2001-06-29 - 11:48 p.m.

Upgrade

One of the things that I've been promising myself for a while that when I got a little money I was going to upgrade my computer.

It's been a good machine, but it's about three years old. It's slowness is starting to be an issue, and the video card is utterly inadequate.

When we were out getting Lily's PS2 we also bought some games for our computers. I bought myself Carmageddon 2000 the third game in the Carmageddon series. I was wild about Carmageddon 2, so I looked forward to 3 very much.

On the side of the box it said that 1MB of Video RAM was the minimum requirement. Hey, I've got that! But the RECOMMENDED amount is 32MB. Zoiks!

It was plain that today's software had bypassed my video card. In fact YESTERDAY'S software had too. I'd constantly had video problems with Carmageddon2, and when I reloaded it recently the game had simply worsened the resolution of the game, rather than dance on the edge with my current card.

It was also plain that I needed more RAM. With multiple windows open I was getting computer slowness, error messages and frequent crashes.

Especially troublesome was ChessBase, my chess database program, which is the most important thing I use my computer for. The interface between CB and Fritz, my chess analysis engine, has been a big problem. The longer I use Fritz, the more it bogs down. The only way to make it move again is to reboot, but that takes a long time too. Sometimes, Fritz just slows to a crawl. This is a huge pain because it makes analyzing games for my chess column take forever.

Now, from the preceding, you may get the mistaken idea that I actually know something about computer hardware. No, no, a thousand times no! I am a big hardware ignoramus, always was, even when I was a major computer geek in high school.

Luckily I have a computer expert on the premises - Lily.

Before I met her, when my computer became too out-of-date I'd simply buy a new one. A valid solution, but expensive. However, my temptation was always to stick with the old machine as long as possible. For example, the computer down in the comic store is a 486!

However, Lily looked at the components of my old system and said that I needed more RAM, a new video card and a new motherboard. Since those are the major components of a new system, she suggested that we buy something called a "bare bones" computer and she could install it in my old box. This is like buying a practically new system - without actually buying one.

Lily ordered the components a couple weeks ago, and they finally arrived here early this week. However, I thought it best to dismantle my machine AFTER I'd finished my chess column for the week.

Watching Lily work is very interesting. She says that she's almost completely self-taught about computers, and she seems to use a trial-and-error method of putting things together and making them work. It's something I'm quite familiar with - it's the way I used to write computer programs.

She has my computer up and running now, but there seem to be a host of little problems. For example, Carmageddon 2000 won't run on my machine. Lily has investigated the program online and from what she can tell it is very buggy indeed - but our particular problems seem to be unique. However, she is not even close to giving up on the problem.

Actually, I think at this point very little of my old computer is left. In fact, it is even in a jazzy new box, that looks a little Apple-esque. And the sides are still open and I can see the computer's colorful wiry guts. Lily isn't done with it yet - my computer is now a patchwork creation, a Frankenstein's Monster and very much a work in progress.