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future-proof in the 90s
Thursday, September 9 2010
I've been on a roll with putting together new versions of old computers. Some days ago it was Coyote (formerly Echidna), the new Debian-Linux based media computer running an Atom 330 and attached to an enormous 2 Terabyte hard drive. Then it was the Pentium IV I set up yesterday for my brother. Today I rebuilt Aardvark, the computer Gretchen had when I moved in with her back before 9Eleven. That computer has been largey unchanged in that time. It started out with Windows 98 and an AMD K6 running 400 MHz and ended up with Windows 2000 running on a 450 MHz K6. Gretchen's last observation about it came the same day she initiated my dragging of her ergonomic particleboard desk up the stairs: "It's so slow!" Aardvark is an old IBM Aptiva, but amazingly I found that one of my newer Atom-based motherboards fit in its case. For its time, the Aptiva had one crucial advanced feature: a replaceable motherboard backplate, allowing the installation of every suitably-small motherboard produced since. The Aptiva's ATX power supply (which is weirdly small and couldn't be replaced) had to be modernized with the addition of the little four-pin cable carrying 12 volts to the vicinity of the processor, so I just tapped into one of the media drive power cables. Since the Atom motherboard draws so little power, one doesn't have to be worried about exceeding the limits of any of its rails.
This evening I queued up some podcasts on my computer, strapped on a portable FM radio with noise-canceling earbuds, and weed-whacked the entire lawn. It was the first such mowing since early August (before I'd gone to Virginia). It's true: we only mow our lawn about four times each year.
But Gretchen always likes it when I mow the lawn. When I finished (at about dark) she'd prepared a huge pot of minestrone-type soup containing chunks of marinaded tofu.
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