Sunday Rush
Went to HS’s place after his RT, and CheekyHan was there also (since they were taking RT together). His PC, an AMD Palermo Sempron 3500+ with an MSI motherboard was dead. However, not knowing the full cause of the problem, I insisted that the PC had to be brought to my place, since HS did not tell me his system spec, so I came prepared with everything except the important part, which was the MSI Debug Bracket, so CheekyHan drove us back to my place, stopping at SPC beside JJC for a $20 fuel top up before heading to my place.
Diagnosed the PC, seems to be either a motherboard problem or the CPU is spoilt (very low chance), so therefore HS has to get a new PC. Worked my way through the CPU and motherboard bundle pricelist, and decided on the Asus P5K SE/EPU (for the cheapest motherboard with eSATA and 3 year warranty) with an Intel E2160 and 2GB RAM. Headed down to Funan because the chances of finding an eee Box there was higher than Sim Lim Square, and also there were DIY shops there for HS’s parts. In the end, the DIY shop only had the motherboard, but no CPU, so we headed to SLS. Finally, we got the whole set for $302 (after 2% cash discount) at a shop there. Took a look around SLS for the eee Box, and the price difference is huge - one shop was selling for $509, while another shop was selling for $439. Decided to be patient and wait for fatdeals.sg to reserve one for me, since their office is at Commonwealth MRT, and cheaper by a few dollars.
Went to CheekyHan’s place to fix up HS’s new computer in record time (not really counted, because its a “basic” config of just CPU and RAM) of < 1 hour. CheekyHan also decided to do a stunt, and used HS’s old RAM on his mum’s Intel P4. Ended up spending close to one hour figuring out what was wrong with the PC, and eventually was solved, probably due to the weird power issue with the PSU and motherboard DIMM slots. Drove HS back to his place, and later got an SMS from him, saying that his mouse connector was the “round one” (PS/2), and unfortunately, the motherboard only has one PS/2 port, which was for the keyboard, so he either has to get a new mouse, or scrounge up a PS/2 to USB converter for his mouse.
On another note, I spent $10 on bus fare this morning, because I forgot to top-up my ez-link card yesterday. Yeah, the ticket states $1.40, which is pretty evil of SBSTransit to not show the actual cash paid. Woe is me…