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Daxyne is a computer which will run the GNU operating system. On this page I will log its creation in true Ulillillia fashion.
[edit] March 29: The need arises
In spring 2007 I purchased a five-year-old laptop which I named Moomintroll. This was an act of foolishness which I will not repeat. As soon as I took it home I learned of several problems: its battery was nonfunctional; it had no wireless; the screen tended to get glitchy if it was not held in a certain way.
Somehow I dealt with these things for the rest of the year, propping the base up on books to keep the screen working and stuff. On March 29, though, I opened up the laptop and the damn thing turned off on me. The power went out for a minute and then came back on, but when I tried to turn it on again it flipped off. I soon established that the power cable was dangerously loose and if not oriented the right way would cause the circuit in the computer to freak out. So, I proclaimed Moomintroll quite dead.
Was this because of my mistake in buying this particular used laptop? No, it had seemed to work when I was testing it out in the previous owner's office. Really, laptops just tend to fall apart after a couple of years.
Conclusion for today: Do not buy used laptops.
[edit] March 31: Daxyne is conceived
I started looking for replacement laptops or even desktops that were less than $400. Being half-Jewish I cannot bear to spend a large amount of money on a machine that I mainly use for hacking out papers at the last minute and writing pointless articles that nobody will read about stuff like Tibet.
Soon I realized this problem was out of my league and contacted my Korean friend who is obsessed with computer hardware. It is great to have a specialist friend who can help you with things like this. He instructed me not to buy a used computer on eBay, which is something I should have concluded for myself anyway (see above).
I soon learned that most modern computers come with Windows Vista, which nobody needs. Having been out of the market for 6 years this was an unfortunate surprise. I also determined that "Windows tax" on these computers is about $50, which could buy me about 10 great books from the used bookstore down the street. So, I was faced with the following choices:
- Buy new computer, buy or warez Windows XP, call tech support to get a Vista refund.
- Buy new computer, install GNU/Linux, call tech support to get a Vista refund.
- Build own computer, buy or warez Windows XP.
- Build own computer, install GNU/Linux.
I was hesitant to build my own computer but said friend assured me it was easy. Given these options, the choice was between going back to GNU which I have not used in 4 years, or getting my hands on XP somehow.
At home in Massachusetts I have a Windows 2000 CD which I used whenever I needed to flatten and reinstall. Windows 2000 is old and grungy but it works so I have never complained. The cost of that Windows license was free because Microsoft never complained about that one copy of Win2k being used by everyone in my family at once. So, while I've got nothing against licensing software to me for money, and it seems like a reasonable business model if you want to try for it, I don't want to pay $100 just for the basic stuff that I could install for free if I were at home. Judaism wins again.
The other way I could get XP is by downloading it. I have access to a secure copy of XP and I have pirated ridiculously expensive software from time to time. But it doesn't feel right to endorse this overpriced software that tries to lock me in to Microsoft's sharecropper gimmick by installing an illegitimate copy. I can't really think of a non-computer analogy for this, but it's like Photoshop: developers and how-to authors are forced to write for/about Photoshop because everyone uses it, but nobody actually buys Photoshop. The third-party support creates a self-perpetuating cycle, and then Adobe makes money off of those authors and developers, as well as the poor saps who don't want to use warez. It's a sort of "lock-in" situation. So, if I can't afford XP I don't want to buy into that.
So, I decided my new computer would be built by me, and it would run GNU. My Korean friend picked out the specs and here they are:
- Motherboard: (NewEgg) Onboard video, audio, Ethernet; 4xUSB; Vista certified
- CPU: (NewEgg) AMD 64-bit, 2.1GHz, 256KiB/1MiB cache
- RAM: (NewEgg) 2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400), 5-5-5-15
- HDD: (NewEgg) 250GB, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache
- DVDs: (NewEgg) DVD±R/W and CD-RW
- Case: (NewEgg) el cheapo black/silver case (so I can write on it with a Sharpie)
You will notice that this setup is ridiculously overpowered. It is light-years beyond anything I have previously owned in terms of computers. In fact, it is so overpowered that to explain how good it is I must use terms I do not even understand like "PC2 6400". Yes, I might think my Korean friend had spent a little too long lusting over the various overclocked, top-of-the-line parts NewEgg occasionally puts on sale. But the bill came to $300, the same price as an eMachines PC with an 80GB hard drive and a 32-bit 1.8GHz CPU.
Hmm... this could be a quite profitable enterprise if I wanted to go into it.
Conclusion for today: Building a computer is the perfect thing for a cheapskate like me. Also, GNU is the most moral choice.
