my-computer was down for 12 hours today because the power sup­ply died overnight. I had hoped it was just the fan interlocks—AlphaStations won’t power up if they sense fan trouble—but it turned out to be an irrepara­ble com­po­nent failure.

Now of course you can’t just go down to the cor­ner store and buy a replace­ment AlphaS­ta­tion power sup­ply. (It’s a pro­pri­etary design.) But what you can do is bike to Brighton, buy a nor­mal ATX power sup­ply, con­sult the moth­er­board tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion, con­sult the ATX spec­i­fi­ca­tion, and spend hours sol­der­ing a cus­tom wiring har­ness to plug them together. So I did.

Incred­i­bly, it worked.

It’s pretty impres­sive that this is only the first hard­ware fail­ure in nearly 10 years of its exis­tence. Yes, I checked—my-computer was made in 1996! How­ever, hav­ing pledged long ago that I would only replace it when it com­pletely quits work­ing, I can’t help but won­der: could this be the begin­ning of the end for my trusty AlphaS­ta­tion?