Anyway there was nothing seriously wrong with the hard drive, Windows detected some of those error things like cross linked files and stuff. This is a 20GB drive, which I never scan or defrag because those are things of the past. While I've got the drive up and running I copy all the files over to the drive on the AMD box. Then I put the laptop drive back in the laptop and it boots up just fine.
Meanwhile, I go to Fry's to get another case fan for the AMD box. I got a Gigabyte brand motherboard, and it gets a bit hot when the case is closed and when it is raining the world of Morrowind. While I'm there I decide to pick up a "front IDE & power panel" which is a little bracket that fits in a floppy drive slot and provides an IDE and power socket to the front of the case. I had seen this gizmo before, and thought it might be handy for swapping in an extra hard drive for backups and stuff.
Unfortunately there are some cable management issues with using the front IDE & power panel. Typical ATA ribbons don't have a lot of room between the two plugs, so I can't connect the panel and also connect an internal drive. I need some kind of, hm, ATA extension, or at least a male/male ATA adapter to make a longer ribbon. (Okay, I know these ribbons are short for a reason, with an extra adapter and length of ribbon I'm risking lots of extra resistance or something.) But there are no such things, at least not at Fry's.
Well, the panel was only like $5, not much of a loss and I learned a few things.
Meanwhile, the cable modem is still flakey. I call in to get a technician sent out, but the soonest appointment was one week away. I hoped the problem will fix itself, which it does partly -- the cable box started behaving. A week passes, the Comcast man shows up. I can tell he really doesn't want to have to figure out what the problem is, so he just swaps out the old modem (a two year old modem, which, frighteningly enough, the guy tells me was from before he started working that job), activates the MAC address on the network, and bolts out of here like his pants were on fire. "You know how to set up your router? Okay, here's your copy." He doesn't even close the front door all the way.
An hour later an the cable modem is unable to reach the gateway. I power cycle the modem, and am back on the network. Thirty minutes later the same thing happens. This new model has a yellow and orange led marked "Test", which is orange. I call Comcast.
"My high speed internet isn't working."
"First I have to inform you that in the case that the problem is not due to Comcast you will be charged a service fee of $49. Let's see, the first appointment I can get you is... next Wednesday?"
"The guy was just out here. He just left an hour ago."
"Oh, right, you told me. Oh, but the work order has been closed. We can't do anything once the order has been closed."
"Okay, sign me up for next Wednesday. Say, any idea when you guys will be going bankrupt?"
An idea slowly surfaces in my brain. The cable guy swapped out the modem, but he didn't change the power supply. If, perhaps, the power supply got fried, it might be delivering too much/too little power to the modem, causing it to overheat and shut down. Fortunately he left a new power supply with the new modem -- and, as a bonus, yet another 10' Cat 5 network cable. I plug in the new power supply and never look back.
Technical tip: 90% of all hardware problems are due to faulty power supplies.
Now, two weeks since the electrical storm, I'm getting the same system disk message on my laptop, only this time the hard drive has no errors. I think something on the motherboard must be failing, because it doesn't feel/sound like it is even trying to spin up the drive. If I boot from floppy, the C: drive is not accessible.
So this morning I had to dig up a 50' network cable to hook the AMD box up to the network (the laptop has a wireless card). Then I had to download and install Firefox, which took maybe two minutes. And so here I am.
I have two questions/issues to ponder and discuss. One, any suggestions for the laptop? She's had a good long life, and this was in fact her second hard drive, kind of like a liver transplant for computers.
Two, suggestions on how to rig up the external IDE panel so that I don't have to open the case every time I want to hook up a stray drive?
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