More like guidelines
Late last night (early this morning) I fixed the PC. Mercifully, the expiry of the power supply doesn't seem to have hit any other components; cue one hurried harddisk backup.
The installation of the new power supply was notable for three reasons:
1) The new power supply is surprisingly lightweight and empty feeling.
2) ATX, it seems, is not so much a standard as a guideline; fitting the new PSU required a structurally dubious modification to the back of the case to make it fit.
3) The box for the new powersupply showed several bad photos of the connectors it came with, all in that cheap-printed-badly-imaged way where everything comes out black, unless it's the background. As it turns out, the box was right; all the connectors really are black. Every single one of them. Totally black.
All that aside, the system seems to be working again now. Accidentally discovered a connector on the motherboard for chassis fan monitoring, which is nice, but the PSU fan seems to confuse it. Sadly the power LED cable came loose in the process and I can't find where it plugs into. Hmmm.
The installation of the new power supply was notable for three reasons:
1) The new power supply is surprisingly lightweight and empty feeling.
2) ATX, it seems, is not so much a standard as a guideline; fitting the new PSU required a structurally dubious modification to the back of the case to make it fit.
3) The box for the new powersupply showed several bad photos of the connectors it came with, all in that cheap-printed-badly-imaged way where everything comes out black, unless it's the background. As it turns out, the box was right; all the connectors really are black. Every single one of them. Totally black.
All that aside, the system seems to be working again now. Accidentally discovered a connector on the motherboard for chassis fan monitoring, which is nice, but the PSU fan seems to confuse it. Sadly the power LED cable came loose in the process and I can't find where it plugs into. Hmmm.