thisisjack (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} thisisjack) wrote,@ 2008-11-30 14:52:00 |
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"Yeah man, I remember before."
I've really only owned 3 computers over the last 15 years. "Fatman" who started out as a mutant file server in a Newark attic. "God-Eater" who is ... god only knows where... and the iBook, which was a solid little machine, anonymous and hard working.. yet in the end, not really worthy of a name.
There were others. I had a few IBM AT's and an XT at one point. I had a few clunky omnibooks and a thinkpad for a bit.. but they were only passing through. G-E was around for the better part of 5-6 years. Fatman for almost 10 and the iBook is still in the garage, anonymous, hard working and clamped to the workbench.
It's been cold and rainy in NJ and I have been geeking out severely this weekend. My brother-in-law, a CS student at NJIT, dropped off a eMachine that was "generally fried but might have some good components on it" because he had heard that my computer died. The one that died was Fatman, 1999-2008, RIP big guy.
The eMachine has a crappy MSI mobo, 3 gigs of mismatched DDR and an "AMD 64 3500+" CPU, whatever the hell that is. All my working knowledge of repairing computers is about 5 years out of date.
Someone crammed 2 sticks of DDR in that are a different speed than what came stock, I believe that + a cheap power supply is what fried the capacitors on the video bus ( I suspect someone crammed in a gigantic video card as well). So.. off to Ratshack. It's a sad day when the phrase "Do you have any more thousand microfarad caps?" gets you a funny look in Radio Shack, but that day has come. They only had 2 in the store, I cannibalized the rest off the dead mobo from my recently deceased computer.
.. and that did the trick. That and taking out the bad ram sticks and a new power supply. Grand total 6.50$ for solder and the caps. It lives.
This is the fastest machine I have owned in a long time.. it's neat to see all the eye candy in Gnome2, usually Gnome bogged down my last machine and I didn't use it.
It was fun. It's been a long time since I salvaged something that was straight up trash, and Andrews first time at it. We started talking about computers, the internet, the whole mess.. and it occured to me that this 18 year old kid didn't remember a time before... which seems strange and sad to me. I remember before. I remember before cell phones and the web and the internet everywhere. Untethered. Really and actually anonymous. Anonymous in the sense that you could disappear. You could go places where no one could find you, not even your friends.
I miss it.
I remember when I first got God-Eater and really got into the net for the first time in a serious way. I remember sitting in front of the computer and thinking "This is going to be bad for me."
Nothing to be done about it.
This box has been fun though, need to name it.
I've really only owned 3 computers over the last 15 years. "Fatman" who started out as a mutant file server in a Newark attic. "God-Eater" who is ... god only knows where... and the iBook, which was a solid little machine, anonymous and hard working.. yet in the end, not really worthy of a name.
There were others. I had a few IBM AT's and an XT at one point. I had a few clunky omnibooks and a thinkpad for a bit.. but they were only passing through. G-E was around for the better part of 5-6 years. Fatman for almost 10 and the iBook is still in the garage, anonymous, hard working and clamped to the workbench.
It's been cold and rainy in NJ and I have been geeking out severely this weekend. My brother-in-law, a CS student at NJIT, dropped off a eMachine that was "generally fried but might have some good components on it" because he had heard that my computer died. The one that died was Fatman, 1999-2008, RIP big guy.
The eMachine has a crappy MSI mobo, 3 gigs of mismatched DDR and an "AMD 64 3500+" CPU, whatever the hell that is. All my working knowledge of repairing computers is about 5 years out of date.
Someone crammed 2 sticks of DDR in that are a different speed than what came stock, I believe that + a cheap power supply is what fried the capacitors on the video bus ( I suspect someone crammed in a gigantic video card as well). So.. off to Ratshack. It's a sad day when the phrase "Do you have any more thousand microfarad caps?" gets you a funny look in Radio Shack, but that day has come. They only had 2 in the store, I cannibalized the rest off the dead mobo from my recently deceased computer.
.. and that did the trick. That and taking out the bad ram sticks and a new power supply. Grand total 6.50$ for solder and the caps. It lives.
This is the fastest machine I have owned in a long time.. it's neat to see all the eye candy in Gnome2, usually Gnome bogged down my last machine and I didn't use it.
It was fun. It's been a long time since I salvaged something that was straight up trash, and Andrews first time at it. We started talking about computers, the internet, the whole mess.. and it occured to me that this 18 year old kid didn't remember a time before... which seems strange and sad to me. I remember before. I remember before cell phones and the web and the internet everywhere. Untethered. Really and actually anonymous. Anonymous in the sense that you could disappear. You could go places where no one could find you, not even your friends.
I miss it.
I remember when I first got God-Eater and really got into the net for the first time in a serious way. I remember sitting in front of the computer and thinking "This is going to be bad for me."
Nothing to be done about it.
This box has been fun though, need to name it.
