Memes

Ahahaha. Last time I did clean my PC and re-paste for the first time since 4 years - my wife has touched PC case and hit it with static. She saw my face fall into despair the moment it happened. She didn't knew. It didn't start after reassembly. And that's how I bought my current PC.

After many attempts and debugging I found out that one ram slot is dead and PC wont boot with any ram sticks in this port. But that was too late.

I've never had this issue. Though to be honest I have an industrial motherboard that isn't prone to failure and has to be configured manually for literally everything on the machine in the bios. Currently rocking 48 gigabytes of ddr4 ram running in fucked quad channel with a core i5 9th gen and an RX 6600. Running Linux as Windows 11 literally halves my performance in games.

I've quite literally shocked my motherboard and forced shut it down several times and it does not care. It also has PS2 keyboard and mouse ports and a single PCI slot alongside serial and VGA on the back. Yes I try to avoid shocking my electronics and genuinely try to be careful with them. Kinda hard when your power cuts though. Or you think that blanket you have on would be fine to wear in the cold while you are repasting.

The thing is also neat as in it has a backup bios when I was modding my BIOS I really appreciated because it meant you could always just flash the motherboard without desocking and reprogramming the bios chip.

You also have to configure where the thing boots and how the ram works as well. Or else it will just refuse to boot past the bios. Oh yeah and enable settings specific to your CPU and what it can do.

Whenever you reset the CMOS it has a default password which is just password as well.

This is why you don't clean it with soap, water and a wire brush. Just use air.

I have been living with only my work laptop for years now because that happened and then I didn't want to deal with it until later.

Not the best idea to plug it directly into the socket either, unless your home has surge protection built in. Dunno if that's even a thing.

Ideally plug it in to a UPS with an isolated circuit so that it acts as a surge protector, filter, and battery backup.

Same.

What I would like is LEGO-esque PC system, where you just slot shrouded hardware bricks and cartridges, no wires. The game cartridges of the SNES had variable amounts of storage or chips to enhance performance, such as the SuperFX for Star Fox and Yoshi's Island.

After having built a bunch of pcs through the years, I've learned that components really aren't as fragile as they feel.

The industrial design has improved enormously since then, as well. The days of using the same connector for different voltages, or connectors which can be rotated are gone. Everything has a keyed connector or similar pokayoke that means it only fits to the correct place, and only one way around. CPUs don't suicide if you forget to attach their system cooler, they just throttle. Much better, and obvious in retrospect that it should always have been that way.

Apart from the front panel connectors on a motherboard, of course. Those fiddly little bastards can get straight to hell.

Some IDE (PATA) connectors had no keying....

Hang on, I've never heard of this. I haven't built a huge amount of machines but never knew about RAM training!

I even did a Compaq course back in the day ~25 years ago. Is this a recent thing, by any chance (DDR era)?

Yeah RAM training is just unnerving. For like 6 minutes you have a Schroedinger's box that is either fucked or about to POST

take forever for the first boot due to ram optimization

That's not just a downloading RAM joke?

Wait what? How does that work? Is there some data storage in the motherboard that's remembering the best way to organize your ram?

I've built quite many computers and the first powerup always fails for some very minor thing, like the psu switch being off, forgetting ram... but last time i got everything right the first time. but it still didn't go smooth. i powered it on. fans spinning, black screen...i waited and waited...shut it down, tried again. nope, shit. switched rams to different slots. nope. tried with one stick. nope. got frustrated, started filling out the rma form and boom suddenly it posted. turns out it just takes long to post....like ridiculously long. sometimes more than 5 minutes. since it works I've been too lazy to take it apart and rma the mobo. I'll do it just before the warranty expires.

What car guys do is tap a wrench in the engine bay as soon as the vehicle owner starts up their motor for the first time so it sounds like it's knocking

I really miss case buzzers :(

Sacrilege, the machine spirit needs its blood!