Old Age catches us all....

Well, so its true... no one escapes old age..... it catches us all.
Same goes for technology... let me expand......

I've spent a couple of dollars this last week or so upgrading an old PC I had lying around doing nothing.  Its a Packard Bell of indeterminate age, I guess late 2008 perhaps, so its 11 yrs old.   Noisy as hell, I presumed that it was the CPU fan, so onto eBay and ordered a 7" fan.  No problems, delivered in a couple of day.  Fan fitted.... still noisy.... so I reckoned that it must be the PSU, so ordered a replacement ATX PSU, eBay again.  Took 5 days to deliver and I'm pretty pissed by the time it took to arrive, and this from one of the U Ks major corporate and educational suppliers.

Installed the PSU  - cables a wee bit short, and missing a molex connector, but thats to be expected given the age of the tech at the time.  Booted the beast up - still noisy as hell.   Regroup and consider - always the best strategy.   Now, what else has a fan on it ????  The ATI Video card.....!!   Remove said video card and used the on-board video connector, its only an old Intel VGA but it does the job.   We now have a silent PC......   

So there, even top quality video cards fails after time.     My own fault really, I should've checked the on-board connx first of all, and should've had a couple spare PCI video cards to test with.    But wait... I DID have this test kit back in the day, and got rid of that kit when I decided to "retire".......

Onward, or not as the situation actually is.    Now to reload a decent operating system on the Packard Bell - Linux Mint 19, instead of the MX Linux that was loaded.   Further problems... it wont boot up from the USB drive, although I know the pens are working OK.  So must be the motherboard boot configuration.  I had a look see and modified to boot from USB, but still no joy.......    Regroup and rethink.... again...... I've spent money & time on this heap of junk ( Really its a fine PC for someone who isnt a technophile. )  so I think I'll give it the benefit of "another day, when I'm feeling a bit more generous with my time".
No one escapes old age......   Sayonara......   B-)