Some Blog Site

Quick Quiz:
Of what is this a picture?

If you said “a desktop computer from around 2004” you are correct.
If you said “not a Mac” you are also correct.
If you said “Some Guy’s computer” you are also correct.

Thursday night, after all the non-festivities of the day, my wife started the computer but the screen was misbehaving. The picture was choppy and repeated and pixels were not where they should have been. I shut it off and figured I’d look at it the next day.

The next day, there was no picture at all. The monitor told us “No Signal”.

So I replaced the video card. I went from this:

to this:

No, I did not mix up those photos. The desktop computer had a fancy graphics card. I had to add the cooling system (heat sinks! heat-transfer tubes! a fan!) after the card kept resetting during Command & Conquer. That was years ago.

On Saturday, I pulled a video card out of one of my previous computers and plopped that one in the current desktop. Other than having to grab a VGA cable because the old card doesn’t support DVI, I had no problems.

Here’s how the cards compare:

I can’t run CnC anymore, but at least I know what I want for Christmas now.