I woke up about 9.20am this morning, the phone was ringing, I answered it.

It was my mate who stacked his bike and broke his wrist's mum, she was trying to get in contact with him, and thought I might now where he was. Apparently his wife (who's over in the US, where they got married) is trying to phone him, but can't get a hold of him either.

I told her I hadn't seen him for a while, and the last thing I knew was when my mate was late to pick him up from the train the other week. I said I was looking to talk to him too, because he's still got a bag here from when he was here.

I gave her the phone numbers of my mate who picked him up from the station the other week.

He'll be around the place somewhere, he's just hard to get hold of, since he lost his phone in the US, and hasn't got a new one.

Anyway, I watched tv for a bit.

The alarm I'd set went off at 10am (I've been sleeping until 11am recently, and I needed to be up at a reasonable time to go to the computer fair today).

I had some breakfast, got in the shower about 10.20am, I took my time, slowly got ready.

I unloaded my bag (it still had all the tools in it from the other day, when I mas moving the sat dish around trying to get Chinese channels). It had the ink cartridge in it I had to get replaced/refilled. I didn't even think about it, and I just chucked it out of the bag.

I took off, rode around to the computer fair.

I went in, had a quick look around. I bumped into the people from the Kincumber senior's centre I saw a couple of days ago. One of them had wanted to speak to me (to ask me how I fixed the issue with the network card) but she'd already left. I said I would send an email.

We chatted for a while, and then they decided to leave, it was a bit before midday.

I wandered around, looking at prices. I realised I didn't have my phone, left it at home.

I decided I would get my new mobo/cpu/ram, and then go home, drop it all off, get the ink cartridge and my phone, and come back.

I wandered around, looking at the prices more.

The guy I wanted to buy the stuff off, (who I bought all the gear for the servers from) wasn't here this time. There was a few stands missing this time.

I found the cheapest place, that I've dealt with before, and I bought the bits I needed. An Asus A7N8X-X motherboard (not as good as the Deluxe board I used in the servers I'm sure, but it was about half the price, and the machine I got for my mate last time had one of these boards in it, and it was ok). I bought an AMD Athlon 2600, I was going to get a 2500 like I got for the servers, but it was only $15 more for the 2600. I also got a single stick of 512MB DDR 400 RAM, I could have gone dual channel with 2 x 256MB DIMMs, but I might want to add more memory to this machine, without have to replace stuff, and if I get another 512MB chip, then I can do dual channel 1GB anyway. All this stuff was just shy of $400 worth. ($393 to be exact, and the tight arse guy wouldn't even make it $390).

I chucked it in my bike, and came home. I dumped it all out, grabbed the empty ink cartridge and my phone, and I went back again. Luckily this is the fair that's just around the corner from my place.

There was an SMS on my phone, from my mate I go to dinner with, he had decided that he did want the CDRs he wasn't sure about, and some cases for them.

I went in, and started looking for the replacement ink cartridge. I bumped into a mate, one of my other mate's sister's boyfriend. Chatted to him for a bit, he heard about me starting up, so I just went on a little bit about that.

He left a few minutes later, and I got back to looking at the cartridges. I had found one I thought looked compatible, but most of them are labeled by the printer they are for, not the genuine part number they replace.

I tried to call the woman who owns the printer to find out the model, she wasn't at home. She gave me her home phone number, I called in home, where her daughter might have been, but she wasn't home, there was no answer.

I got back to looking at the cartridges, and I thought I found one that looked right. I asked the woman selling, she said they were compatible, so I bought it.

I then went looking for new fans for the machine, because I'm not putting up with these niosy ass rattling fans anymore. I couldn't find any that go into the front of the drive bay, so after going around the whole fair looking for them, I ended up buying ones that screw onto the controller side of the disk, and have 2 fans attached. Hopefully the air movement will be enough to cool the top of the drive below, but I don't know what I'm going to do about the top of the top drive.

While getting them, I wanted 3 blue ones, but the guy only had 2, so I got three yellow ones instead (like it makes any difference) and the guy gave me a dollar off. Huge.

Oh, I've just looked in the case. I'll have to swap it all around anyway, the drive cage is in the way of the bottom drive, so I'll have to swap the order of the 3 hard disks and the DVDR drive around, that will fix that problem anyway.

I looked for the CDRs for my mate, I found a stack of 50, bought them. I decided it would probably be a good idea to buy some floppy disks, I immediately forgot again, until now.

I loaded all the stuff into my bike, I think I am done now. I will get something to eat, and then go.

As I was putting the stuff in my bike (Fans, ink cartridges, CDRs), I realised I hadn't got the CD cases. D'oh. I grumbled for a bit, but then I decided to go back in again, and get them. It took me a minute, I found some cheap coloured cases, bought them. I dumped them in my bike, got some food and a drink, and then after seating and eating it, I took off.

I went to the bottle shop nearby, to get more Scotch. Just as I had finished paying, my phone started ringing. I grabbed the bottle, and wandered out, and answered the phone. It was the woman who wanted the ink cartridge, she'd managed to find out it was a 640C or something. I said I had already bought it, and would come down and drop it off later, since she was still not at home.

I told her to give me 2 rings when she got home, and I would go down there some time after that to drop it off.

I got off the phone, I checked the cartridge while I put the bottle in my bag, and it was right. Cool.

I came home.

As I pulled into my street (for once I went the right way, instead of the wrong way up the one way street), there was a cop paddy wagon just leaving the street. I wonder why they were in here (it's all dead ends and stuff here, no main roads).

I unloaded everything.

I grabbed the motherboard tray out of my case with the dead mobo, and I started undoing the first screw. Hangon, Deja Vu, last time I did this, I gave the board one more go, and it worked.

I did the screw up again, plugged the board in, set it all up, and powered it up.

The monitor light went green this time, instead of just staying orange. Hmm.

I pulled the monitor signal cable out, and it came up "Check Signal Cable", ok good, the monitor is working, perhaps the video card is not.

I plugged it back in, no signal still, I powered it up and down a few times, each time the monitor would respond properly, but not give a picture. I tried turning the monitor on and off a few times, no difference.

I pulled the signal cable out. It didn't say "Check Signal Cable", and I couldn't bring the menu for the monitor up.

Hmm, I think my monitor just died. Very conveniently, just when I could have got a new one today, but now I'll have to try to sort something out.

I plugged the monitor from this machine into the video card, and powered the board up. Bang, it powered up.

Crap, now I've bought a new mobo/cpu/ram, and I don't know what to do with them.

The woman who wants the ink cartdridge just rang, she's home now. I suppose I'll have to go down there in a bit.

I can put the 800 back together as it was, but then I have all this new gear, with no case to put it in, no PSU, no disks to run on it, no video card.

Or I can replace the mobo/cpu/ram with the new ones, put them in the old case, reinstall windows, and at a later time get a case/disk/video card etc to rebuild the 800 in something else.

I just don't know what to do, I thought maybe blogging here would help me think about it, but it's not. It's a lot easier to just put the 800 back together and leave it alone, If I use the new mobo, I'll have muck around with the disks, and reinstall windows.

I think I'll blog yesterday and think about it more.