Category Archives: computers

Daisy

Fitting – that the old desktop OS should crash just as I was saving the last of the important files. (“what are you doing dave!?”) It has been unplugged. Actually the machine served us well for 7 years and a month (a very long time in computer years). As Dad Harrison liked to say, “She owes you nothing…” (you got your money’s worth). Windows95 is no longer supported by Symantic, ZoneAlarm, or even Microsoft, and so this paper weight was coasting on legacy apps like Office 97 and Lotus Organizer. The Dell Dimension 300 XPS. Good bye old friend.

    Original specs:
  • 8.4gb drive
  • 4mb video
  • 64mb RAM
  • Pentium II 300mhz
    Youthful upgrades:
  • 40gb drive
  • 8mb video
  • 384mb RAM
  • CD RW

old parts cache

Stayin’ alive. It should have been a paper weight by this time but the 7 year old desktop with a 300 mhz PII and running Win95 keeps on going. No longer supported by anyone, parts come from hand-me-down machines. For instance, the graphics card went tango uniform over the weekend but I was able to swap it out with a donor. Restored. B.O.U.R.Girl, without losing a beat, pointed next to the wood scars where desk meets careless chair. Hey! I’m the computer guy from upstairs! Don’t look at me!

a-okay

Went lights out just before my face hit the keyboard. I was a tad concerned for the non-bootable hardrive challenge — as I was running out ideas. The issues:

  • normal boot – no chance
  • last known good logon – no go
  • safe mode w/without prompt – no go
  • Recovery Console wanted admin password – huh?
  • XP OEM disc clean install would wipe all – poor choice

Need a wizard. Support desk? Must sleep… Zzzzzzzzzzz.

A Google search in the morining AM sparked the idea to remove the HDD and slave it on another XP machine . Bingo. Data salvaged. The day saved, the faulty OS can now be overwritten, departitioned, formatted, folded, spindled, or mutilated! Now if I can only coax Norton Security to come back to life 😮

house call

Dear PC Guru: A loved one is having bootup troubles. She’s spent hours on the landline with the techies and I’m not convinced that they have a handle on the situation – advising that her c:disc was-is corrupt…

Neat trick how they deduce that over the phone. Most folks don’t practice safe computing or data backup so my primary mission is data rescue, and secondarily, to restore the OS and install a CD burner so that there won’t be a crisis next time. Committed to the challenge, I hope it isn’t too much of a basket case. I’ll either be a hero or a zero for my $200 idea to box it up and ship. The UPS man should have the machine at my front door by manana.

Heathkit 3

Lawd it’s a real mutha for ya… Yeah! The son/pop tag team sloooow pc build, after 4 months in neutral, is back in gear with this hardware component added last night. An MSI K8N Neo4 mutherboard will serve as the heart and soul of our project featuring the nVidia chipset. The nForce4 features SLI specification for dual PCIe GPUs. This board has the Socket 939 which accepts the latest and greatest from AMD, the next big ticket item on the must have list.

leaving a mark

The Wikipedia is a Wiki. This tool allows you or I or anyone knowledgeable about any given subject or topic the means to add or edit content — In this case to the world’s free encyclopedia on the web. The Wikipedia has umpteen thousands of pages currently posted on topics. Even so, If you search Wikipedia for a given item and come up empty handed then write about it and save it to the site. Who knows, other collaborators might jump in and help you to flesh it out. Kind of like leaving your initials carved into the picnic table. Here is a contribution: The Mercedes-Benz 220SE. I’m not an expert authority but I do come from a generation that remembers the era. Go ahead! Jump in!

milestone

Google beat Microsoft to the punch on this one. Finally, a fast ( .5 seconds ) way to search for stuff on your pc. The Google Desktop beta brings order to your local machine by indexing the 8,074 emails, 9,731 documents, and 5,332 viewed pages in my browser cache. Stealing the thunder.

Careful though… There is a potential privacy issue, should a guest access your machine. There should be a means to enable / disable the search function and password protect. What if you use a public computer that has this tool?

on the radar

Buzz words like newsfeed, aggregate news reader, RSS, XML, ATOM — all describe innovative means and ways to dish up news or editorial content without all of the fluff. Internet users want their information direct and fast and these new tools usher in a new way to cut to the chase. Reminds me of the early minimalist world wide web when ALL web pages had gray backgrounds, black text and blue underlined links. Folks are returning to the basics. While web page presentation graphics, flash, and animation enhance the visual appeal, XML feed will save bandwidth. The cool factor however is that not only can Joe NetCitizen be published, he can become syndicated! Already, portals like bloglines.com and a href=”http://my.yahoo.com”>my.yahoo.com can present these syndicated feeds by subscription. Ultimately, your email client will be enabled. What began with the blogging community will mature with Google, Amazon, Mozilla, and Microsoft.