IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!

This weekend I dug out two old PCs which I seemed to recall had died on us (several years ago), warranting the purchase of new PCs.

Contemplating making one working PC from the two, I pulled the sides off both boxes and took a look inside. I know my way around the inside of a case, and I'm also pretty efficient at salvaging dead PCs, so one look was all it took for me to realize that I was lacking several critical pieces, like RAM, and hard drives.

Fortunately I'm also a hoarder, so the RAM sticks and hard drives which no longer resided within these cases were still within my possession. As were several old Video Cards which I'd burned out (or so I thought) playing games that were a little bit too graphic intensive for them. I'd need one of those video cards because the mother board of one of those PCs does not have an on-board GPU.

But first on the agenda was upgrading my daughter's PC. She got 50% more Ram and a new (old) video card. Old, but still a two generation upgrade over what she had. I also uninstalled AVG. As much as I like anti-virus programs they tend to bog older systems down (as well as some newer ones). Her computer definitely seemed to run a lot faster with those simple changes. Cost? zero dollars.

Then I turned to the PCs. The first thing I noticed was of the remaining RAM sticks, the two largest were two 512MB sticks and they would only fit one of the MoBos. So it got a full Gig of RAM. I also dropped in one of my two 40GB HDD then, out of sheer curiosity, plugged it in and fired it up. To my amazement not only did it work, but it booted up into Linspire.

ASIDE: Earlier this week at my mate's house we watched United which he'd...er...borrowed(?) from a certain website which let you download...borrow. I did say borrow. So this website lets you borrow all sorts of movies which, if you've got a TV hooked up to your computer, rather than watch these movies on your piddly little computer monitor you can watch them on a much bigger screen (such as that found on a 50" Plasma TV). We already have Netflix, which lets us stream movies through our BluRay player, except that Netflix's 'online' service is sadly lacking. It does have a reasonable selection of some older movies, and some of the newer releases, but for the older or more obscure classics, and the latest releases, you still have to request a physical DVD. I understand what they're doing, but I still think it sucks.

So I hooked up this new PC with Linspire to my 50" Plasma, booted it up, and the POST loading screen came up, followed by the Linspire loading screen, and then? As it booted into Linspire's desktop, my TV screen went dark and the words Invalid Format began floating around the screen. Having encountered this situation before with the BluRay player I knew what was going on so I hooked up a monitor to the Linspire machine to set its resolution to one of the handful of true 16:9 widescreen resolutions. Except Linspire didn't offer any of those particular resolutions to me. Yes, I was using a widescreen monitor, but even when I told it to show me resolutions not supported by my system none of the 16:9 resolutions were listed.

Fortunately I had a second 40GB HDD so I unplugged the Linspire HDD and plugged in the second one. It booted up into Windows XP (as it should; I only have a 98 SE CD, and an XP Pro CD), and XP let me set the resolution to a proper 16:9 resolution. Unplug the monitor, plug in the 50" and the Windows desktop appeared larger than life (that's assuming you're smaller than 50", which I'm not, so technically it's not larger than my life, but I digress).

I unplugged the LAN cable from the BluRay player and hooked it up to the PC, which was good for updating the video drivers, but not so good for the BluRay player. But one of the other gadgets I had in my possession, which I had no idea why, or how long I'd had it (years, I'm guessing), was a 5-port Switch. As I'd gone through my box of PC Bits & Pieces I'd come across the Switch and despite not recalling ever seeing it before and not being 100% sure what it was, in typical Bloke-fashion I'd thought to myself, "I might be able to use this." A quick Google search revealed that indeed I could use it, and for the purpose I'd had in mind, too. Back into the box of Bits & Pieces I went where I extracted two 6' CAT5 cables. Plug the LAN cable into the Uplink port on the Switch, plug in both 6' cables then plug their other ends into the BluRay and the PC, and now both machines were online. Cost? Zero dollars.

Finally I turned to the last PC. This thing is old. It has an Athlon 1.2Ghz CPU. Years ago that was fast. Now? Not so much. It also only takes PC133 RAM. I had, according to their stickers, two 128MB sticks of PC133. I plugged them in, plugged in the Linspire HDD, and one GeForce MX4000, being the fastest of the old video cards I still had. It all booted up, except the Linspire HDD wouldn't boot. Which made me wonder if Linspire was not on the Hard Drive itself, but buried in an EPROM chip on the other PC's Motherboard.

Fortunately I had my XP CDs handy, as well as an old DVD drive which I promptly plugged in. It was then a simple matter of installing XP, and catching up on some reading. Then downloading SP3 while doing some more reading.

The only problem is there's one essential part of a computer which I don't have any spares of, and that would be monitors. The first PC doesn't need one because it's hooked up to the 50" Plasma, but this second PC? It needs a monitor. It also needs a new MoBo, faster CPU, more (& faster) RAM, a faster Video Card, and a bigger power supply to keep all that stuff running. In other words, I need a new computer ;)

"This axe? Why, it's been in the family for generations. Had 4 new handles, and a new blade, but it's just as good as the day my great-grandpappy bought it, all them years ago."