Maude
I have a new computer! Almost.
I should explain that this family is Not Like Other People when it comes to computers. Not for me the experience of waking up one morning with a desire to purchase a new silicon friend, taking myself off to Computer Universe or wherever and marching in to demand of the hand-rubbing salesman:
"I'll have one of your very finest Computers, my good man. I like the look of that one there! Does it come in pink?"
No, in my world computers are things that start off as something that someone else wants to get rid of. You then add or take away various components until you have the machine of your dreams. Or something that works, whatever comes first. Until a few days ago, my main desktop was a putty-coloured box which had started life as something that my brother-in-law "...couldn't find a use for". In the interim, it had been given a new hard drive, dvd burner, power supply, wifi card, graphics card, dinky little monitor and a second hard drive (some of which I even paid for!), and it worked perfectly well - in fact, due to a rather idiosyncratic choice of operating systems - Windows 2000 and Mepis - it worked considerably better than the average box purchased from Computer Universe.
It was the second hard drive which proved the last straw though. The motherboard just wasn't up to it. Oh, it could see and access the shiny 500GB second drive, but due to some sort of failing in the data transfer rate, any data on it was prone to spontaneously vanish. Which is not the sort of thing you want from a computer, take it from me.
Anway, after about a year of this, I got fed up of only being able to use the 180GB drive, where my main operating system was squeezed into two little partitions of 5 and 13GB.
"I want a new motherboard!". I told The Husband.
"I think I've got one lying around.". he said.
This is another aspect of My Life With Computers in which I am Not Like Other People, because I am pretty sure most people don't just have the odd spare motherboard or two lying around. (under the bed, since you ask). The sheer quantity of computer parts lying around is largely due to living in a house full of ardent gamers who are always wanting more ram and rom and Hz and gigs and a pony. Thus, the Lying Around motherboard, although a few years old, was of very respectable spec. It had last seen service in The Daughter's computer, and may, in fact, have orginally come from G. G is one of those bleeding-edge, early-adopter types, and is the source of quite a lot of hand-me-down components (and whose experiments with an over-clocked processor and a unique cooling system derived from a domestic refrigerator we will draw a veil over).
Unfortunately, the Lying Around motherboard had lain around a little too long, and had apparently departed for Silicon Heaven. It was an ex-motherboard. Upon hearing this, I made an announcement:
"I will buy a new one!"
The Husband looked stunned, as well he might. I don't do new stuff. As well as the brother-in-law's reject computer, my mobile phone is about 10 years old, and is third or fourth hand, and I currently delight in ownership of The Daughter's last mp3 player, a dinky little iRiver. Then there's the three laptops and two desktops which I have rescued from Container World and tarted up with second hand six quid components from ebay. (G doesn't have stuff that old!)
But I'm not getting any younger, and I thought: "Why shouldn't I have an almost newish computer? It's what real people do!
Unfortunately, it doesn't end with the motherboard. A new motherboard needs a new processor. And a new dvd burner. And new memory. And a new case and power supply, but fortunately The Husband had one of those Lying Around - his last-but-one, from the days when case modding was all the rage. Which means it's back and has a fancy see-through panel in the side. Although the string of flashing blue leds that went inside are mercifully long gone!
Having got leave to spend my money, The Husband sprang into action, and very soon some boxes of components were delivered! Hurrah! None of this just walking into a shop and buying a functioning machine rubbish! I was not allowed to assemble them myself - I am not allowed near anything that costs more than six quid, or is expected to be in a functional state at the end of it all, but The Husband got his finger out and put it all together pronto, including the final coup de grace which was to install the two hard drives from the old machine, and then he handed it over to me, a technically fully-functioning bit of electronic kit, and said:
"Here you go, it's all yours."
Shiny Components
Shiny components in situ
133t modded case. Dude, where's my leds!?
A technically fully-functioning piece of electronic kit which, in fact, was completely non-functional because it's not just about the electronics, and it's not as simple as just taking the wretched hard drive out of one machine and putting it in another. Oh no! We're not at the Computer Universe stage yet!
The problem was that the old hard drive wouldn't boot in the new machine. Windows took great exception to all this shennanigans, as Windows is wont to do. When I finally prodded it awake, it took one look at the shiney new components and went:
"OOOH! YOU CHANGED STUFF! I HATE YOU!"
