August 30, 2004
Just thought I'd share this...
This was an old network box that got thrown out at work. It wasn't really constructed to be a stand-alone home computer, so I had to do some... modifications.
What it came with: A 300 MHz CPU, a bad 4 Gig hard drive, one 64 Meg stick of memory, 1 IDE controller on the board, 2 empty PCI slots, and a power supply with only one power plug.
On the bright side, it has USB, on-board video, and on-board sound. There's also an on-board network connection that I couldn't make work.
What I've done: Unplugged the old power supply, and plugged in one that had multiple power plugs. For the sake of convenience, I just left it sitting on the floor, rather than try to swap it into the case.
Replaced the 64 Meg of memory with 2 sticks of 256 Meg. I'm running programs at a tolerable speed now.
Installed my old Network Interface Card in one of the PCI slots, so I have internet access.
Installed my old C: drive properly in the case in place of the original C: drive that didn't work.
Hooked up my USB hub (floor, lower left), giving me printer, scanner, and access to my PDA via its charging cradle (not shown).
Installed a PCI IDE controller card and attached my old D: drive (on floor, bottom right of picture) to it, thus giving me access to ALL of my old files.
Unfortunately, the case wasn't designed to hold all this stuff, so I'm currently running everything in the "gutted fish" layout that you see in the picture. It seems to run ok this way, except when the cat starts walking on the components.
I hope to have a picture of something happier within a week.
As a final note, the 16 color thing isn't SO bad, even though it makes my vast pr0n collection nigh unviewable. The big problem is that I can't adjust my screen setting above 480x600, which makes viewing blogs without left sidebars a little tricky, since a little of the text gets cut off on the left side. My current work-around for that is to copy the block of text I can't read, and paste it into a text editor. Even the cut-off parts get copied, so I'm able to read what I'm missing.
Meanwhile, I just keep repeating "it's only temporary".
Oh, and drinking heavily helps, too.
Posted by: Harvey at
10:58 PM
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