Daily Archive

I fought the vast assortment of PCs, the conglomeration of PCs, the hand-me-downs that have accumulated over the years. I don’t think of myself as a hoarder, but my SO might not agree. For years now, I’ve received kicks under the table, nudges in the arms as someone would offer and I would snatch up free computer equipment. I did have a plan. I did have a few battles to wage keeping the aging collection running. I’ve always wanted the super-duper wiz-bang blue-lighted gamers PCs that my BIL was always getting and flaunting. I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money when the workhorse on my desk was fine.

Over the years I’ve purchased computers for my family. After a few years, I realized that I couldn’t live vicariously thru their PCs and started getting them what they needed, not what I wanted. I did draw the line getting what I knew I would have to maintain. But still no fancy lights.

Well we moved and along came several bins of parts, 5 PCs, and 3 laptops. Then at work they said I could bring my 2 1/2 year old work horse home as mine. They wanted to replace everyone’s at the same time.. My SO just rolled his eyes till he saw the black, sleek, piece of art that was my new pc.

And so begins the Battle of the PCs……

No one wanted to be turned into parts. No one wanted a new copy of XP. Everyone was quaking in the corners wondering who would be the first to go. The first challenge was getting the new PC to talk to the others. It was a shell game at first. Netbeui was their common language. The new Black Box was having none of this… After a few moments of sheer stupidity, that little communication problem fell by the wayside. Old Tower of Power (OTP) was talking to Big Black Box (BBB) and giving up all it’s secrets at a very slow speed. My junker hub was only doing 10 MB/half duplex. Hmmm, flipped a few switches and much better. I left it overnight merrily moving data.

I mistakenly thought I had won the War. Overnight, OTP became a conspirator. As I attempted to load XP, it gave me multiple Blue Screens of Death (BSD). Of course, the error messages were cryptic and as I looked at the array of PCs, I swore they all had smug looks on their faceplates. Hmm. I stripped parts as suggested. Flashed the BIOS. Popped parts in and out. Every time the BSD took exactly 6 min and 6 sec to appear. Long enough to hope. ARGH! Google was no help. Microsoft was no help. I booted from diskette, stripped the hard drive back to nothing. Fought through a ‘long beep’ scare. Parts, screws, face plates, and more were scattered around the Old Tower of Power. I retired from the field.

The next day my new DVD/CDRW drive showed up in the mail. I had been swapping between two CD drives on the OTP in hopes at least one would be blessed by the XP gods. As a last desperate attempt, I worked on the Big Black Box, popping out the CD drive and installing the DVD drive. What a difference 6 years has made in PCs. No screw driver needed, power supply just swung out of the way, drive popped in, and BBB instantly started writing to the drive. No drivers needed. No stupid PNP wreaking havoc on the PC. Now I was armed with a new CD player… I locked up BBB and moved back to OTP. I think I sensed fear in OTP’s diodes or maybe it’s attempt to fall off the desk as I approached, gave it away.

Suddenly after fighting with OTP for two days, it rolled over and gave up. Seems the whole time, the original CD player was not XP compatible. This still puzzles me greatly since I had installed Windows 2000, burned spindles of CDs, and played music using this CD player. Two hours later Old Tower of Power met the new wireless age and was happily downloading patches…

The rest of PCs seem to have learned from the Battle and are slowly capitulating one at a time. Two will go and two will stay… I haven’t had the heart to break the news to the PCs yet… Do I hear ‘donation’ in their futures?

We will see.

Ciao