Atomic Playboy

I finally have a laptop. This has been needed for so long now. It’s an Acer Travelmate, 2.8GHz Celeron. Needs more RAM, though — the integrated video chip uses 64 MB of system memory, and it only had 256 MB to begin with.

But first, I need a WLAN card for it so I don’t have to drag a network tail around the apartment.

Approximately 48 hours ago, one of my hard drives suddenly got musical. It clicked to the rhythm of the music.

I instantly shut down, let the computer cool down for a few minutes, and restarted. It was still clicking, the drive head obviously not being able to go where it wanted to.

Shit. The IBM Deskstar “click of death.” The reason they’ve been nicknamed “Deathstars.” Click, and they’re dead.

I shut down again, pulled the plug on the drive and restarted. This time, the computer couldn’t find my primary disk. The one with the OS.

This is where I started to panic.

One more reboot, jump into BIOS and autodetect drives, and it’s there again. Phew.

I bought a new case about a year ago. After having moved the hardware to this case, I noted that it vibrated and made a humming noise. I attributed this to the new case. Now that the dead disk is gone, it’s not humming anymore. Great, that means that the disk sat there vibrating madly for a year.

Also, while poking around in the guts of my computer, I saw that the back case fan was out, thanks to my quick dirty hack to get power to it. Heat problems may explain some strange behavior after the disk died. It’s back on, and I’ve ordered a proper power connector, as well as round IDE cables to improve the air flow.

I really need new CPU cooling. I have an Athlon XP 2100+, at 61°C (rising to 63-64° with the incredible heat we’ve had lately) when idle. Not really the optimal work temperature.

…so I guess my tax return will have to go to a new disk.

Christmas is coming up. Buy me something from this list and I’ll be happy for at least six months.

• Apple iPod. This is easily the best MP3 player on the market. Sure, you can get portable players with more storage for less than the cost of an iPod, but they’re simply not as nice as an iPod. Or as small as an iPod. Or as cute.
• Apple iBook. I really want a good laptop, and I’m very curious about Mac OS X. I can kill two birds with one stone and get an iBook. My current laptop is an old Cyrix 100MHz that’s little more than a glorified SSH terminal that I mostly use to IRC from my bed. It runs Debian Linux in text-mode only.
• Digital camera. It would be great if I could take pictures whenever I felt like it and put them in the gallery.

Uh. Well, that was all that I could think of at the moment. Not exactly cheap toys. But I’ll probably buy the iPod within a few months. I also need to buy a Firewire card, since my motherboard doesn’t have Firewire ports…