Windows98 either.

Odds are it's either the motherboard or the power-supply. The former
wouldn't be TOO bad (I actually have a spare or three ;-) but I've not
many PSUs lying around.

I really need to open it up and start probing the hardware. Or I guess
I could take this as a sign to either
a) give up running old hard-ware and just run
everything through emulation, or
b) start collecting hardware for an entirely new
Win9x computer.
(Note that Option c) "Give up on the whole thing and live in the
modern day" isn't on the table at all ;-)

Some days the Hardware Gods smile upon you, other days they don't. I
guess this is one of the latter.

But at least if I need another display, I know I won't be lacking.
It's been slim pickings for a while, but I guess people are buying new
again. I'd chastise people for not properly disposing of their e-waste
if I didn't benefit so much from their sloppiness ;-)