The Motherboard Replacement from Perdition, Chapter the Second
28 Jun 2006 
around lunchtime 
Matt Winckler
Now with a surprise twist ending!
It was over a month ago that the motherboard replacement from perdition began. I’ll bet that with my silence, y’all thought this thing had simply gone away silently and left me in peace. Hah! No, because that is not the way technology curses work. When our story left off, I was waiting for a replacement processor, because the replacement motherboard (a.k.a. replacement motherboard #2) sourced from the shady used parts dealer in Kennewick had apparently fried the existing (and previously working) one. We now return to the story two weeks later.
The replacement CPU arrived in good time and I installed it in the new motherboard (a.k.a. replacement motherboard #3) from Cline. I power it up, the fans spin, and seconds tick by as I wait for the monitor to show me something. Anything! …Nothing. I could feel ulcers forming as ten, then fifteen seconds ground past in agonizing suspense. Still nothing. I powered down the machine, powered down my Asus, and once again prepared for a CPU transplant. Once the new processor was in my working machine, I powered it up, and slap me with a decorative yard flamingo if I didn’t hear the distinctive beeee-bop-beeee-bop tone that the Asus makes when it is trying to say “hey, dufus, this CPU you’ve fed me is toast!” So then, it would seem that Replacement CPU from eBay #1 was DOA. I began seriously questioning my technical competence as I tallied a list of casualties so far:
- 1 open-box Biostar motherboard: DOA, smoked, popped, fizzled.
- 1 brand-new power supply: DOA, the cooling fan didn’t work.
- 1 used ASRock motherboard: DOA, in a less spectacular manner, though seemingly destroying an otherwise good CPU to make up for lack of fireworks.
- 1 CPU (machine’s original): fried by an ASRock motherboard.
- 1 used CPU from eBay: DOA, despite guarantees to the contrary.
I racked my brain trying to think of things I was doing wrong, but came up blank. After all, I’d been successfully swapping out parts with my working machine over and over again with no ill effects. I could still not help but think that I’d simply had a bad streak and needed to continue pressing on.
After negotiating with the relatively unhelpful eBay vendor (I’ve adopted the belief that “power sellers” are the worst kind of person to buy from; they’re the people who hear the “make money fast on eBay” radio ads and don’t have any time for customer service), I made to ship the DOA CPU back to him (another $4.50 out of pocket, not to mention $9 in overpriced non-refundable original shipping charges - pffft) and ordered another from a vastly more friendly eBay seller, after emailing him first to confirm his no-DOA guarantee. That was a Friday night. And so I waited.
The following Monday the chip arrived. I first plugged it into my Asus board to make sure it was good - and it was. And at this point I must make a note - these ASRock boards have a jumper on them to control FSB speed. It can be 200MHz, 266MHz, or 333MHz (DDR). I had previously been installing CPUs at 266MHz, since that is the appropriate setting for the particular model of chip (Athlon XP 1600+). For this one (an Athlon XP 1700+), however, on a terrible hunch, I set the jumpers for 200MHz instead. This time it actually booted, recognizing the chip as an Athlon XP 1100. Thinking all was now well, I shut it down and adjusted the jumper to 266MHz. Power up: nothing.
It was at this point that “anguish” is probably the nearest term to describe my feeling, though such a word still lacks the proper amount of depth. Perhaps “dire anguish” is better. In any event, after plugging the CPU back into my Asus, I added two items to the earlier tally:
- 1 brand-new ASRock motherboard from Cline Computers: defective; evidently dispatches outrageous amounts of juice to fry CPUs when set for 266MHz FSB
- 1 used CPU from eBay: originally working, DESTROYED BY BRAND NEW ASROCK MOTHERBOARD OBTAINED FROM CLINE COMPUTERS!
It would seem that Replacement Motherboard #4 was actually a stealth defective one - it had the hidden feature of destroying CPUs when set for 266MHz FSB, and had probably been frying all these CPUs all along. That evening I was so ticked off, having burned through $70 worth of processors, that I could hardly get to sleep. I kept imagining (with great pleasure) the wonderful conversation I was going to have with whomever happened to be running the desk at Cline Computers the next day.
