Don_HH2K's Blog

The many PCs of Don

It's getting hard to count all of these on my hands!

HP Compaq nx6325 - 2006 (2006)

This is the computer I use most regularly. It's used for everything from schoolwork to digital media to gaming, and generally is pretty powerful though lacks somewhat on the gaming front. It comes to school with me on weekdays and occasionally gets carried around on the weekends, though it's more of a mainstream value notebook than a thin and light designed for mobility. The battery's virtually useless and is best used in Standby, so it's absolutely pertinent that the power cord remains handy at all times. So far, the included power cord shorted out (not warrantied), and the mainboard needed to be replaced (warrantied).

This machine is home to roughly 16GB of digital media, 150MB of e-mail, 30MB of IM conversations, 4GB of games, and over 100MB of homework compressed with algorithms ranging from deflate to LZMA.

Intel SE440BX2, No. 1 - 2008 (1998)

A machine I recently found at work that would otherwise have been thrown out. The machine is in relatively good condition, especially when compared to the rest of my desktops. Though it lacks a CD drive and a bay cover, I was able to install openSuSE using a set of fourteen floppies. Because this is the faster of my two SE440BX2 machines, I'm planning on making it my secondary machine when I get a chance. The fact that it actually has a complete case is an added bonus as well.

Intel SE440BX2, No. 2 - 2007 (1998)

I got this machine for $2.50 at CompUSA's liquidation sale. Originally it came with a "CompUSAPC" case that fell apart shortly after I got it, so it's now in the case that came with a Gateway Performance 500. Originally it was configured with just a PSU, motherboard, CPU, NIC, and floppy drive; I added the rest later. It primarily serves as my secondary PC and is also used for backups, though I'm in the process of moving backups onto my WS440BX. I'm not entirely certain where the panels to the case have gone to...

Intel WS440BX - 2005 (1998)

This was a Gateway Performance 500 at one point. The processor spontaneously died, so I ended up gutting the machine and using its parts and case elsewhere. Just recently I bought a replacement CPU from a local retailer. I'm planning on creating a NAS with this machine. The case is now used in one of the SE440BX2 machines, so I have the motherboard enclosed in a static-proof bag until I end up getting a new one. Originally I had been planning on seating this machine in a gutted VCR, though its height prevented the project from ever taking off. It's currently planned to be a NAS once I get a suitable hard drive for it.

Gateway Solo 2500LS - 2001 (1997)

Originally my dad's machine, I received this machine in 2001 to replace my aging Windows 3.1-based machine that was having Y2K-related problems. At the time it ran Windows 98 First Edition and sported just 32mb of RAM with a 3GB hard drive. It was later upgraded to 160mb of RAM (which was the documented limit, though this later proved to be 280mb) and a 6gb hard drive. Its first CD drive was dead when I got it, though I bought a replacement just a month before the laptop stopped turning on. Strangely enough, the laptop started booting again when I tried it a year or two later. It's now the server that runs my website and blog.

The machine actually features two PCMCIA slots and an RS-232 port, though the RS-232 port had its pins accidentally pulled out, while the second PCMCIA slot has a few bent pins. The floppy drive is also dead, though this is a rather recent development.

NEC Ready 220T - 2008 (1997)

This machine was given to me as a gift from a friend of mine. He had no use for it, and it had been collecting dust for a number of years in his office, mainly due to his lack of a power cord for the unit. The onboard CD drive is dead and the unit features no floppy drive, so installing an OS can be quite a pain. Furthermore, the battery charge controller is dead. Since the battery isn't a lithium ion model, I can take it out and hook it up to my 12-volt camera battery charger without fears of it exploding. However, the controller constantly reads zero volts from the battery while in use, and thus the system puts out a series of three high-pitched beeps every five seconds while the system is running off the batteries.

I use an old parallel printer/scanner combo unit, and my main laptop doesn't have a parallel port. This machine acts as a print-and-scan server using IIS for configuration and SMB for scanned image and printer sharing.

AST Ascentia M - 2000 (1996)

My dad got this machine following the liquidation of a telecom startup in the area where he happened to be working, where it was used mainly for logging the results of tests carried out by the compliance engineering department. The machine is in very good condition, with a charging battery and virtually no surface scratches despite its advanced age. The CD drive is extremely picky about what CDs it reads, and the external floppy drive needs to be held vertically (usually up against a wall or similar surface) to read properly. For reasons unknown, only the first gigabyte of the 20gb hard drive in this works properly; writes to the rest of the drive cause it to reset.

Compaq Deskpro 4/33i - 1996 (1990)

Ah, this machine brings back memories. It originally belonged to Serono Corporation, and was thrown out with nearly 300 similar workstations when the local campus upgraded to a fleet of Pentium/166MHz machines. Serono upgraded the machine quite a bit: its purchased configuration, according to the label on the bottom, was a 33MHz 486DX processor with 4MB of RAM.

When I acquired the machine, it was configured with the 83MHz Pentium CPU and 16MB of memory, with a 120MB hard drive and a 5.25" floppy drive. The Pentium Overdrive-83 was supposely a commercial flop, making it a rare find. It originally ran Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with a 10Base-2 network card and talked to the rest of the Serono campus via IPX, though I downgraded to Windows 3.1 to free up some RAM by getting rid of the networking features I wouldn't be using any time soon. It was later upgraded with a Memorex CD drive, various hard drives, the Sound Blaster Pro, a Super VGA-capable graphics card, and so forth. The NE2000 and extra 16MB of memory were installed within the past two years.

On the LPX riser card, there's a fourth ISA slot that's inexplicably upside-down. Because the power supply gets in the way of installing a full-height ISA card, it's difficult to install a card in this socket. I managed to install my Promise EIDEMax card from its bay cover, turning it upside-down, and snaking the IDE cable just so that it wouldn't pop out. I'm assuming that Compaq reserved this for some interface card that's unknown to me, though if I haven't got a clue what goes there in the first place, it makes sense to make use of the extra slot if possible.

Packard Bell 386SX Notebook Computer - 1993 (1993)

The blast from the past! This was originally designed in 1989 and purchased in 1993 as our first home PC, even though it was intended to be solely my dad's. The machine ran Windows 3.1 along with vintage apps such as Netscape Navigator Gold 3.04, Microsoft Project 1.0, Trumpet Winsock 2.0, ComIT!, and Microsoft Word 4. It later had a prototype V.34 modem attached via serial and an HP DeskJet 500 over parallel.

Circumstances were such that in November 2007, when my HP Compaq nx6325 needed to be sent in for service, I ended up using this machine on a regular basis. It had surprising battery life for a notebook of its age, especailly when switched into its 8MHz "Slow Mode". It could be kept in a primitive Standby mode for much longer, though the fact that the system beeped while in Standby made this inconvenient to use. As the hard drive is dead, the machine gets booted off one floppy for DOS or two for Windows 3.1; both configurations allow for TCP/IP networking over 10Base-T Ethernet. The machine is far too slow to browse the Internet, read e-mail, or use AIM locally, so I did all three using a terminal emulator with Lynx, PINE, and bsflite. Perhaps the strangest thing I did with this machine, to the amazement of my schoolmates, was write an entire term paper using the MS-DOS Editor.

Print | posted on Saturday, February 23, 2008 1:13 AM |