The computer that I call mine is a hand-me-down from . It’s been a pretty dependable machine, and it was quite an improvement over my last – an AMD K6-2 350. But, it has had its quirks. When I first got it, if it sat off for more than a few days, it would have problems starting up. It would power up for a few seconds, then shut down. It would do that a few times, and then boot up as if nothing was wrong.

This problem has become worse over the time I’ve had it. Now, if it’s down for more than a few hours, this happens, and it takes quite a while to get it to stay on. Each time it boots, it stays on for a little while longer, and then eventually it acts as though nothing was wrong.

A new problem has cropped up. Every once in a while, the machine’s hard drive activity light goes solid and the machine stops accessing the CD-RW drive. It doesn’t even show up in WinXP’s explorer. I have to restart the machine to access the drive again.

And now, in the past few days, it has been randomly shutting off, as if I had left the machine shut down for a time. Today, I’ve noticed that everything slows to a crawl right before it shuts down.

All of this leads me to believe that there is something serious wrong with the motherboard. That’s the only thing that can explain both the problems with shutting down and with the IDE controller.

Is my diagnosis accurate? Is the machine doomed? If it is, I’d like to salvage the hard drives, the RAM, and the CD-RW and put them into another box. Does anybody happen to have a case and mobo/proc combo just lying around, collecting dust, taking up space? Maybe a mac? *wink*wink*nudge*nudge*

I’m going to keep my eyes open, check out MSU Surplus and the usual haunts, but if you see anything, let me know. :)