The Box That Wouldn't POST

So instead of helping Barbara put together the opera class listening, I've spent today doing battle with Mom's old computer. Last night I downloaded and mostly burned Fedora Core 3. This morning, the computer wouldn't POST. Grawr. I've found that more often than not, the box won't POST, but with the front bezel off pushing the reset button, it will eventually POST. Given that my plans for the box involve it sitting on the floor with all of my CDs on its hard drive, as long as it's stable I don't care how much of a pain it is to get started. I have long term fears for the stability of the box, on POST the BIOS reports the +3.3 V at +4.6 V +/-. This is not good and I'm hoping is just an error, but all of the other voltages come in low (but not by that much), so who knows. So, first install fails when the machine spontaneously restarts. Second install fails, saying the Samba files aren't readable off the CD and saying I'm not going any further, third install pauses on the second disc, complaining about inability to read the CD, so I download CD2 again and throw it on a CD-RW and the install finishes. I should point out that this is the default install, so there's definately no Samba and I'm not sure about ssh, I assume so, but anyway. I then proceed to b0rk this install by telling the monitor to display at 1024x768, which it doesn't like. As I don't feel like configuring _everything_ from the command line, and since I don't know when I'm going to get internet access to the box, I decide to install a fourth time with Samba enabled. Hopefully a fifth won't be necessary.

In other news, ITS has decided to suck again, and has reactivated blocking of IRC and my SMTP server. uncleamos reports the same problem, deathbysnusnu has no such problems. AAAARGH.

A meme, courtesy of irilyth
( You can never go home again... )