The Troubleshooting Saga, Part 2
Bugs work like villains in JRPGs: they appear, cackle madly, you 'defeat' them, and then (at the dramatically appropriate moment, natch), they return, cackling madly, flapping one wing, haloed by the death of the world.
Okay, analogy got away from me there. Anyway: last week, while zombified by lack of sleep, I typed up an account of my attempting to troubleshoot my game console using, basically, Morse code: pressing the power button and listening to beep patterns. After an hour and a half of forum crawling, button-pushing, and prayer, I finally saved the machine, though of course I didn't know what I did right to fix it. I knew what had gone wrong, though: the machine didn't like it when I turned the power off and on again abruptly. Easily done. I moved the Playstation off the surge protector that I turn off and on a lot, and the problem did not recur.
Until last night, of course, when Steph and I were watching Samurai Champloo. 2 minutes from the end of an episode, of course, our power blew–one of those half-second outages that does nothing but ruin electronics.
Start up the Playstation again, and: no image. Again. Reset video interface: no image. Attempt to boot to safe mode: no image.
About an hour later, I figured out what had actually happened, and how to fix it, which, again, boggles my mind with the confusion of this mixed-up world.
There's a computer in our television. Of course there is. Why would I not expect there to be a computer in our television? There's a computer in our coffee maker, for the love of Pete. (Who's Pete? Don't distract me.) Anyway, when game console and television start up, they talk to one another:
Playstation: I have a 1080i signal here.
Televison: Great bro i can handle that send that up.
Playstation: *sends signal*
Thing is, the computer in my television can crash just like any other computer. And when it does, it refuses to actually listen to anything anyone else says.
Playstation: 1080i signal, coming at you.
Television: Awesome, 480p. Way to go!
Playstation: I said 1080i.
Television: Dudes, we have a RGB antenna signal coming in! Get ready!
Playstation: *sighs*
Turns out that the problem wasn't in my Playstation at all. It was in the TV. Of course, the only way to reboot the TV is to manually unplug it from the wall, because just pushing the power button on the remote sends it into vampire hibernation mode, where it sips off the grid and gradually increases its Generation until it will rise as a giant television flesh-tree lich thing to conquer New York. (Or was that a Vampire: the Masquerade mod?) Anyway, once TV and Playstation were unplugged for a while, the picture returned, with no harm done!
Except for the harm I'd caused my Playstation's file system by rebooting the dang thing so many times. Turns out the villain was the narrator all along!
On the one hand, I've spent more time troubleshooting my TV and video game console this month than I have actually spent watching movies or playing games. On the other hand, I feel like I've learned something through this process. On the gripping hand, I'm starting to think that John Prine's had it right all along.
