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Foggy street |
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At the strip mall |
Dense fog this morning, and the fog never lifted throughout the day. It was a little dicey driving around in places where I could only see for about a hundred feet ahead, but for once, no one was speeding.
The DIMMs arrived today. The package was quite a bit ahead of schedule so that's good. The bad part is DHL left it outside in the mist on the damp doorstep. The package also looked a little crushed, but fortunately, the contents were fine.
Memory installation on the laptop was surprisingly simple. All I had to do was open the panel marked "M" (Hmm... M is for memory? Makes sense.) and pop the DIMM into the slot. And that's all.
The desktop computer, on the other hand, took quite a bit more work.
The first step, of course, was to unplug the two hundred or so pieces of equipment that were plugged into the computer. Apparently, I did accumulate lots of peripherals over several years of use, even though some are used less frequently than others.
Then I brought the case out to the living room, where there was more space to work. I'd forgotten how to open the case so that took a bit of fiddling. Finally, I figured out that the case should be placed on one side and flipped up to reveal the internals.
I knew where the memory slots are because there was already one DIMM there, just like the one I was about to insert. So I put the new DIMM in. It didn't go in. I wondered if I had put it in the wrong way so I checked which way the notch went. Hmm, that was correct. Anyway, it seemed to require a little more effort than I thought but I got the DIMM into the socket.
Closed up the case and carried it back to the bedroom. (What? Isn't that where everyone uses a computer? :) ) Plugged in all the two hundred or so peripherals. (I shouldn't have done that yet, but I was being optimistic.)
Booted up the computer, and checked the memory. It still said it had 256MB. What?
Unplugged all the peripherals again and brought the computer case out to the living room again. I took out the new DIMM and put it back in again, hoping that it would work this time.
Carried the case back to the bedroom and plugged in all the peripherals again. Booted up the computer. This time it said that the memory had increased to 768MB. Yay! Then the keyboard froze, and display blanked out a short time later. Augh!
Turned off the power and left the computer alone for about half an hour. (Used the laptop instead.)
Then I went back and tried turning the computer on again. This time it booted up fine and didn't freeze or die or anything. Hmm... that was disconcertingly flaky. But it has more memory now!