And then it slammed the door and flounced off to sulk in its bedroom.
Actually, it bsod-ed and said "Inaccessible Boot Device", which amounts to the same thing. There is, apparently, a fix for this, which involves sacrificing a chicken at the first full moon after Bill Gates birthday, pulling down your pants, turning round three times and singing "Waltzing Matilda" backwards, but on the whole it seemed easier just to reinstall Windows. It didn't seem worth the effort of reinstalling Windows 2000 and getting it up to speed (10 years is a lot of updates!) and besides, Microsoft is pulling the rug in a few months anyway, so I opted for Windows 7. I stuck it in a little 20GB partition, there to ponder the futility of its existence. I was tempted to do away with Windows entirely, but there's always some bloody thing...
Mepis on the other partition booted fine. In that it booted the kernel, loaded all the services and was up and running and fully functional, except for one tiny thing. The graphics. It was set up for the Nvidia graphics card in the old machine, and wouldn't work with the new graphics card. I had - Jurassic Park style - a cursor on a completely blank screen. Which counts as a fully functioning system in the world of Linux - GUI? Pshaw! Who needs it? I could have fixed it by reinstalling the drivers and spending three days laboriously re-writing the config file - what Linux geek worth her salt wouldn't kill for a chance to do that - but I decided that life is too short, and I reinstalled Mepis in less than 10 minutes.
Fortunately - and here my well-laid master plans came to fruition - I was able to clone my old 13GB home partition from the smaller drive and copy it onto the new drive then s t r e t c h it out to fill its new 400GB partition. That was very satisfying, let me tell you! in an oddly Freudian way
Copying the home partition meant that all my settings were saved. Thiede appeared on his rightful place on my desktop, and all I have to do is reinstall the programs and they have all their old settings and data! It's exactly like it was before!
Which is strange, because there is nothing - nothing - at all left of the original brother-in-law's box. And all that is left from the last reincarnation is the two hard drives and one data partition. This prompts the old question of computer existentialism - is this the same computer, or isn't it? I've given it a new name, so I don't get confused. It's called Maude. Maude says hello.
I should explain that this family is Not Like Other People when it comes to computers. Not for me the experience of waking up one morning with a desire to purchase a new silicon friend, taking myself off to Computer Universe or wherever and marching in to demand of the hand-rubbing salesman:
"I'll have one of your very finest Computers, my good man. I like the look of that one there! Does it come in pink?"
No, in my world computers are things that start off as something that someone else wants to get rid of. You then add or take away various components until you have the machine of your dreams. Or something that works, whatever comes first. Until a few days ago, my main desktop was a putty-coloured box which had started life as something that my brother-in-law "...couldn't find a use for". In the interim, it had been given a new hard drive, dvd burner, power supply, wifi card, graphics card, dinky little monitor and a second hard drive (some of which I even paid for!), and it worked perfectly well - in fact, due to a rather idiosyncratic choice of operating systems - Windows 2000 and Mepis - it worked considerably better than the average box purchased from Computer Universe.
It was the second hard drive which proved the last straw though. The motherboard just wasn't up to it. Oh, it could see and access the shiny 500GB second drive, but due to some sort of failing in the data transfer rate, any data on it was prone to spontaneously vanish. Which is not the sort of thing you want from a computer, take it from me.
Anway, after about a year of this, I got fed up of only being able to use the 180GB drive, where my main operating system was squeezed into two little partitions of 5 and 13GB.
"I want a new motherboard!". I told The Husband.
"I think I've got one lying around.". he said.
This is another aspect of My Life With Computers in which I am Not Like Other People, because I am pretty sure most people don't just have the odd spare motherboard or two lying around. (under the bed, since you ask). The sheer quantity of computer parts lying around is largely due to living in a house full of ardent gamers who are always wanting more ram and rom and Hz and gigs and a pony. Thus, the Lying Around motherboard, although a few years old, was of very respectable spec. It had last seen service in The Daughter's computer, and may, in fact, have orginally come from G. G is one of those bleeding-edge, early-adopter types, and is the source of quite a lot of hand-me-down components (and whose experiments with an over-clocked processor and a unique cooling system derived from a domestic refrigerator we will draw a veil over).
