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The Dusty Beast Lives!
Aug. 14th, 2002 02:27 amThe DUSTY BEAST is the name of the computer that I now have, made up of parts of "BEAST1" (my dad's old 486) and "BEAST2) (my old 200mhz machine). Mostly it's still my old 200mhz machine with a new cd-r drive and the case & floppy from the 486. And the power supply that I originally pulled from my 500mhz "Gold Vanity" machine.
So... Jeff showed up today unannounced to help me with my drive/computer. (And how could be be announced, since I have no butler?) We quickly determined that my 8.5 gig drive from my old machine was corrupt (fdisk couldn't read it) so we wiped it and formatted it.
Next I got his help (mostly borrowing his tools) and moved the motherboard from my old computer to the larger case recently occupied by my dad's old 486. Jeff helped me with some of the plugs... I didn't know what to do with the Turbo plug (ignore it) and I wasn't sure what to do about the fact that I'd pulled a power supply with a switch hard-wired to the on/off switch in the front of the computer and replaced it with the kind of power supply that has the on/off switch in back and powers through the motherboard. What we did, or what Jeff did for me, was to use the reset cord/plug as my on/off switch (which the case didn't have). Well, anyway, I don't have a reset button but I have an on/off switch so that's cool. ^_^
Next we looked at the 3.3 gig hard drive that had originally been the master drive for my old computer, and which I was fairly certain had died and caused my old computer to die with it. We were able to wipe it and format it with a little difficulty. Jeff told me to run scandisk before I used it, just to be safe. Well... I tried running scandisk twice, and my computer hung up both times, then it didn't even want to boot up correctly (this is my new computer, "Neon Lotus", with the crappy 3.3 gig drive slaved to it).
So anyway, the crappy 3.3 drive is apparently junk, which I'd suspected all along. It's another two toy magnets to go with the two from the 486 drive, if I ever bother to open them up. ^_^
After getting home earlier tonight, I hooked everything else up and then tried to start it all up. At first I couldn't figure out why it wasn't seeing the cd rom drive... but after I included it in the boot sequence everything went fine. I managed to install WIN98 without calling Mike or Jeff, which is a good thing because they're asleep this time of night. ^_^
My computer likes to run through the memory test a bajillion times before moving on... I remember that it's always done that (haven't had this computer up and running in a couple of years).
Now that it's alive, I'm not entirely sure what I plan to do with it... it's certainly a beast, but I >DID< install the Geforce 2 mx 440 PCI video card that I've had lying around for months, so it's got SOME ability to run older 3d computer games. I'll probably add my really slow external cd-rw drive to it, and use it as a backup backup computer or something.
So... Jeff showed up today unannounced to help me with my drive/computer. (And how could be be announced, since I have no butler?) We quickly determined that my 8.5 gig drive from my old machine was corrupt (fdisk couldn't read it) so we wiped it and formatted it.
Next I got his help (mostly borrowing his tools) and moved the motherboard from my old computer to the larger case recently occupied by my dad's old 486. Jeff helped me with some of the plugs... I didn't know what to do with the Turbo plug (ignore it) and I wasn't sure what to do about the fact that I'd pulled a power supply with a switch hard-wired to the on/off switch in the front of the computer and replaced it with the kind of power supply that has the on/off switch in back and powers through the motherboard. What we did, or what Jeff did for me, was to use the reset cord/plug as my on/off switch (which the case didn't have). Well, anyway, I don't have a reset button but I have an on/off switch so that's cool. ^_^
Next we looked at the 3.3 gig hard drive that had originally been the master drive for my old computer, and which I was fairly certain had died and caused my old computer to die with it. We were able to wipe it and format it with a little difficulty. Jeff told me to run scandisk before I used it, just to be safe. Well... I tried running scandisk twice, and my computer hung up both times, then it didn't even want to boot up correctly (this is my new computer, "Neon Lotus", with the crappy 3.3 gig drive slaved to it).
So anyway, the crappy 3.3 drive is apparently junk, which I'd suspected all along. It's another two toy magnets to go with the two from the 486 drive, if I ever bother to open them up. ^_^
After getting home earlier tonight, I hooked everything else up and then tried to start it all up. At first I couldn't figure out why it wasn't seeing the cd rom drive... but after I included it in the boot sequence everything went fine. I managed to install WIN98 without calling Mike or Jeff, which is a good thing because they're asleep this time of night. ^_^
My computer likes to run through the memory test a bajillion times before moving on... I remember that it's always done that (haven't had this computer up and running in a couple of years).
Now that it's alive, I'm not entirely sure what I plan to do with it... it's certainly a beast, but I >DID< install the Geforce 2 mx 440 PCI video card that I've had lying around for months, so it's got SOME ability to run older 3d computer games. I'll probably add my really slow external cd-rw drive to it, and use it as a backup backup computer or something.
