Further Adventures of MCCCXCIV
We bought a new card, and cable. With some effort it was fitted into the computer; it seems that Dell don’t envisage anyone ever wanting to add stuff, which suggests that they don’t really hang out much with proper IT geeks for whom no electronic device is entirely finished until everything inside has been swapped and overclocked to within an inch of its life. It surprises me that as yet our washing machine doesn’t do the clothes in about ten seconds and produce a read out of everything washed.
So the card (which came from Germany, because in eBay world only Germany and China seem to exist) is installed. Well actually it’s not at the moment. It’s sat there, but unplugged from the board, because it keeps restarting the computer every time it gets turned off.
Which is amusing the first five or six times, but less so after that point. After that point comes the sensible approach, which is followed by cursing the card in half remembered GCSE German (just incase the malevolent little bugger happens to have tiny pcb ears). Which itself is not a lot of cursing, apart from the only two swearwords my, very remiss, German teacher taught me (Schweinehund and Scheiße). Though given that my French teacher tried to convince me that the worst swear word available in France was Zut, at least that’s two actual expletives.
In the meantime, until we either solve it the sensible way and find out why, or find out how to say “I’ll bring you as much radiator fluid and as many whorish graphics cards as you like if you work” in such a way that the card understands, I am 1394-less.
