The Official HL Raffle/Donation Thread

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Quakindude

I pulled the ECS 650i mobo out of it since the PCB was cracked. The HDD's look ok, the opticals are trashed, the heat spreader is missing off one of my sticks of ram, the video card is gone (an EVGA 7950GT 512Mb!!!) the processor looks ok, the PSU is full of dirt, pine needles and insulation, the Audigy 2 ZS sound card is gone but my SIIG FW800 card was in there and looks to be OK. The Kids AMD rig is toast. The CNPS9500 has one of the mounts pulled through the mobo, so the mobo is toast. The opticals are trashed, the HDD has a dent in the top and the drive cage was rearranged. The 7800GS video card is trashed as is the PSU. I have an Antec 450w PSU that may be usable, but it's ATX 1.0/1.1 spec and has the 20 pin mobo connector. I may run out to CC today and buy a new one just to see if my main rig will fire up with my EVGA680i mobo in it. I've got the main rig put together with that mobo, which was in the yard, but looks OK, my E6600 CPU, a CNPS9500, my WD2500KS HDD and one optical I had new in the box, but not installed. My Lacie FW800 External NAS 1Tb drive looks OK, I took it apart and cleaned it out yesterday. I have an old PCI Video card I'm going to put in it just to see if it fires up and if one of my LCD's still work. I know that one of them is toasted, the other I'll see about today. It has a lot of scratches on the screen though, so once I get a video card, I'll be looking for another monitor. Probably go with a used CRT for now until we see what happens with the insurance company.

That first sentence put a knife right into my heart, then every sentence I read after that pushed it a little deeper! That sucks man!!!

Not to sound repetitive, but glad to hear things may be starting to look up and you've got a plan of action to follow. Best of luck to you and your family!

[Panda Man]

WSFA TV Montgomery, AL - House Approves Bill to Give $79 Million for Enterprise Schools

Well at least they are pretending to do something.

[Dread]

$79 million sounds like a lot to your average Joe who's never been involved
in any contruction projects of any size.

That amount 'may' build a new school, but thats it (depending on local costs etc). We just built a new, state-of-the-art college building here on post and it came in at a leisurely $102 million.

They should dedicate closer to 300-400 million $ to rebuild.

[Quakindude]

Here's an update.

My daughters High School, which was largely destroyed in the tornado, has determined that the kids will go to school in "shifts" at the local community college. Half will go from 0800-1500 (3pm) and the other half, my daughter is in this second half, will go from 1500-2000 (3pm-8pm). So props to the faculty, staff and more importantly, the students at Enterprise-Ozark Community College for allowing the High School students to invade their campus!

By the end of the week, and with no small amount of protestations from my wife :roll: , I will have a desktop back up and running. The parts are inbound. My E6600 CPU survived along with my 2 HDD's and the SIIG FW800 card, but that's pretty much it. Rich is sending me some DDR2 Dominator Ram to review/use and I bought a mobo from a buddy yesterday. Here's the story behind that mobo:

I got a eVGA 680i from my riding (motorcycles) buddy from Florida. He was having a lot of overclocking problems with his, it was never stable, yadda-yadda-yadda. I asked him two different times if he had the chipset cooler on it and both times, he assured me he did. I asked him where the chipset fan was and he said, I kept it with the CPU...you gotta provide your own fan bro. I just said OK. Opened the box and there's the chipset fan. He said to give him $100 for it and I was like dude, here's the fan I was talking about and it should have been installed here. He blushed, said he liked his DQ6 and I could have the board for $100. So I paid him and now have a new, used for all of 20 hours, 680i mobo.

Since the folks here and at MPC have been so generous in donation's, I was able to buy a new video card as well. I figured that since the computing community was so concerned about my computers, my folding ability and the all important gaming activities for a highly stressed out tornado victim, I should do the right thing and buy an 8800GTS to replace the simply awesome eVGA 7950GT 512Mb I lost in the storm. I have never found that video card and my yard is completely cleaned up and the house is totally empty. :cry:

My son has been chomping at the bit to get back into WOW. So it will be nice to have one desktop up and running again. His and my daughters desktop was a total loss though. The AMD 4800 S939 CPU may be alive, but I won't know until I get a new mobo for it. So that one will just have to wait. By the end of the week, we will have the desktop, probably used more by my kids for school and games than by me for a while, and this laptop I'm on now.

Also, in th computing community's constant generosity, I have a new LCD on the way! Someone, from MPC forums, knows someone (I was asked to keep this person's ID to myself, but you know who you are and THANK YOU!) at Dell and I was offered a refurbished 2407FWP monitor for $300. Comes with a 4 year advanced replacement warranty and 24" of screen goodness. I also bought a new PSU and a couple of Lite-On opticals to finish up the package. Since I spent more for a monitor than I could really afford to, I'll be keeping my banged up Enermax case for a while yet. That sucker may be tweaked and twisted, but the 250mm side fan still works just fine and the 680i chipset demands good airflow.

So, there's the state of Tom's computing union. All of you guys have made such a huge difference in my perceptions of this disaster. I've been given money, free computer parts, steeply discounted computer parts and all the verbal support one could ever ask for. If the insurance agency was half as helpful and responsive as you guys have been, my house would already be rebuilt and the landscaping done!

I will leave with this parting thought. One day, someone else will need assistance here. And I will be there to give it.

Thanks a lot folks.

Tom

[screwballl]

good to see you still have a sense of humor (by your sig comment) even after all that yall have been through... things are starting to look up and better for the family I see

[Quakindude]

Since the donations thread is in this sub-forum, I decided to post these pictures here as well. I would imagine that this will require multiple posts, so I will get them all in here. I just got my broadband connection up in our new place, so that's why it has taken so long to get them posted. DIAL UP SUCKS!

This is about 7 houses up the road from us.


Our masterbedroom:


The power lines area:



The house shifted on the foundation:


Back view:


Back of house looking at the kitchen windows. This is where the computers went out.


My kitchen flooring I had put in just 5 months ago is now pulled away from the wall because the house is out of square.


All four corners of the house are busted open like this:


Continued in next post.

[Quakindude]

Here's the back of the house.


Looking down the back yard at the houses behind us. That used to be my pool.


My living room right after the tornado came through.


All my computer stuff was sucked through the kitchen.


Side view of house next to kitchen.


The house behind mine. There was a 40ft long workshop back there.


My messy computer room. After a little bit of cleaning too.


Continued in next post.

[Quakindude]

Another, wider view of the side.


After my pool was pumped out.


The view down the street in front of my house. The pile to the right is right in front of my house. The city workers had already reduced the size of that pile considerably.


That's all for now. I have some stuff to get done around this new place. Like setting up my network.

[simple_inhibition]

wow.... just the magnitude of the damage is insane. im glad you posted these pics and glad you and your family are ok

[Quakindude]

Here's something to think about. The computers were down low on the desks. The monitors were left where they normally were. Everything near the floor was gone as were any CD's and other light things like that. However, one of my laptops and both monitors were relatively undisturbed. The LCD on the left had the power cord, video cable and USB cable ripped out of the back panel. As in, the back panel was gone with the cords. :bawling: