08.07
Well, the aftermath of the lightning strike is becoming clearer. With the computer monitor out, I decided to try a couple spares that were laying around the house. This experiment brought good and bad results. The bad: no picture. Crappers. The worse, that must mean the graphics card on the computer is blown. The even worse, the Dell b110 I use has an integrated graphics set on the mother board. If it’s blown, the mother board is probably blown, too. The good: maybe the monitor is alright. Or not. No way tell right now.
The machine does power up. By watching the blink rate of the hard-drive light, I can tell when it has reached the sign-in page. Entering the password starts more hard-drive activity, with the light blinking normally. That’s good. The bad: it’s a six-year old obsolescent machine that isn’t worth repairing.
Now for the real kick in the head. Our homeowner’s policy has a five-hundred deductible. With all costs totted up, I might get a hundred fifty out of the racketeers. So I’ll be stuck borrowing time on other people’s machines for quite a while.
So that’s the noodle for today, folks. If I’m scarce around here, and elsewhere on the web, you know why.
Really sorry to hear about that PE. I was hoping for better. I might be able to help you out with a graphics card, I have more of them than I can use. Nothing new but still some I think serviceable. I also have a few comps about as old as the one you are looking to replace that with a hard drive might run again. They are probably too old to be worth shipping.
If you go on line tonight around 10 eastern we can talk.
Good luck.