more SDL decoupling this morning

I fleshed out some generic bitmap blitting routines (independent of SDL) and have been continuing to wade through unit tests. I'm currently reimplementing the dragon's lair bitmap scoreboard (the one that is displayed in noldp mode) using my generic video routines instead of the SDL routines I was relying on before. This feels really good to be abstracting this stuff out.

Back in business

Looks like my RAM had gone bad so swapping it out fixed my problems.

I've made good progress on the SDL decoupling task. Now everything builds and I am just fixing the unit tests so that they pass again. I also made a list of things that I broke along the way that I should go back and fix :)

Fixed?

In the process of troubleshooting, I noticed that I didn't have an internal speaker plugged into the motherboard which meant that if the BIOS was giving me error beeps, I wasn't hearing them. I also noticed that my case doesn't seem to have an internal speaker. So I cannibalized an old empty ATX case I had sitting around and removed its little speaker. I plugged it in and powered on. I was greeted with a long continuous beep.

I did some googling and decided that the long continuous beep may indicate a RAM problem. So I swapped out the RAM (which I had not tried yet I am ashamed to admit) and the machine POST'd! Woohoo!

I now have to plug in all the stuff I unplugged and see if I am really back in business or not.

Update on dead computer

I priced out a new cpu, motherboard and ram and I _really_ don't want to buy that right now when I need to be saving money for Dexter investments. So I did some more troubleshooting on my current hardware.

I swapped out the following parts:
- video card
- power supply (which was a pain!)

I removed all cards except for the video card. I removed most of the RAM.

So I've narrowed the problem down to the motherboard, CPU, or the memory and I am really pointing the finger squarely at the motherboard.

So the cheapest option right now seems to be to get a "new" motherboard that supports my older components (DDR2 memory and core2 duo CPU). I could get the same motherboard I currently have or I could try for something newer that is targeted toward legacy stuff which might have more bugs worked out of it.

My current motherboard is an ASUS P5NE SLI (and I have never used the SLI feature). It mostly works well and I definitely use the firewire port on it but other than that any motherboard that supports the memory configuration and CPU would do. Oh, my CPU is a core 2 duo E6760. And my memory is PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz. Suggestions?

Decoupled sound code from SDL

I did some work to decouple the dexter sound code from SDL and am mostly finished.
Now I need to go through the code and remove all other references to SDL which may take a little while. I had to do all this work on my laptop as my desktop is still down (and probably will be for a week).

Computer still down

I've tried some suggestions from others on how to save my computer and it's still exhibiting the same symptoms.

So now I'm looking at what new hardware would cost.

Disaster

Last night, a high-powered electrical device was plugged into our power outlet outside of our house. This device apparently drew too much power and tripped a breaker but only then did I realize that my computer stuff was on the same circuit.

Now my computer won't boot. I have to suspect a motherboard/BIOS problem at this point. But it has drastically slowed down my progress on the Dexter project because it could be a week before I can get back up and running. I can use my laptop instead so progress can still be made but it will definitely be at a decreased speed.

Sad day.