The next day dawned. With grim countenance I took the offending motherboard into Cline Computers and told them the entire story, and indicated that at minimum I wanted a refund on the motherboard itself, and furthermore if ASRock had any business sense whatsoever they’d recompense me $35 for at least one of the processors their defective motherboard destroyed. (I didn’t actually expect to get anywhere on that last part; I couldn’t prove to other people that I’d installed everything properly, etc.) I was therefore moderately surprised when the response came from the Cline employee:
“Well, you know, I’d like to help you out, but we really can’t do anything for you. We’re just a computer repair company; we don’t guarantee any individual parts we sell. You can try contacting the manufacturer.” He was then kind enough to call up ASRock on the spot. ASRock told him that vendors (e.g., him) are responsible for handling returns. He asked (”hypothetically”) what would happen if the vendor wouldn’t take a return - ASRock said to call a given number, and they’d take care of it. He handed me the number and that was that.
Back at the office, I looked up ASRock’s site and read the fine print. In order to get an RMA number and address to mail the board to (at my expense), I’d have to call for them to send me a fax, then fax something back to them. Which meant that in my case (having no landline and therefore no fax capability), I’d have to go pay to use a fax machine somewhere and make another trip to pick up the fax from them whenever it arrived. Additionally, unless I happened to be an Authorized ASRock Dealer, I’d be charged a nonrefundable $35 service fee just for them to look at the board (in this case, half the cost of the motherboard itself).
(For what it’s worth, I’m not making any of this stuff up. Every bit of this story is completely true. I know it’s difficult to believe, but try to bear with me.)
This seemed to necessitate a call back to Cline Computers with a more penitent tone, pleading with them to do something to make this right. Eventually I got them to agree to do an return with NewEgg, where they had purchased the part from.
(At this point I’d like to make a brief aside. Had I wanted to, I could have purchased this exact model from NewEgg myself for $20 less than I paid Cline. I knew this at the time, but made the foolish assumption that, having gone through 2 DOA motherboards already, if any problems arose with this one it’d be easier to return it to the retailer than mailing it back to NewEgg. It was, in essence, supposed to transfer some of the risk onto the retailer and away from me, since by returning it I wouldn’t have to pay return shipping. I now heartily repent of this misguided notion and will consequently never buy computer parts from local dealers ever again.)
And so it was that the next day I took the motherboard back to Cline Computers for them to send back to NewEgg. They still wouldn’t give me a refund, but would give me another new motherboard of the same model instead. But surprise surprise, it turns out that in order for them to do the return - something against their standard operating procedure - they wanted me to pay $10 for return shipping. (Or, in other words, at least $3 more than it would actually cost.) Not seeing many options at this point (better to be out $10 more than $70 for the entire motherboard), I accepted the terms and walked away with Replacement Motherboard #4, shaking the dust off my feet as I went. When I got home, I got onto eBay and ordered Replacement CPU #3.
And so we come nigh to the present day. Replacement CPU #3 arrived on Monday. After a glass of wine to steel my nerves for the task at hand, I took out the new motherboard and installed the CPU. Bliss! It worked! At last, the curse had been broken! I still handled it very gingerly, lest anything untoward should happen, but all went smoothly. Windows XP booted up and…
…naturally complained that it had to be activated, since all the internals of the machine it was installed on had been swapped out. I called up the Windows XP activation hotline (staffed by automated voice-recognition demons), read it off the 50-digit (”fefty - eff it was one”) “installation code”, waited a moment, and was greeted with “I’m sorry, the installation code you provided is not valid. …I’m sorry, I was not able to help you activate your copy of Windows XP today. Goodbye.” Hey! Ho! Har! I want to speak to a hoomin bean! But no. One unceremonious click later told me everything I needed to know about Microsoft’s customer service philosophy. I clicked the “remind me later” button and continued. But no! It told me I had to activate before I could login. And so I tried activation one more time. This time, for inexplicable reasons, the online activation failed again (as it had the first time), but it gave me a place to put in a product key. The key that was prefilled in there did not match the one on the certificate of authenticity, so I put in the new one, and voila! Product activated. I wasn’t in the mood to hazard a guess as to what this might mean about eMachines or Microsoft’s activation process.
And so the tale is ended. The computer passed back into my cousin’s grateful hands the followign day, and today is the day after that and I’ve still not had any calls, so I must assume that all is well.
My resolution is to never do this ever again. My allowable responses to future calls for help are going to be, in this order:
- Dell sells very nice refurbished machines for $300 after shipping and taxes.
- The local Costco sells very nice new machines for $1000, and has a very good return policy.
- I will do it. It will cost you (price of 3 new pieces of hardware +$100), six Belhaven Wee Heavy Scottish Ales (~$25) and will take me at least 1 month to complete.