That shot of Death_Machine in my last entry does not do him justice. He is one bad-ass mutha… and he truly is some sort of zombie/frankenstein thing… rising from the dead, stealing parts from other dead machines, reanimation, eating brains, fearing fire… the works. I like giving my computers human characters and attributes. It helps keep me from tossing them out of windows when they piss me off. What’s amazing is how well that machine runs. Honestly, I don’t “use” it on a daily basis, so it would probably feel a little slow to me now, after using this machine for so long. But it gives me no problems. It happily plays all my TV and now all of my audio and probably all of my other video until I figure out the issue this one has with all that stuff. I’ll take some better pictures soon, he deserves it.
I remember when I first decided to build my own PC. I had helped others with theirs and had poked and prodded with enough hardware to know what I was doing… and it was time for a new computer. So I went to my most trusted tech news and information site, Ars, and started browsing their System Guides. I was making decent money at the time, so I shot for something between their “God Box” and their “Hot Rod” with a few personal tweaks. I actually found my original hardware shopping list. I bought almost every piece from a separate vendor, so I probably raped myself with shipping cost. oh well. When I finally received all the pieces, I started putting the thing together… well, I tried, but it didn’t work out, because the motherboard was missing one of the little nubs on the processor socket that the heatsink/fan attached to. It was simply not there. It had broken off, apparently. So I called the place I bought the board from and the promptly sent me a new one (and didn’t ask for the old one back, more on that later).
Now I finally had all my pieces and I threw it all together and it worked! I was so proud. And it frickin’ ripped! It was the fastest machine I had ever used. I named him CatGeyser, after a funny snippet about “Wooster Mass” from the book (I was living in Worcester at the time) and then promptly installed my email client, web browser and chat clients… what a waste. I did use it to watch a lot of DVDs, which was fun. And I did start using it edit my photos, when I got a digital camera. Sooner or later I broke down and bought a few video games, too. But, alas, no computer runs forever (except those wicked old Digital machines) and it started to have the usual list of bugs that a computer has. Hard drive failures, CD burners that refuse to burn anymore, operating system reinstalls and upgrades… and then one day, something really went wrong and the CPU fans (yes, it was a dual-processor system) were no longer spinning. The chips were fried (at least one of them) and the board wasn’t getting power to all of it’s connectors. It was dead…
so I bought a new motherboard which was already mounted in a case and moved all the rest of the hardware over to the new home… abandoning that giant case, that wonderfully fast motherboard and a lot of case fans (for a system about as fast with almost as many fans and a window so I could see in the case… ooooh).
A couple years later, I was working after-school day care with middle-schoolers, and they wanted me to run some clubs, so I suggested a “computer club.” We got a whole bunch of old broken and dead computers donated to us and we went to town, ripping them apart and testing the various pieces of hardware to see what was salvageable. I quickly realized that I’d need to bring in some hardware from home to make this all work. So I went to my parents’ house, where I dumped all the stuff I didn’t want to take from Worcester to Woonsocket… including a bunch of random computer hardware. Among the randomness was the huge tower, the dead motherboard, and the original motherboard, with the missing nub. I did a little research, and found that heatsink/fans were available from CompUSA which attached to all the nubs, and not just the middle ones. I picked up a couple of those and brought all the pieces to the next meeting of the “computer club.” I announced that we had a “big” project on the table to go with all the little ones. We made some progress with one of the old chips and the new fan and some crappy old hard drive and video card… actually got it to POST and install an OS, but not really run. The club ended, and the machine went back into hibernation for a while.
Then, a new roommate wanted a computer, so I took on the beast again… getting two new chips and a better hard drive and a semi-decent video card. It worked like a charm, so I put it in his room and he had a computer. I gave it to him with an old Sun monitor that needed software to make it display correctly, and apparently it got pushed against the wall a few too many times, because the connector on the back of that monitor is really messed up now… and he must’ve gone through 3 or 4 keyboards and mice. While he was using it, he stenciled DEATH MACHINE on one of the side panels.
When he moved out and I decided to make it into the TV in my room, so I bought a Radeon All In Wonder, installed it and renamed it to Death Machine… Drew moved out at the same time, and he had adopted Blinky, the computer that had received much of CatGeyer’s old hardware after the initial death of CatGeyser. I made a barter deal
with Drew : I would upgrade Blinky to all black drives (to match the case) if he bought me a monitor for Death Machine. So Blinky’s hardware came back to the tower it started in… and then I threw in another hard drive and the .
That is the full story and lifespan of that diehard machine across the room from me.
In real geek news, Mozilla 1.5 is out!!!!!!!!!!!!! You really need to get it. I’m still anxiously awaiting Thunderbird 1.5… shouldn’t be too long now.
woot
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