Fans for nothing#

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:02:59 +0000

Since upgrading my amd64 box to 64studio the other day, it's been unable to run more than 24 hours without shutting itself down - usually while I was out and unable to see how it crashed. Yesterday, though, I was actually at the keyboard, and (suspecting overheating) instantly whipped the case off while I rebooted it into the BIOS setup screen. Hmm. Looks hot. Ow. Feels hot, too. Perhaps a case fan would be a good idea.

Well, right diagnosis, wrong prescription. I bought a case fan today, and perhaps it was a good idea, but the immediate problem seems to be that the CPU fan only revolves intermittently (and has now stopped doing even that, whch made the roblem much easier to identify). There's not much a case fan can do to mitigate that ...

On the upside I also got a new graphics card to replace the very elderly Voodoo3 I've been using for about eight years, and took the opportunity to recable everything and neaten up all the wires inside the machine, so it looks prettier if nothing else.

64studio looks kind of cool so far, although I haven't played with it too much yet. That was motivated by another foray into producing mixes for the LFNS. Having messed around a little with Mixmeister and finding that although it makes the hard things (beat matching, etc) simple, it compensates by making the simple things (such as starting the track when you want it to) way way way too difficult, I'm looking for something slightly different. I just don't yet know what.