Unfortunately, the Lying Around motherboard had lain around a little too long, and had apparently departed for Silicon Heaven. It was an ex-motherboard. Upon hearing this, I made an announcement:
"I will buy a new one!"
The Husband looked stunned, as well he might. I don't do new stuff. As well as the brother-in-law's reject computer, my mobile phone is about 10 years old, and is third or fourth hand, and I currently delight in ownership of The Daughter's last mp3 player, a dinky little iRiver. Then there's the three laptops and two desktops which I have rescued from Container World and tarted up with second hand six quid components from ebay. (G doesn't have stuff that old!)
But I'm not getting any younger, and I thought: "Why shouldn't I have an almost newish computer? It's what real people do!
Unfortunately, it doesn't end with the motherboard. A new motherboard needs a new processor. And a new dvd burner. And new memory. And a new case and power supply, but fortunately The Husband had one of those Lying Around - his last-but-one, from the days when case modding was all the rage. Which means it's back and has a fancy see-through panel in the side. Although the string of flashing blue leds that went inside are mercifully long gone!
Having got leave to spend my money, The Husband sprang into action, and very soon some boxes of components were delivered! Hurrah! None of this just walking into a shop and buying a functioning machine rubbish! I was not allowed to assemble them myself - I am not allowed near anything that costs more than six quid, or is expected to be in a functional state at the end of it all, but The Husband got his finger out and put it all together pronto, including the final coup de grace which was to install the two hard drives from the old machine, and then he handed it over to me, a technically fully-functioning bit of electronic kit, and said:
"Here you go, it's all yours."
Shiny Components
Shiny components in situ
133t modded case. Dude, where's my leds!?
A technically fully-functioning piece of electronic kit which, in fact, was completely non-functional because it's not just about the electronics, and it's not as simple as just taking the wretched hard drive out of one machine and putting it in another. Oh no! We're not at the Computer Universe stage yet!
The problem was that the old hard drive wouldn't boot in the new machine. Windows took great exception to all this shennanigans, as Windows is wont to do. When I finally prodded it awake, it took one look at the shiney new components and went:
"OOOH! YOU CHANGED STUFF! I HATE YOU!"
And then it slammed the door and flounced off to sulk in its bedroom.
Actually, it bsod-ed and said "Inaccessible Boot Device", which amounts to the same thing. There is, apparently, a fix for this, which involves sacrificing a chicken at the first full moon after Bill Gates birthday, pulling down your pants, turning round three times and singing "Waltzing Matilda" backwards, but on the whole it seemed easier just to reinstall Windows. It didn't seem worth the effort of reinstalling Windows 2000 and getting it up to speed (10 years is a lot of updates!) and besides, Microsoft is pulling the rug in a few months anyway, so I opted for Windows 7. I stuck it in a little 20GB partition, there to ponder the futility of its existence. I was tempted to do away with Windows entirely, but there's always some bloody thing...
Mepis on the other partition booted fine. In that it booted the kernel, loaded all the services and was up and running and fully functional, except for one tiny thing. The graphics. It was set up for the Nvidia graphics card in the old machine, and wouldn't work with the new graphics card. I had - Jurassic Park style - a cursor on a completely blank screen. Which counts as a fully functioning system in the world of Linux - GUI? Pshaw! Who needs it? I could have fixed it by reinstalling the drivers and spending three days laboriously re-writing the config file - what Linux geek worth her salt wouldn't kill for a chance to do that - but I decided that life is too short, and I reinstalled Mepis in less than 10 minutes.
Fortunately - and here my well-laid master plans came to fruition - I was able to clone my old 13GB home partition from the smaller drive and copy it onto the new drive then s t r e t c h it out to fill its new 400GB partition. That was very satisfying, let me tell you! in an oddly Freudian way
Copying the home partition meant that all my settings were saved. Thiede appeared on his rightful place on my desktop, and all I have to do is reinstall the programs and they have all their old settings and data! It's exactly like it was before!
Which is strange, because there is nothing - nothing - at all left of the original brother-in-law's box. And all that is left from the last reincarnation is the two hard drives and one data partition. This prompts the old question of computer existentialism - is this the same computer, or isn't it? I've given it a new name, so I don't get confused. It's called Maude. Maude says hello.