Uh...oh...
May. 10th, 2006 02:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sepdetDelenn, my 10-year-old mutant Mac clone, which I used to play with the way Han Solo played with the Millenium Falcon, is starting to go.
The strange purple chip I put in it about 7 years ago to trick it into thinking it was a G3 Mac is dying. It hung when I booted.
Let me sing Delenn's praises.
At a time when CD-drives were just starting to become standard, and in the early days of PowerPCs, there was a brief renaissance of Apple letting 3rd party companies create Mac clones, thinking that it worked for PCs, so why not Macs? After a few years Apple thought better of this. But in the meantime, a company called PowerBase created Macs at about a third of the price of real Macs, specially fine-tuned so that their graphics capacity was actually better than Macs, and WAY better than PCs.
It was a marvellous beast. Also, unlike Macs of the day, one could pop open the hood and futz around.
Over the years I added a CD-write drive to it, when those were invented. And a scanner. And a zip drive, when those were invented. And ethernet, when the net started to demand bandwidth. And a REALLY good drawing tablet-- my old Herald graphics that resemble India ink paintings were done on that.
It was the first computer I used to surf the net outside of the office. It was where I did all my MUSHing for nearly 10 years.
Delenn was named Delenn after I souped her up with that mutant chip that made her very fast indeed, except when she had occasional hot flashes and threw weird alien characters onto the screen for a few seconds. I assumed she was uploading data to the mothership and let her be. I can't remember exactly what it was now, but that chip I installed did not go in a place where a new processor ought to be installed. It was in a spare memory slot or something.
At any rate, I don't understand why it lasted as long as it did, all pinned together with ten jillion cables and prayers and love. I haven't futzed under the hood in so long that I'm not sure how to replace the bit that's ailing.
Well, Delenn, you've been a grand lady, and I hope you don't die, but 10 years is a fairly good run for a computer that was on practically 24/7 for the first 8 years.
Right now I'm attempting to transfer everything onto zip disks and scoop it across to a more modern computer.
Among other things attached to Delenn is a hard drive which is partitioned in weird ways-- they had to be back in those days-- as Zathras (work/applications), Lennier (documents and finances), Draal (art and games), and Dukhat (archives and old files). Those who know B5 will understand, sort of, except that I think PC owners don't usually name their hard drives the way Mac owners do.
I seem to be letting go of a lot in my life these days. I hope Delenn isn't one of them. I kept fighting Tornado woman off of her, because her cables are messy. "Don't touch the dinosaur!"
Hard to believe Lae was -- 8? 7? when I got that beastie.
The strange purple chip I put in it about 7 years ago to trick it into thinking it was a G3 Mac is dying. It hung when I booted.
Let me sing Delenn's praises.
At a time when CD-drives were just starting to become standard, and in the early days of PowerPCs, there was a brief renaissance of Apple letting 3rd party companies create Mac clones, thinking that it worked for PCs, so why not Macs? After a few years Apple thought better of this. But in the meantime, a company called PowerBase created Macs at about a third of the price of real Macs, specially fine-tuned so that their graphics capacity was actually better than Macs, and WAY better than PCs.
It was a marvellous beast. Also, unlike Macs of the day, one could pop open the hood and futz around.
Over the years I added a CD-write drive to it, when those were invented. And a scanner. And a zip drive, when those were invented. And ethernet, when the net started to demand bandwidth. And a REALLY good drawing tablet-- my old Herald graphics that resemble India ink paintings were done on that.
It was the first computer I used to surf the net outside of the office. It was where I did all my MUSHing for nearly 10 years.
Delenn was named Delenn after I souped her up with that mutant chip that made her very fast indeed, except when she had occasional hot flashes and threw weird alien characters onto the screen for a few seconds. I assumed she was uploading data to the mothership and let her be. I can't remember exactly what it was now, but that chip I installed did not go in a place where a new processor ought to be installed. It was in a spare memory slot or something.
At any rate, I don't understand why it lasted as long as it did, all pinned together with ten jillion cables and prayers and love. I haven't futzed under the hood in so long that I'm not sure how to replace the bit that's ailing.
Well, Delenn, you've been a grand lady, and I hope you don't die, but 10 years is a fairly good run for a computer that was on practically 24/7 for the first 8 years.
Right now I'm attempting to transfer everything onto zip disks and scoop it across to a more modern computer.
Among other things attached to Delenn is a hard drive which is partitioned in weird ways-- they had to be back in those days-- as Zathras (work/applications), Lennier (documents and finances), Draal (art and games), and Dukhat (archives and old files). Those who know B5 will understand, sort of, except that I think PC owners don't usually name their hard drives the way Mac owners do.
I seem to be letting go of a lot in my life these days. I hope Delenn isn't one of them. I kept fighting Tornado woman off of her, because her cables are messy. "Don't touch the dinosaur!"
Hard to believe Lae was -- 8? 7? when I got that beastie.
