Withdrawal

I had a nasty scare on the weekend. My No1 PC wouldn't start. It's only response was "beep, beep, beep". No error messages or helpful hints to tell me what had happened, just a repeating series of 3 beeps. After several vain attempt to see if I could catch it's machine logic off guard by trying the same restart over and over again, the panic started to creep in. Was this it? Was my beautiful hand crafted PC dead? Did I kill it? How can I live with out it.

My heart rate started to increase and, although I knew that there were other things to be doing in the day, all I could think of was how I could possibly resuscitate the "Blue Beast". I started to pace and my breath became shallow. I had to take action. I had to read the motherboard manual.

NOTE: PC Hardware Manuals
Lets face it, as far a as useful information goes these documents are pretty thin on the ground. There was NO troubleshooting guide. No table that might give the slightest hint about what 3 beeps might mean. Nothing. However, there were warnings about overclocking the PC, and warnings about overheating, plus a section on an application that helps you push then machine a bit harder. But nothing about the beeps.

I finally noticed a single line instruction for a jumper setting that would allow me to reset any tweaks that I had applied that may have fried my machine. Like an addict searching desperately for a fix, I pounced. Cables were ripped free, screws spun off and the still and cold entrails of the box were laid bare. There it was. My last hope, just an itsy bitsy little piece of plastic to move from here to there and back again. Done.

Cables - check, Power - check. Restart - beep beep beep.

oh shit.

I untangled the cables again and peered inside to make sure that there was nothing obvious that would spell the terminal demise of a critical organ, the nasty white residue of a cancerous smoke. Nothing visible. Nothing obvious. Of course. When I moved in close thought there was a hint, a tiny waft, of the sickening tang left by cooked hardware. Now I was fearing the worst. What was it? The CPU, the motherboard itself? How would I know?

Now I had to walk away, turn my back on my creation and accept defeat. Throughout the day I kept thinking, what did I do? Where did it all go wrong. Was it lightning from a storm, or the heat of summer that pushed it over the edge. The hardest part was trying to come to grips with being without No1 PC, lighting up it's room with its cool blue glow.

A miracle
Later in the afternoon, I had some time at home to further dwell on the disaster. I had my laptop to get on the Net with to check out the makers website. The best information I could find was a 6MB download of the same stinking manual I had started with in the first place! Search after search found nothing. All I wanted was the story of the beeps.
It took an hour of searches and fruitless trawling through tech forums before a real clue was revealed. 3 beeps means that the base memory is dead. I returned to the still and cold PC, cabled it up and powered it on again.....
This time there was a flicker of life, of hope. The memory check was wrong, stating only 64KB were available and that all the hard drives could not be found, but there was a response!!! I restarted again to look at the messages more closely. On the third attempt...

beep, beep, beep

With renewed vigour I plunged back inside and carefully extracted the what seemed to be the cause of this woe. Restart. Beep, beep, beep. Well I expected that one. The freed chip looked and smelt fine. A little bit dusty but nothing disgusting. Nothing to suggest a critical failure. Carefully I went back in and repositioned the memory chip in its place, locking everything down firmly.

Cables, Power .. a deep breathe and Life. Blue beast was back.

I felt the euphoria spread through me. The thrill of re-unification. The fading of withdrawal.