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All posts tagged with "Computers"

I built a computer!

Last week, I built my very first computer as a present for the boyfriend. He needed an upgrade for his gaming machine and we found that his 2006 model just couldn't be upgraded any further and the latest games wouldn't run... So, we would refit it. New motherboard, new processor, new graphics card.

He wanted a top-of-the-range machine so that it wouldn't need upgrading for a while yet, so we selected the almost-best-but-not-quite (not made of money here :P ) parts.

We went with the following:

When it arrived, we found that ah - previous computer case was a Micro ATX form and the motherboard we purchased was ATX. The graphics card required at least 400W of power and the current PSU would only supply 115W. Hmmm. Oh well, blame my n00biness. :P Out we went again, and picked out the following extra parts:

So! Now we build (pictures described by text underneath them)...

Toys!
Parts!

Working area
The working area - ooh, shiny

In goes the motherboard
In goes the motherboard

It's in!
Processor

Almost there
Almost there... Most of the bits in now!

Aaaand... Then I forgot to take more pictures, so here's the finished product:

The finished product

The front bit opens up to reveal the optical drive etc. Yes, it lights up (not my idea...), but it worked first time, the drivers and everything installed without a problem, and everything is great :D We took the 200GB hard drive and 8-in-1 card reader out of the old computer as they were still pretty good, then reformatted the lot and put Windows 7 RC 64-bit edition on there (it previously had XP Media Center which would only see 2GB of RAM :\ ) and lo and behold... Latest games run fine, not found a single problem with it yet. We'll definitely be getting the full version of Windows 7 when it comes out as the boyfriend hates Vista and needs DirectX 10 for his games (which is only available in Vista and 7)... So, there we have it. He can pay for that though :P

I was surprised to find that it worked, to be honest... I'd never built a computer from scratch and while I did have some guidance at first, I was apparently doing so well I didn't need it XD

More pics can be seen on my Flickr account :)

Reverting to Safari 3 from Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.5

Did you make the same mistake I did, and update to Safari 4 when it was offered as a Software Update, then found some things didn't work any more, or you just plain don't like Safari 4? If so, here's how to revert back to Safari 3.2.3 on Mac OS X Leopard.

  1. Remove your existing Safari installation. Drag /Applications/Safari.app to the Trash, and rename the ~/Library/Safari folder (where ~ is your home folder, e.g. /Users/your-username) to something else (you're essentially making a backup here). It is important that you empty the Trash after doing this, as I found my 'new' Safari copied itself to my Trash folder.
  2. Rename ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.RSS.plist (if you have it - I didn't, but then I wasn't subscribed to any feeds) to something else (backups again - these files contain your bookmarks and RSS feeds so if you don't want to lose them, don't skip this step)
  3. Edit /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Resources/Info.plist and replace all instances of the number 5530 with 5525. Please note: you may need to modify the file's permissions in order to be able to edit it. This can be done by right-clicking it, selecting Get Info, and modifying the permissions at the bottom - you need to give your username read and write access.
  4. Download Safari 3.2.3 and install it (you will be asked to reboot afterwards)
  5. Hey presto, you have Safari 3 again! Replace the files from step 2 (you may need to remove the new files created by Safari 3). Some people have said this doesn't seem to work for them, and if it doesn't for you or screws up your Safari, you might need to open the files and add your bookmarks back in manually... It seems there might be an inconsistency in the XML but I haven't looked into it in too much detail.

There you go, just thought I would share :P

Instructions for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4)

Edit: I have been asked for instructions for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) - unfortunately, I don't have access to that version, but I'm told the instructions do work, except that the following modifications are to be made:

Keeping water near a computer is a bad idea.

Now why didn't I listen when I was told that?

Let me explain. Earlier today I was thirsty so I had a bottle of water on my desk next to my laptop. For ease of use, I'd left the lid of the bottle off so that I didn't have to take it off all the time.

Now, I'm in the process of moving out of this room, so all my stuff is in random places, including my external CD-RW drive, which was currently on its side leaning against my stereo. The water bottle was next to it.
Of course, the CD-RW drive had been sat there on its side for the past few days all nice and steady... and it chooses today to topple over (to the other side it was leaning towards...), taking the bottle of water with it and therefore resulting in water all over my computer. I grab the tissues and start mopping up my keyboard and touchpad, getting the majority of the water out. I tried typing, and of course nothing was working. I tipped the computer on its side and out came a shower of water from the keyboard... I didn't even think that much water had got onto the comp in the first place since the water bottle was nearly empty, but eeeeep so much water!
Comp refused to do anything after that, except with my usb mouse (not the touchpad) so I shut it down and got my recently packed hairdryer out to try and dry the computer out a bit. This worked for a couple of minutes... until the hairdryer stopped working for absolutely no reason. O.O I thought maybe I'd maxed the fuse or something, but I don't see how I could have done that. I left both appliances alone after turning the comp upside down so that the water would hopefully fall out or something. I tried turning it on about half an hour later - all fine, except when I try and log in (the comp is password protected, see) - keyboard still acting up. I try to switch comp off - nothing doing. Bah. I turn it off with the power button, then try the hairdryer in a different socket - nope. Move it back to original socket - ah it works now. Weird. Anyway, I get on with drying computer out... then restart it. It wouldn't start properly so I made it start with "Last Known Good Configuration" and it at least seemed to want to log me in. Yay!

So here I am now. Computer's dry now, but the space bar is really sticky. Not the actual key itself, but if I press anything remotely near the space bar (including the touchpad and surrounding plasticy bits) it gets stuck and I have to hit my poor computer repeatedly to get it to unstick. All that, and I haven't checked the CD-RW drive for damage after it fell over. Oh well, it survived me dropping it on the floor once so... yeah... I'll find out when I get home, I guess... or not, I don't use it there. Hmmm. Yeah. Anyway.

Blah. That was long and useless. Just learn from that, kids - water + computer (or any electrical appliance, for that matter) = bad.