I Voted

God bless America and God bless the soldiers who give us the right to vote. Yesterday was a big day in Montana and for The United States of America. Montana has chosen a democratic senator, Jon Tester, to go to the US senate. Montana is not known for democratic sponsorship, but I guess times change and so it goes.

Laura and I went to the elementary school nearby and cast our votes. One particular initiative shows what Missoula is all about, and makes me rather ashamed to say I am from Missoula. That being an initiative that encourages law enforcement to make marijuana use the lowest priority crime in the city. Yes, lowest priority - jaywalking is a higher crime than marijuana use. If you want to read the article in The Missoulian then you can click >>HERE<<.

I have been thinking of putting a computer together for Laura to use at school so she doesn't have to carry the laptop to school everyday. Yesterday was the day to put it together and what a mess I made! I took some video to show the office in complete chaos as I was getting the computer going. I did a quick pass of all the computers, starting with my new one.



I have since cleaned up the office and it is in good shape again. Laura's computer is just about ready to be taken to the school, and that will clear up a little room in the house for me to put another computer together! ha ha! I am actually thinking of putting together an old computer to play my old computer games on. I have several games that I need DOS to be played and XP does not use a DOS format any longer so I am thinking of reverting back to Windows 98 to play all my old games. I have enough computers now that I can put a 10 gig hard drive in an old computer and play my old games without much trouble. I might get started on that this afternoon.

I know a few people who read the blog has old computers they still use, or still have around and use occasionally so this is for those people. On of the neighbor girls moved out last week and she left her computer to me. She was having trouble with it, and didn't want to have the hassle any longer so she donated it to my collection. I initially thought it was going to be Laura's computer for the school and I wouldn't have to piece one together, but I soon discovered it was in bad shape. The monitor flickered continually so I plugged another monitor in and the same thing happened - I knew the problem was coming from the computer and it wasn't the monitor... I turned the computer off, and when I came back to turn it on, the monitor wouldn't respond and I knew trouble had found me.

Well, I did some research on the internet and found that the capacitors on the motherboard have gone bad. Keep an eye on the capacitors when you are working on the old computers - if they are bulging at the top and leaking then you are not far from having trouble. I guess this type of motherboard is known for having trouble, so it might not be as common for other types, but this is a problem I never knew about. The picture above shows the capacitors that are bulging and leaking a brown acid from the top. Something to keep in mind when buying an old computer or trouble shooting.

Until again

-=Nolan=-