A day for my computer... (Part 2 of 2)

First Law of Blissful Ignorance: What you don't know will always hurt you.

Now, I was prepared. I did not want to switch ON my computer to test it again because a problem in SMPS could directly lead to drastic voltage fluctuations in the power supply to the system's main board as well as to the hard disk and other drives. So, I unplugged all the pheripherals that were connected to the CPU cabinet and took it to Richie Street as I was sure I could find a suitable solution for this problem there!

I asked the shop keeper for a AT form factor SMPS. He said it was not available and it was out dated. Just then I remembered reading in my motherboard manual that it is capable of supporting both AT as well as ATX. So thought I could directly go in for ATX SMPS. Then here comes a problem: The cabinet that I was using then had the push button type power switch which is not compatible with a ATX form factor SMPS. Instead of worrying about other issues, I purchased a new Zebronics cabinet itself with two exhaust fans located at the side and a 400 Watt ATX SMPS. The whole thing was transferred from the old cabinet to the new one.

During this transfer, I had to face up with a hell lot of problems which I've listed down below:

1. The cabinet did not have a provision to support a PS/1 slot which was hard fixed to the motherboard. - Resolution: a hole was made in a blank sheet metal and was screwed to the cabinet at the required position.

2. One of my two USB ports was dead. Hopefully the new cabinet had support for USB port at the front side. So I connected one to this and other one was connected to the back slot.

3. There wasn't enough space to do the wiring. Resolution: Optimal wiring.. managed to overcome this problem :-)

4. When all things were setup and the computer was booted - System RAM was reported as 128 MB. (What happened to the rest half of the RAM :-S)?? Resolution: Cleaned the RAM strips's contact with moisturising solution - did not serve the purpose, instead...

5. Computer monitor became garbled???? Resolution: Cleaned the RAM slot's contact with salt paper.

6. The SMPS fan was not running. Resolution: Oh.. it needed some motivation since it was all new for this place. I hit started it with a screw driver and it started to spin. After that, it started by itself as and when the computer was switched ON.

Well.. That's all. The whole thing forced me to spend 1500 bucks (Rs. 1250/- for the cabinet and Rs. 250/- for service) out of my pocket! :-(

I'm home now and everything seems to be running fine.. I gave some stress tests to my PC. It withstood them. Let's see how the new equipment performs..

The day turned out to be a special day for my computer! It has got a new shelter (the outer cabinet shell). For me, I went in to a state of acute trauma as Murphy's Law was over powered for the rest of day's time. Yet, I came across a lot of things that eventually happened to upgrade my knowledge on ATX form factor based computer systems.