CHAPTER 1

I’m going to tell you the whole story, right from the beginning.

I’m planning to host a birthday party on  11th March, which is … well …  my birthday, of course. When I first bought my computer, I noticed that there was a port for TV-out on my graphics card. For two years, it’s lay unused…

Yesterday, Thursday, I went to Nehru Place, to get a connector/converter, to connect that 9-pin DIN TV-Out connector to my TV. My TV did not have S-Video, so I couldn’t use the wire bundled with my nVidia 6600GT. So, as I said, I went to Nehru Place. Before going, I had had a chat with a guy from Rashi Peripherals, the supplier (NOT retailer) of XFX cards. I asked him what could be done about the wire. And he gave me the address of GD Cables, in Masarover Building in Nehru Place. So I went, and found such a shop didn’t exist. But I found that Rashi Peripherals was in the sane building…so I went there, and asked again about the wire. He redirected me to GD Electronics, and said that the guy on the phone was probably a twat.

I went to GD Electronics, and asked for the wire. He gave me one, but it had 3 RC (you know, the 3 coloured connectors – Yellow, Red and White) connectors for output, whereas I only wanted one, just for video. I wasn’t that sure if that would work. Plus he said it would cost me Rs. 150, so me and bro decided to look around a bit more. We then went to SMC International in Meghdoot Building. This was the shop from where I got my PC assembled. I went into the main shop, and he redirected me to there spare parts/wire department in the back. I went, and the guy there said, he only had 7-pin connectors, no 9-pinners. However, after a long chat with the owner of SMC International (long because he was constantly on 2 mobile phones, one landline and a laptop, sometimes concurrently!), he told me to go to Bharat Cables in the basement.

I went there, he gave me a 7-pinner, identical to the one given by GD Electronics. Then we jogged back to GD Electronics to see if he had given us a 7-pinner or a 9-pinner. We practically lost all hope when he noticed it was a 7-pin connector. We roamed aimlessly, trying to see if any shop had the connector. One guy had an oversized connector, which didn’t fit. Then we struck gold. We found a guy with a connector, which had a whole lot of connector hanging off it. This was the way the 9-pin connector is supposed to look. It has 9-pins which translates into lot of bandwidth, so there are supposed to be 2 S-Video cables, 3 RCs, and one video-in or something like that. Unfortunately, he charged Rs. 350. So, heartened by our find, we continued to search, because we weren’t happy with the price. Just a few shops away we found another guy with a similar wire, with less connectors but the video RC I wanted was there. So we decided to go for it. Rs. 150 well spent.

We returned home, jubilant and I dragged my PC to the living room, to connect it to the TV. The final moment, I switched on the thing. The TV just gave a flicker, nothing else. I frowned…maybe I was supposed to change some settings in te nVidia control panel. So I dragged my monitor there as well. I connected the monitor to the graphics card as well, and I switched on the PC.

No output.

I broke into a light sweat. This had never happened before. I have had instances where the graphics card doesn’t work, but then my BIOS gives an error message. But the BIOS signalled that everything was just fine. The screen, too, degaussed, but just remained blank. It did go off and back on when the resolution changed, when it goes from BIOS screen to Windows boot screen to log in screen. But it didn’t show anything. I tried yanking the graphics card out, and fitting it again…didn’t work. I dragged everything into my room, to work there. I set up the PC, and as expected, it didn’t work. I continued for about half-an-hour, and then progressively, went into shock and withdrawal.

My 6600GT was dead.

I will not be ashamed to say this, but I was on the verge of tears. I had every right to. It was so young. Just 2 years of service. I just sat there motionless for a few minutes.

Then mom came. She had a laptop. With WiFi, and we have a neighbour who has an open WiFi connection. I started on the road to recovery. I found out that my card had a 3 year warranty. I hope to go to Nehru Place again, on Friday, and get this thing fixed. But maybe they won’t replace it. And these things can’t be repaired. Only replaced. That needs money…

Then I realise, my bro needed to submit a report the day after (Saturday), and the file was still on the PC. My Mom’s laptop didn’t have an external SATA port of course, so I coudn’t just yank out the hard disk. Then I did something that I’ve never did before. I turned on the PC, waited for some time, and logged in. My user was at the bottom of the list, so I just kept the ‘Down’ key pressed. After I heard the login tune, I waited for some time for the startup programs to run. Then I opened the Run dialog box by pressing Windows key+R. I typed in the address of the folder (D:DocumentsVineet’s Documents). Now I had the folder opened. I kept the bottom and right keys pressed for some time, to get to the bottom right of the contents of the folder. Then I selected a 5×5 box of contents by using the Shift Key and Arrow Keys. I knew my brp’s file was somewhere around the bottom, because he didn’t use Auto Arrange, and this file had been made recently. Then copy, by Control+C. Now, I stuck in an empty pen drive. When the drive is empty, it just opens up the pen drive’s folder…no Autorun dialogs. So once that was done, I did Control+V, to paste. I knew that data was getting transferred because the light on the pen drive was flashing. When it stopped flashing, I yanked out the pen drive and put it into the laptop’s USB port. It opened, and there was the report. All without looking at the screen. Then obviously I shut down the PC, by first Windows, then U to open the Shut Down box, and then U again, for shut down.

I didn’t sleep well that night.

Tags: Graphics, Hardware, nVidia, Tips