So, fast forward to last week. I was out of the office for a weekend, and came in on Monday and the computer was off. Funny, I thought I left it running.... Ah, well, hit the power button, and ... hmm; that doesn't do anything. Check power cords, they're good; eventually I hauled the power supply down to a lab with a multimeter and confirmed that it was dead.
So, I got a RMA to return it to Antec, and stopped by Fry's to get a cheap power supply (would you believe $9.99 after rebate?) to use for the interim, because I don't want to wait another month to be able to use my computer.
I plugged the power supply in, and hit the on button. Fans whirred, drives powered up, and everything appears to be all-systems-go for a whole two seconds. Then the computer started up a distressing low-high-low-high beep pattern. The manual for this motherboard neglected to include beep-code information, preferring to fill the pages with screen shots of the Windows driver install screens, so I turned to Google, which provided sites that indicated that the problem was a dead CPU, or possibly a mis-seated one.
I reseated the CPU. No go. I went to my friend's office, opened his computer, took his CPU, put it in my computer. No go. I put my CPU in his computer; it worked fine. I put his CPU back. Put my CPU back. No go.
Clearly the motherboard is dead. Again.
And at that point it was 5:15, and the motherboard's customer service line closed at 5:00. Yay.
So I have emailed them to get a RMA number for the motherboard again.
And I'm not exactly sure what I'll do for a computer for the next month. I can work using the faster of my home computers, but even it's more than a bit slow for this sort of work, and I really can't think efficiently in a 17" monitor any more. And also it's at home, though I suppose I could change that -- like I did last time I sent the motherboard in for repairs.
Or, alternately: anyone in the S.F. Bay Area know of a local store that has a Gigabyte motherboard in stock that will support RDRAM? If I can get the board in a day or two, I can likely scare up money out of the budget to pay for a replacement on grounds that I need a computer this month....