[edit] April 1: The pizza is in the oven
Today my packages were shipped out from opposite ends of the country, to arrive in Minnesota sometime around Friday. My parents replied to my e-mail to point out to me that to ship my monitor and mouse from home with insurance would cost over $100. I could of course drive the monitor over here on my usual road trip in 2009. But if I want this computer done this week and not next year, the best solution would be to go buy a new monitor myself.
Conclusion for today: Damn, shipping stuff is expensive.
[edit] April 3: Bits and pieces
I got two packages in the mail today: the case and the other parts I ordered. I took them home with me. However I have no time to put Daxyne together today because I am involved in a lot of on-campus organizations which meet this evening. Also I don't have a monitor yet so it would be kind of pointless.
I was given a spare hour so I decided to burn myself a copy of Ubuntu. I was recommended to burn 7.10 even though 8.04 is coming out later this month. Unfortunately I do not have access to a computer or CD-Rs. Luckily I am on a college campus and know the tech support manager. I borrowed a CD-R from him and went into one of the labs. There is no bandwidth cap in the labs and I downloaded the Ubuntu CD via BitTorrent at 2MB/s. I wonder if they track stuff like that. Within 30 minutes the CD was ready to install.
Conclusion for today: The Internet is really fast.
[edit] April 4: Putting it all together... set sail for fail
I woke up this morning and snapped everything into place. The output board didn't fit quite into the case but I fudged it. Finally we were down to the things I was missing: a SATA cable, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. There is no electronics store in the area so I took the bus to the Mall of America. The reason I went there is because I wanted to get the computer finished today and proclaim victory.
This was a ridiculously stupid idea. Luckily it was almost redeemed by many small pleasures. The mall itself is a self-parody of consumerism which made me grin uncontrollably. There was a used clothing store in there I'm familiar with and I bought myself a jacket. Radio Shack actually had the keyboard, mouse, and SATA cable, for much cheaper than Best Buy or online. Unfortunately they didn't have a monitor so I had to ride a taxi down the highway to Best Buy, buy the monitor, and then call the taxi company to come back (total price, with my overtipping: $26). There was an anime convention across the street from the mall so there were people dressed like Tifa and Stephanie from LazyTown. This was amusing. There was also a tea store full of delicious tea which was wonderful, and I almost got hooked into buying a teapot. The entire cost of the trip was over $300, which more than doubled the cost of my computer. But roughly $230 of that was electronics. I could have bought a prebuilt computer for $530.
When I got home I discovered that my motherboard is broken. It doesn't recognize any SATA devices. I will have to return it and get a new one, making this whole trip pointless. I was utterly infuriated by the fact that nothing I did made the BIOS recognize the SATA devices. I was so close to done, and this motherboard ruined everything.
Conclusion for today: Building your own computer is not all that cheap; use the Internet; don't buy retail; Radio Shack is still surprisingly tech-friendly; large malls and anime conventions are inexplicably amusing.
[edit] April 5: Computers suck
Today to make myself feel better I tried several methods of troubleshooting. I got Daxyne to boot from a USB floppy drive in an attempt to update the BIOS. The BIOS paused on this for about 20 minutes then decided it couldn't find COMMAND.COM. I tried again and learned something special: the "y", "t" and backspace keys on my newly purchased keyboard are not working.
I then plugged the monitor, keyboard and mouse into Moomintroll to give it the old college try. Windows booted up fine but when it got to the login screen all the input stopped working and the monitor went out. While trying to diagnose this, I learned that Moomintroll has degraded rapidly and now turns itself off whenever I open it up (that is to say, I had turned it on with the shell closed, and when I opened it up the power went off). I also tried loading my Ubuntu install CD into Moomintroll, which went sparklingly until I tried to actually load the operating system, at which point it reminded me that I had downloaded the 64-bit version.
I then went outside and played frisbee for a while.
[edit] April 11: Welcome to Ubuntu
I woke up this morning and went right to the post office at 10AM, but they hadn't finished sorting their mail. I had some toast, came back at 11 and it still wasn't done. Finally at 12 my motherboard was given to me.
I have to say, I preferred the Elitegroup motherboard and it's too bad it was DoA. The new one from Biostar had plugs in all the wrong places and the power wires blocked my fan when I first turned it on, causing smoke and a bad smell. Luckily I fixed this problem and managed to boot without issue.
Ubuntu installed in 20 minutes! I was totally shocked by how easy it was-- I didn't even need to worry about partitioning. By 1PM I was up and running with everything working... well, almost everything.
