My basement computer died a couple nights ago.

First the printer port and serial ports stopped responding (yes, I still use the old non-universal type serial and parallel ports) . Then I rebooted, and it never did the boot part. The monitor never received a signal, which means the very early BIOS stuff doesn’t happen, or all the peripheral interfaces have gotten whacked.

So I ordered another motherboard/CPU combo from TigerDirect. Also, a surge protector/battery backup thingy. I’m pretty sure this is a result of power surges in the basement, because I often come downstairs to find it’s rebooted, and power outages/hiccups are no stranger to our house.

I’m pretty sure all the data is still on the hard drives but regardless, I had just done my weekly backup of critical files. Huzzah for preparedness!