{"id":1040,"date":"2010-06-10T10:32:46","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T17:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2010-06-10T10:32:46","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T17:32:46","slug":"computer-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2010\/06\/10\/computer-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My computer at home has been locking up occasionally for the last few weeks.  This has been happening since my upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04\/Lucid, but I suspect this is a coincidence.  (1) The lockups are hard: even the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magic_SysRq_key\">SysRq<\/a> magic doesn&#8217;t do anything, so I deduce that the problem is in the kernel or below.  (2) I haven&#8217;t seen any reports of the new Linux kernels being flaky.  (3) I tried an upgrade from the i386 to amd46 (32-bit to 64-bit) system which I had been meaning to do anyway: no change even with a significantly different kernel.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, I am of the opinion that I have a hardware problem.<\/p>\n<p>As a computer scientist, I don&#8217;t enjoy hardware problems, so I&#8217;m thinking about buying my way out of them.  (Also, my current system is mostly 3 years old, so it&#8217;s not a crazy time to upgrade.)  My current thinking:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ark.intel.com\/Product.aspx?id=41447\">Intel i7 930<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.asus.com\/product.aspx?P_ID=t4yhK6y9W9o7iQ9E&#038;templete=2\">ASUS P6T SE<\/a><\/li>\n<li>some brand-name DDR3 RAM: 3 &times; 1GB 1333MHz<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For about $700, that would leave me with the same case and power supply (an Antec Sonata II, 450W), my video card (nVidia 7600GT, but don&#8217;t game so who cares), my Hauppauge PCI TV tuner, and my recently-upgraded hard disks.<\/p>\n<p>So, the questions for the crowd:  Does my &#8220;it&#8217;s hardware&#8221; assessment sound right?  Is it likely that the processor\/mobo\/RAM swap will fix my problems?  Any other suggestions for hardware purchases?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My computer at home has been locking up occasionally for the last few weeks. This has been happening since my upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04\/Lucid, but I suspect this is a coincidence. (1) The lockups are hard: even the SysRq magic doesn&#8217;t do anything, so I deduce that the problem is in the kernel or below. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1046,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions\/1046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}