A Blast From The Past!

Remember that Windows 2000 machine I mentioned a few posts back? Well, I was paid more than sufficiently to fix it, only to receive an e-mail from the owner a few days later saying they'd bought two new Athlon 64-based Compaq towers (got a great deal on them through a Best Buy employee discount). I was then requested to transfer the data from the computer I'd just repaired to the new ones. I agreed to help them, and they again insisted on paying me a more than sufficient amount for the services rendered. They were also going to throw-out the Windows 2000 machine, but I said I'd take it. 866MHz Pentium III, 384MB of PC133 RAM, 80GB 7200RPM WD HDD, 24x LG CD-RW, and a 5-port PCI USB 2.0 card were the most notably salvageable components.

I got my new used machine home and went digging through my pile of parts to see what I could do with it. I ended-up adding a DVD-ROM drive, another 64MB of RAM (458MB total), and swapping the 80GB HDD (that'll go in one of my nicer machines) with two 6.5GB drives I had. It's ugly, but it runs well. Anyway, while I was looking for parts, I came across the shell of my old 300MHz Pentium II machine. This box is close to my heart because it's the first computer I ever really played with; tweaking and such. Sure, I started back with my Commodore 128 and had a 386 and a 486 DX2 66 before I got this one, but this P2 was where I started upgrading video cards and RAM, adding more optical drives, flashing the BIOS, and really getting to know the modern Windows environment well. It turned out I had enough parts lying around to rebuild this one as well, so here I am, posting from my old P2-300, Intel AL440LX, 128MB of PC66 RAM, 6.5GB HDD, CD-ROM, 32MB ATi Rage Fury, Sound Blaster Live!, Windows 98SE machine.

The really cool thing was that the last hard drive I'd used in there was still there, and I hadn't touched it in over three years! All the old software, games, bookmarks... Ah... Memories... *sniff* I've since updated it with the latest versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp 2, and WinRAR, and the latest compatible versions of Java, Adobe Reader, and Quicktime; oh, and three years worth of Windows Updates :) It's a little sluggish to start-up and load programs, but once you're in, it's solid.

Nostalgia rules.