Good news: my new PC finally showed up. A Dell X8500-1053BK with an intell I5-3450 processor, 8GB, 1TB hard drive and a 1GB Radeon HD 7570 graphics card. This *should* cover my CAD needs.
Bad news: the old hard drive was found to be deader’n hell. The power supply was also fried. So I’m guessing that there was a hell of a power surge… got past both the surge protector and the battery power supply. Grrr.
ARGH news: a bit over a year ago, I spent a day in the Bell aircraft archive in Niagra Falls, NY. I made a buttload of scans and photos. These files were all carefully sorted and filed, and stored on a backup drive and the PC drive. The backup drive went fzzzzt a few months ago, but fortunately I had backed *it* up. Then the PC drive went fzzzt.
But… it appears that when I backed up the backup hard drive, somehow the Bell stuff slipped through the cracks. *All* the Bell stuff. Gone. Kaput.
arrgh.
I’m contemplating doing another “investor funded” trip at some point to recover this stuff. A hard drive recovery would cost $2000, and is uncertain that it would work… a trip to rescan stuff would cost half that, and get more stuff.
Also: the loss of this hard drive has some more immediate problems. All of my CD burning was off this PC and hard drive. This is now no longer possible. So… if you are one of the several customers who have been waiting for a CD of APRs and photos and such… there will be a bit of a delay as I dig through the backup drives to rebuild the CD burning files.
Argh.