Scrapped my old 'pooter

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Finally had to scrap my old barebone 75 mhz packard bell after 3 years of faithful service. Had to upgrade to a 333mhz that I built last night with scrounged parts I collected over the last two years. Guess now I need to start scrounging for when I have to upgrade to ghz in a couple years. Stripping "Zaphod" as a doner for this tower made me feel like I was pulling the plug on a family member for organ harvesting( o.k. I admit it , I'm a geek and a technician). Now to figure a name for this new beast. Any suggestions ?

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2002

Answers

Now to figure a name for this new beast. Any suggestions ?

(sound of Taps playing)

How about Phoenix (rising from the ashes)?

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002


I second Phoenix!

My sil, a geek kinda guy, upgraded our puter over xmas. He bumped the ram up from 16meg to 96meg. Its a whole lot faster now.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002


I got room for RAM. The main board is a salvaged server board. I like the Phoenix, but will add "torch level 1" as a generation indicator. any others?

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

No suggestions for you Jay, although YOU might consider changing your name to "Dr. Frankenstein" . . . . . ;-)

I am impressed with your talent. I have to buy my computers! I need to add more RAM but I have been putting it off because I don't think I'll be able to put it in. Well, that, and I get busy with other things . . .

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002


Jay,

What don't you do???? Worms, edible utensils, and computers too?? Man, I wished you lived in Kansas, I could use friend like you close by!! If I know how to work on computers (like building new ones from scratch) I would. Heck, the computer I'm on now has had to have two transplants in the last year to keep it from tripping over my words. LOL. It only has ONE MB of harddrive for goodness sakes. I'm getting ready to buy a "notebook" so that I can use it for my continuing education.

Name? How about LUCKY for luck? I know If I'd attempted that project I'd certainly need to give it a name suggesting its fate!

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002



You da man, Jay. I have no idea what you said, it's all way over my head,but I think you said you built a computer. Huh? I didnt know actual people could do this. I have enough trouble turning mine on. You are truly amazing!

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Whoa back up. I'm just a "student of life". What happened with Phoenix I is my old system got too antiquated to be effective so I scrounged a large tower case that could accomodate two mother boards and slots for up to twenty hard drives and sixteen periphials.One whole side of the chassis can be used for p&p cards. The mother board I ended up using can accomodate four times the dimm sticks of a typical mother board. As I get ahold of more periphial hardware and a faster processor, my unit could accomodate a multi user network or a bulletin board similar to this only on a smaller scale. As far as what I can't do, after being in education cycle for 35 years and having a sort of photographic memory, most learning processes run fairly smooth for me and I get a kick out of learning.Something else I find fun is seeing how much junk I can get to work in a system with little or no cash investment.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Joy ,

Installing the strips is fairly simple. Use ESD protection (grounded 1 megaohm wriststrap and slide them in the socket and lock them in place. Then let your system reconize the added ram or configure the value in the cmos/bios configuration. Just make sure all memory sticks are compatable. EDO and non-EDO memory sticks are not compatable with each other.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002


twenty hard drives

SCSI drives?

What OS are you running on this thing? Novell? Unix? Linux?

Ruth is really intrigued by what you're doing, Jay. This sort of thing is right up her alley - I'm sure you two could "talk shop" for quite a while. :-)

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002


Jim,

My chassis is what we called a mini mainframe, about four and a half feet tall , two feet deep and 18 inches wide. Has multiple power supplies installed and I loaded all the goodies I have accumulated into it. While it does have potential as a complete network server, I'm currently using it only as a PC with a windows load while I continue to debug the hardware (the cdrom went south last night and the scsi drives wont stripe properly yet. At least the tape drive back up should install easily). As soon as I get the main system debugged, I will probably install the slower board from Zaphod in the secondary main and tinker with networking it in so I can use it as a limited diagnostic background. My training is more in hardware with just required proficiency in software to aid in hardware debug. I was trained a little more on Novell, so I will be studying that as the most likely administration platform when I get more goodies to install in this wall locker. If nothing else, when I get it upgraded, I may get cable connect to play those interactive games. Right now, I'm using this tinkering as a little emotional therapy and a means of maintaining my technician abilities until I get back in a plant environment. So far I have only spent $65 over 18 months on the stuff already installed. Most of it came from junk piles. The fella that sold me the used main board, which required replacement ICs, also gave me a faster processor I can install on my old main board after I straighten out the gold pins on it. It looks like it was inserted on a miskeyed socket.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002



That's cool, Jay. You'll have to let us know how things progress.

I think the reason I haven't tried building my own system is that I don't want to troubleshoot all the potential hardware (and software) problems that inevitably arise when piecing together a system from disparate components such as your doing.

I guess I'm just not all that patient. But this would be something that Ruth would jump right into. :-)

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002


Some of the problems can be downright hilarious, like the large bruise on my forehead. When I installed the hard drives, the main ide worked, but when I installed the scsi drives and configured them, it wouldn't see them. Then I installed the cdrom and cd burner. While accessing the cd, I opened the "latte holder" on the burner, when accessing the burner, the scsi drives polled even though they wouldn't ID. Simple configuration problem so I reinstall the drivers. When it comes up , EVERYTHING is active, drives polling, both latte holders opening and closing , printer port cycling. After six times doing this a large bruise the size of a grapefruit developed on my forehead (had something to do with repeated contact with the surface of my desk) and I retired to bed. This morning , I sat bolt upright in bed with a splitting headache (gotta pad my desktop surface) and came back to my lab and found my tray of lithium batteries. Put one under my tongue to prevent further forehead bruising (lithium lets you ride the little yellow bus , right? only next think next time I'll use bourbon, the batteries taste TERRIBLE and arc between yur taste buds and saliva glands :>) and installed the other on the main board to retain CMOS settings as the one on it was down to .75 volts. Problem solved for 85 cents and one acute concussion :>)

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Jay... you are way to funny!!!!!

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

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