Since there aren't any earth-shattering developments rocking the Apple world right this second, we figured we'd fill you in on the recent death in our little computer family and the progress in our quest for resurrection. For those of you who missed our last episode, Victoria (a beloved PowerTower Pro and AtAT's primary production system) passed away in the early hours of Friday morning. She was found powered off, and neither the keyboard power key nor her own front-mounted startup button provoked any response. Switching her power cord with another made no difference, and moving her to another electrical outlet also proved fruitless. Patient was pronounced dead at 6:48 AM; her last recorded ASCII output was "2601440," an automated entry logged at 4:30 AM EDT to note the then-current Nielsen ratings of her child, As the Apple Turns. She worked right up to the end, poor dear. Her passing came as a shock to us, her family, as she'd been in outwardly perfect health just hours before. Cause of death was assumed to be sudden power supply failure, since all efforts to revive her resulted in neither a startup chime nor disk spin-up; this fact has yet to be confirmed via multimeter autopsy, however.

Victoria's death announcement on AtAT provoked literally dozens of responses from concerned viewers (over fifty at last count), offering both condolences and advice on raising the dead. Replacement power supplies for Power Computing systems are evidently not difficult to come by, judging by the list of vendors who reportedly have the part available: Shreve Systems, AllMac, MacResQ, and Galaxy Online were the most frequently mentioned sources. Lots of people noted that Apple's required to service Power Computing systems for a total of seven years post-buyout, which means we could just bring Victoria in for Apple-authorized power supply replacement if we were so inclined. Several viewers also mentioned that a generic PC power supply ought to work fine in a PowerTower Pro, and should be much less expensive as well-- though personally we're far more comfortable finding an exact match when it comes to posthumous organ replacement. (We wouldn't want an "Abbie Normal" power supply screwing things up in our revived darling.)

A few viewers mentioned just how happy they were when they replaced their Power Computing clones with honest-to-goodness G4s, but we're not quite ready to give up on the old girl just yet. Once Mac OS X is shipping we'll probably retire her and move a Graphite-and-Aqua workhorse into her place, but that's a ways off yet-- and in any case, we wouldn't feel right leaving her dead in a closet. And apparently we're not alone in our desire to keep a PCC unit cranking along; many, many fellow Power Computing users noted that PowerWatch is an excellent and active support group for those of us with these "orphaned" systems, and participants in those message boards may well have lots of suggestions for reputable and cost-effective sources of maintenance parts.

Lastly, we had one suggestion that made us think of Scully at the autopsy table, discovering that the corpse had not died of a heart attack as previously supposed, but rather of an alien-hybrid organic toxin injected into the back of the neck. Faithful viewer Jeff Berman reports that when his early Power Computing clone died, the power supply "tested at zero volts," but the problem was not in fact the power supply. Instead, his motherboard battery had died, which for some reason "completely shut down" his system. His suggestion is to replace that battery first to see what happens. Sounds like a cheap and easy first step to us.

So, our course is now clear: tonight we'll go hunting for a replacement battery, and if that doesn't help, tomorrow we'll get on the horn and have a replacement power supply shipped to us ASAP. Hopefully Victoria will be back from the Great Silicon Dump In The Sky no later than Wednesday night. We'll keep you posted on her progress. And thanks to all of you for your kind support in this time of sorrow. Now, off to play Dr. Frankenstein...