Thanks all for all the help so far. To Cinders, I will have one of the NewEgg Power Supplies on the way by this afternoon.
All this has information re-kindled an old desire to build myself a new machine from scratch as soon as I get this one back up and running. I do not play games on my computers but Wife and the two grandsons do to a small extent. But I do think that a lot of the gaming technology would serve another purpose for me.
I use a program called "Kintecus" to run rather complicated chemical reaction simulations. Often there are 50-60 starting molecular species and as many or more "produced" end products plus thermodynamic factors for the exothermic/endothermic considerations. All this is calculated including all possible intermediate reactions on both a molecular and free radical levels. The program often runs for 36-80+ hours and the results can run to several hundred printed pages. A faster computer would be very nice to say the least but reliability is much more important than speed.
The other program that causes me a lot of computer tie-up is one I have written and re-written for several years. It is based upon a book named "Well Log Analysis by Microcomputer" (early 1980s) and was originally written for the TRS-80 era machines in BASIC. That's the reason I keep the TRS-80 and the other legacy systems running. I write in several versions of BASIC, LISP, PROLOG and several languages for PIC Microcontrollers. But the original Well Log program has been expanded and refined over the years since starting in the early 1980s. The problem is that it runs a rather complicated analysis for every two (2) feet sector of well log on Oil/Gas/Coal wells that are often 8,000-12,000 feet deep and prints out a detailed analysis of every sector. This involves a lot of calculations per sector and takes a long time. Factor in an automatic Well Log Digitizer (
http://www.neuralog.com ) called a NeuraScanner II hooked to your computer and you have the system I use now. Scanning is quick but the program takes forever.
To promote stability I have ducted a small window air conditioner and filter to the computer for bullet-proof cooling and can hold the case at 50-55ºf. with relative ease.
On all the above I pretty well know what I am doing. But you folks forget more about how to build and modify computers before breakfast than I will ever live long enough to learn. So the more of your posts I read on this site the more old dreams I revive and the more excited I get about what you do. I feel much like a kid in a candy store here.
Anyway, apologies for all the blatherings above. My new board came in yesterday afternoon and it is time for me to quit talking and dreaming and to start working on rebuilding the unit at hand. All the rest will have to wait until then.
Thanks again for all your help and wish me luck tonight. I will probably need it.