The package manager was giving me a silly message. Turns out I had to go to Preferences and manually enable the types of packages I wanted.
My screen was at the wrong resolution. I tried to install the nVidia drivers, which made things worse. Eventually I compromised: I used the free software drivers and an imperfect resolution. This monitor technically supports 1440x800 but I'll worry about that later. By the time I got the monitor running at 1280x728 it was 2PM.
Nautilus was doing weird stuff and printing hundreds of megs of "debug log dumped due to signal 11" in my home directory. I followed the instructions on Launchpad and everything seems hunky dory now. Now it's 3PM.
At 3:30 I discovered the magic of Compiz Fusion which made me laugh out loud and fully entranced me for the next three hours.
Conclusion: Ubuntu rocks!
[edit] April 12: Finished
After a party in my room that disrupted final debugging last evening, I turned the computer this morning and everything seemed to be working... except that pesky resolution. My monitor, a Westinghouse L1975NW, was not in the default GNOME settings and seemed to in fact be somewhat difficult for GNU to understand. I Googled around and found this helpful thread:
http://forum.freespire.org/showthread.php?t=13985
The actual thing that got rid of the badly kerned fonts was going to System->Preferences->Screen Resolution and changing "52Hz" to "50Hz". Obviously, that shouldn't do anything since LCDs don't have a refresh rate, but somehow it magically worked. Now my computer is working perfectly.
Conclusion: Computers hurt my eyes, let's go outside and have fun!
[edit] April 16: WHY, GOD? WHY?!?
Today two things happened.
The first thing was my motherboard exploded. Quite literally, the fan stopped spinning, a pungent smell came out of the CPU, and then as I tested the power, to my utter delight a diode lit up and went "BAM" right before my eyes.
The second thing was that I received a credit card bill in the mail for $780, most of which was from this computer-building expedition.
Conclusion: Never build your own computer. EVER.
[edit] April 21: Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair
Motherboard number three took five days to ship and arrived today. There was a crackle and then everything went dead. No power. I moped blackly over my horrible fate. I started to think about what my problem might be. Was the PSU out of whack?
Frustrated, I ran to my college's tech support before class and asked if they could test the power. They couldn't. I sludged through field drawing, my stomach churning with hatred for the so-called beauty of computer building. Finally I got out of class, ran about 20 blocks back to my room, put my case in its box and carried it over to a tech support place in town.
I walked to a distant location only to find they had moved (my shoulders sagging slightly under the weight of the box). I lugged the box all the way to the new location. They opened it up and took a look.
"Where are the spacers?" they asked.
What?
Yes, dearest readers, your humble author, your most eager engineer-in-training, had shorted out three motherboards. The PSU was fine. The case was perfectly made. The poor Gigabyte motherboard, fresh out of the box, had been absolutely intact when I wrested it from its blanket of packaging peanuts this morning. But it had been doomed to death the moment I screwed it directly into the case.
Tears streaming from my eyes, I packed the motherboard back into its box to return to the glorious NewEgg corporation which promised to replace it for free. God bless you, NewEgg. God bless you.
Now I am only a week away, hopefully, from a computer which will serve me for years to come.
[edit] May 2: Still waiting
I have been agonizing over my stupidity for two weeks now. My motherboard is scheduled to arrive Monday.
Conclusions: Spacers. Oh God, SPACERS. DAMN YOU TO HELL.
[edit] May 5: Daxyne my Daxyne
Today my motherboard arrived. I originally put the CPU on its input upside-down. Luckily there were bumps on the input so the thermal grease didn't rub off. I turned it on and the screen was red. I screwed in the monitor plug tight and it was all working.
My troubles are at an end. Knock wood.
[edit] May 6: Spoke too soon
When I plug in my second stick of memory, the monitor stops working.
When I plug in the hard drive LED, the MP3 player stops working.
I don't know why this is.
[edit] May 12
Now the speakers are broken too.
[edit] May 14
I purchased my fifth motherboard today. Nuff said.
[edit] May 16
Yesterday the Ethernet port started dying. I have to restart it when I log in to get the Internet working.
[edit] May 27
I just got my fifth motherboard back from the shop. They said it was dead-- they couldn't get it working. They gave me back the dying fourth motherboard and charged me $75.
[edit] May 30
So we're more than two months into this comedy of errors. What do I have to show for it?
Say hello to the amazing Daxyne Home Script.
Don't laugh... I'm proud of this thing :)
For the links listed here see my links page.
[edit] June 1
Please note that on June 1 I attempted to downgrade Ubuntu to get the sound working, and the entire computer farted out on me. Daxyne is currently in a box in deep storage.