New Computer Problems
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A new computer triggers about 15 hours of frustration and suffering. It all turns out to be hardware problems. The Pinnacle video capture card also causes some misery.

The New PC Tragedy

On Sunday 25-July-2004 I finally obtained funds and permission to build a new PC to replace the 3 year old Pentium III 850MHz that I'm currently struggling with for software development. My friend Rob and I visit the Computer Trader swap meet at the Moorabbin Town Hall around 9am to purchase the following parts for my new PC:

AMD Athlon XP 3.0MHz processor
Gigabyte GA-7N400V Pro motherboard
512MB RAM
NVidia MX 4000 64MB video card
80GB SATA disk drive
Liteon DVD-ROM
ATX 480W case

I get these parts because they are close to the minimum necessary to get the new PC to run. I have to build the new PC in parallel to the existing one so I can keep working. I know that it will take at least 3 days to get a new PC setup with all of the software and configurations necessary for me to perform software development, and I cannot stop working for 3 days. When the new PC is ready I will transfer all of my work and files over to it and hopefully continue will little interruption. Strangely enough, this is similar to the way we upgraded mainframe computers in the 80s. back then we would IPL (Initial Program Load) from a selected set of disks in the farm containing the new operating system, and if something went badly wrong we would IPL back off the original disks.

After Rob and I build the PC and hit the power we get nothing but a black screen. Rob becomes suddenly ill with the stomach bug that's going around, so I take the PC home around midday to diagnose what's wrong. I unplug all the parts and run hours of fruitless experiments to get the PC going, but it will not boot.

I return to the swap meet around 4pm and suggest something is wrong with the parts. The lady at the stall suggests that I have either put the CPU fan on backwards or have forgotten to plug-in the 2nd power supply. I drive home and find the 2nd power supply is not plugged-in. The GA7N400V Pro motherboard has a 2nd small power 4-point socket that Rob didn't notice (but he was rapidly getting ill as the morning progressed, so I don't blame him). I also went through the manual, but not see this missing plug.

I put in the 2nd power socket and the PC immediately starts to boot. Whoopie! I put in the Windows DVD and hit reset to start the setup process. The PC does not reboot.

For the next 6 hours I try everything possible to get the PC to boot. I power it up about 300 times and it only boots 3 times, and there seems to be no pattern to why it does boot a few times. I was just about to put a sledgehammer through the thing before I gave up and dumped the heap of junk in the hallway so I don't get upset by simly looking at it.

Monday morning I drive up to the shop in Prahran to get them to diagnose what it wrong. After about an hour the staff determine that the motherboard is faulty and replace it. Upon returning home the PC works perfectly and I start to Windows XP Pro setup. Well, after wasting half and hour trying to boot the wrong DVD I eventually started the setup. After about 4 days of part-time work, the new PC is getting close to the stage where I can hot-swap over to it.

The Pinnance PCTV Capture Card Tragedy

In late May 2004 I purchased a $99 Pinnacle PCTV Pro PCI video capture card from Harvey Norman in Moorabbin. I was utterly amazed how smoothly the hardware and software installed. Windows XP Pro immediately recognised the PCI card upon reboot and the software tested and configured the card flawlessly. I was prepared for hours of suffering, but not a single problem occurred and it was all working within half an hour.

For many weeks I enjoyed converting old VHS tapes and my favourite live TV shows to MPG files and burning them to DVDs to add to the library. For unknown reasons I could only use 2 of the 4 available capture resolutions. The card supported 4 quality levels which from low to high are: VCD, SVCD, DVD Longplay and DVD. I could only use the VCD or DVD Longplay settings, as the others would skip frames terribly and lose audio sync. I presumed this was caused by my slow (Pentium III 850MHz) processor, but it wasn't a serious problem, as TV and VHS quality isn't that good anyway so the lower capture quality was fine for me.

On Sunday 18-July-2004 I tried to record a TV show and Windows XP spat out a "application failure" popup and the capture software closed. I found that all 3 video capture apps I had available would crash the same way. So it wasn't a software specific problem, it was a problem with all video capture. I presumed the card had failed but had no way to prove it.

When the new PC was available (as described in the previous section) I finally had the chance to transfer the card and software over to see if it would work or fail. It failed! In fact it failed so badly that the freshly installed Windows XP Pro system would die with a blue screen and reboot randomly when I tried to record video. Now I had proof that the card must be faulty.

On 29-July-2004 I returned the Pinnacle product to Harvey Norman and the staff swapped the PCI card with one from a different box.

Over the next days and weeks the new Pinnacle card had mixed reliability. The PC occasionally gives a blue screen and reboots after a recording, but I've learned now to always reboot before and after a recording. Sometimes I have to reboot twice, which may sound mad, but I swear it's true! Lately the problems are getting worse and sometimes I have to reboot 4 or 5 times before the card becomes stable. The card seems to be self-destructing.

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