Showing of Age

Well my computer is finally showing its age. I made her at the end of 2000 and have had relatively trouble free service from her. The only thing I can recall having to do was to reload her OS when some sinister prankster gave her the blaster virus. Other than that I have not changed any hardware components. Well on Sunday night when I tried to save my files that I was working on to a floppy it refused to do so giving me an error message. Thought it was a bad disk and grabbed another...same issue. OK then. Tried a new drive that i had bought for someone some time ago but never used..same thing. Changed the cable.....whoa....isn't there supposed to be one empty space in the pin array....wtf am I seeing 2? Check the cable and wallah the missing pin. To cut a long story short I need a new motherboard. There begins the real issue. I can get boards to accomodate the processor but not the memory. Arrrrggghhh!!! The memory types have changed so rapidly over the past 3 years that mine was in vogue then and outdated now. So unless I can find an older type board or get somebody to do some really creative soldering, I need not only a board but memory modules and processor (although I can find a new board to take the processor since it is fairly up to date) as well. Start saving Scratchie, cuz memory not really cheap right now. Found a different solution for the time being though....enter USB...heh heh heh. Can you say external floppy. Well sometimes progress can be a good thing although not often seen right away. Over the past couple of years many of the computer suppliers have stopped selling the laptops with floppy drives and have instead outfitted them with CD burners. To starve off some of the complaints, and external floppy drive is easily available especially in markets like ours where floppy disks are still used heavily especially by students. Here lies my el cheapo way out...I just got an external floppy drive and turned off the onboard port for the one that is playing the a$$ plugged in to the USB port and I'm good to go. A little on the untidy side but hey it works. I'll just need to buy some stuff sooner than later. So my current wish list stands at: New ATX motherboard for Athlon processors (preferrably an Athlon-64) New processor (AMD all the way) New memory modules (whatever fits the board - 1Gb I guess..OK i'll stay at 512MB if I must) I'll reuse my other stuff. The only thing missing is a DVD burner and since I haven't missed having one I don't think I'll start now. Luckily I paid for multiple reinstalls of my software so that shouldn't be an issue either. What caused the pin to break though? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe just vibration from the fans. I won't complain, 4 1/2 years trouble free service from bulk parts is good in today's tech world. Maybe I'll change boards. I've been using Biostars for a while. Maybe time for an Asus or a Soyo. I like the specs on the Soyo (all the specs except the price that is). Don't know if they make one for the new Athlons though. Whatever but I know it's gonna cost me a bit so I'm starting to save now. Besides I expect a contribution from each of you.. my account number is 0.............. the Bank of.............. Forget that I'll take cash instead. Send it cybermail. Sorry for the compi post you non tech people but sometimes I just gotta go off on a tangent. It keeps me sane. Later all.