damn proprietary computer equipment!
i thought i'd be able to just buy a cheap (but standard) power supply for under $20 and get my old desktop working again, but apparently, the it won't work. the original power supply is a proprietary design and thus has a different layout for the pins and what power is given through each of them, and so i might have to just scrap it soon. its original power supply is dead, and a new one from online ("new" meaning like 4+ years old and the same one, which is designed for my kind of system) would be like $160-$200, where i could almost buy a completely new system with better components for that amount (well, if i recycle some parts like the cd drive, hard drive, floppy disk, etc). oh well.