robglazebrook.com

A quick update on my life:

1. My motherboard arrived quickly, and my computer is working again. I had a brief scare last weekend while playing around with overclocking the CPU and video card simultaneously. My computer suddenly rebooted on its lonesome and, when it had booted back up, the screen ‘looked funny’. That is, every fourth pixel was missing. I got pretty nervous, but after several hours of tinkering and letting it cool down, the problem remedied itself. I guess I only half-fried one of the rendering pipelines.

I’m currently not overclocking.

2. I have two tests and a quiz yet this week, as well as a not-large-yet-important paper due on Monday. Therefore, I don’t have a lot of free time at the moment. Although, honestly, that really isn’t much of an excuse for not posting stuff here, and I’m not trying to use it as such. I’ve other excuses reserved for that.

3. Last week Megan and I turned in our paperwork stating that we wouldn’t be living in our apartment for the next lease period (beginning in August, as do nearly all leases in Ames). Soon, likely, we’ll put in our paperwork looking for a subleaser starting in May at the absolute latest. This Friday, I’m signing a lease for the next period on the house on 6th Avenue, which is the home of several of my friends (though several will be subsequently moving out). Good thing my dad got that new truck of his, eh?

Anyway, that’s all I care to talk about at the moment. I know my website has been somewhere between a boring and a painful read these last few months, and for that, I apologize. Remember when I said a few months ago that I didn’t want to be one of those emotional, whiny bloggers that does little but bitch and moan about the unfairness of life? Well, that opinion hasn’t changed much, and neither has my situation. So I’m sorry to you all (assuming an audience still exists), but I don’t have a lot of happy stuff to report.

Alright, here’s a little more detail:

It all started a couple of weeks ago when my friend Mark asked me to help him with his computer. Mark was in the middle of building his first computer and the process had come to a standstill. He had all the parts, he had them all together, and nothing would turn on. I brought my computer over (beause we had similar setups) and swapped parts back and forth with him until we learned he had a bad power supply. A quick trip to Best Buy solved that problem, and Mark was on his merry way. I, however, had a new problem: I had the computer bug again.

You see, I used to spend a lot of time building and rebuilding my computer. It was a source of pride. Some guys had their cars, I had my computer. Dorky, yes, I know. Deal. :) Anyways, I’d been building and rebuilding my own computers for a long time. And then, around a year and a half ago when it came time to replace my system which had been damaged beyond repair in a storm, I realized I had neither the time nor the inclination to build my own system. So instead, I did the next best thing: I went to an online computer store and custom built my computer. They sent it to me pre-assembled and pre-tested. All I had to do was plug it in. And, for the last year and a few months, that had been enough for me. But that changed two weeks ago. I touched the Forbidden Fruit. I held my CPU in my hands and thought of all the things I used to do, and could be doing.

A few days after that, I ordered a new computer case and power supply online. I decided, in light of my economic situation, that I would upgrade in increments, buying a piece at a time. My case and power supply arrived Friday, and I spent the entire night (since Megan was visiting her family) putting the computer together. After several hours of labor, carefully moving everything into the new case and arranging it just so for the greatest visual appeal, I turned it on.

It ran beautifully. I was excited. It stayed cool, it looked awesome (see the picture at the bottom), and it was glitch-free. I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do some software updates I’d been putting off for a long time. First on the list: the BIOS.

For you computationally disinclinated readers, BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. It’s a little tiny piece of code that sits on your motherboard (not on your hard drive, where everything else is stored) and tells your computer what to do after you push the power button. Manufacturers often release new versions of the BIOS, which can improve system stability, performance, and so on.

I went to my manufacturers website, which wasn’t very intuitively designed, and after a bit of searching found the list of BIOSes, which weren’t documented at all. I downloaded the one I thought I wanted, restarted my computer, replaced my BIOS with the one I’d downloaded, and resetarted again.

Nothing happened.

Now, in my defence, I’ve spent the last several years working primarily with Dell computers. I’ve replaced dozens of Dell BIOSes. If you try to put an incompatible BIOS on a Dell computer, it won’t let you. That’s what we in the biz call ’smart’. I guess my computer wasn’t smart. It didn’t warn me at all that I was overwriting my perfectly usable BIOS with one that wouldn’t work at all. It wrote the file, restarted, and that was that. The computer still turns on, the fans still whirr, and I can hear the hard drive spinning up. That’s it.

And so, dear readers, that is how I created this very pretty, very glowy paperweight:

What you will need for this modification:

1) A computer case with sufficient weight to hold down however much paper you’re planning on weighting.

2) A cheap, no-name motherboard. If such a motherboard cannot be found, choose a motherboard with a name consisting of one or more ‘techie’ words with no apparent relationship to what a motherboard actually does. For this modification, I chose ‘Syntax‘.

3) Written and online documentation forged by an Engrish-speaking, moderately intelligent dormouse with a Scrabble™ board. Although the dormouse should be limited to the letters found within a single Scrabble™ set, the dictionary rules of the game do not apply.

4) A downloaded flashable BIOS with a cryptic name and no documentation. For the purposes of this modification I chose ‘Sm2917.bin’, though the actual name isn’t important as long as it is alphanumeric, contains at least one random uppercase letter, and pertains in no way whatsoever to the motherboard specifications.

This mod is best performed on little to no sleep at between one and three in the morning. First, install the motherboard into the weighty computer case. Second, ensure the computer boots into whatever operating system you’ve chosen (the OS choice is up to you, as paperweights generally run equally well on all systems, although Linux users will often insist their paperweights crash less frequently). Once your system is up and running, download the BIOS update from your motherboard manufacturer’s website. If said manufacturer does not have a website, which is certainly possible if your motherboard was constructed by Rhesus monkeys in Afghanistan (Rhesus monkeys are notoriously poor at web design), choose a manufacturer with a similar tech-sounding name. Restart your system and flash the BIOS to your motherboard. If your BIOS software is suitably obscure, it shouldn’t warn you about system incompatibilities. Restart your system again. If nothing appears on your screen after several minutes… congratulations! You’ve successfully turned your computer into a noisy, energy inefficient paperweight!