bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2007-10-06 05:57 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2007-10-06 05:57 pm
Entry tags:
Disappointed Unix Geek
So I got this bright idea that hey, I want to put the PC at which I am currently working, which has a TV tuner card and Windows XP Media Center Edition, in the living room so I can hook it up to my gorgeous new TV.
And I thought that I should have a workstation of some sort at my desk, from which I could surf the Net and use the Media Center PC as a server.
And I had the old Compaq laptop I bought used to be able to surf the net while I was planning the move to Seattle, which finally died ignominiously a few months ago, which prompted me to buy a Dell laptop so Gary could continue his job hunt at the library among other things, and of which I needed to dispose.
And I had a copy of Solaris on DVD, and I got another bright idea, that gee, maybe I can go get a cheap workstation down at RE-PC while I'm disposing of the laptop, and kill two birds with one stone.
And I found an As-Is Sun Ultra 5 for $35.00. It had a DVD-ROM drive, and RAM, and a keyboard and mouse, but no hard drive. And I got the thing home, and cleaned the loose screws out of its innards, and plopped in a perfectly good hard drive from a long-since-expired PC, and hooked up my Dell monitor and the keyboard and mouse that I bought with the workstation.
And lo, it did not boot.
And I tried the same thing with Gary's old monitor, and lo, it did not boot. And I tried cobbling together a serial cable and hooking it up to the serial port on the new laptop, and lo, it did not boot.
And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Next thing to try would be to find a fresh, known-good serial cable and hook it up. If that doesn't work, then most likely the boot PROM or some other irreplaceable part is fried.
Ah well, set it aside and try another day.
And I thought that I should have a workstation of some sort at my desk, from which I could surf the Net and use the Media Center PC as a server.
And I had the old Compaq laptop I bought used to be able to surf the net while I was planning the move to Seattle, which finally died ignominiously a few months ago, which prompted me to buy a Dell laptop so Gary could continue his job hunt at the library among other things, and of which I needed to dispose.
And I had a copy of Solaris on DVD, and I got another bright idea, that gee, maybe I can go get a cheap workstation down at RE-PC while I'm disposing of the laptop, and kill two birds with one stone.
And I found an As-Is Sun Ultra 5 for $35.00. It had a DVD-ROM drive, and RAM, and a keyboard and mouse, but no hard drive. And I got the thing home, and cleaned the loose screws out of its innards, and plopped in a perfectly good hard drive from a long-since-expired PC, and hooked up my Dell monitor and the keyboard and mouse that I bought with the workstation.
And lo, it did not boot.
And I tried the same thing with Gary's old monitor, and lo, it did not boot. And I tried cobbling together a serial cable and hooking it up to the serial port on the new laptop, and lo, it did not boot.
And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Next thing to try would be to find a fresh, known-good serial cable and hook it up. If that doesn't work, then most likely the boot PROM or some other irreplaceable part is fried.
Ah well, set it aside and try another day.
no subject
I bought a used PC from them, however it did work great - for a year and a half before it's HD kicked the bucket and upgrading it to anything more than 2G was not gonna happen so that's when I built my current PC, then based on the 800MHz Athlon and an Asus A-7V mother board with 512MB RAM on board, now it's a 2G Celeron with a mATX MB. :-)
If I recall right, that old AST tower (P133) had the IBM drive in it (1.6G) drive, I think the old ceramic platter drive at that so I went out and bought a refurbished 17.2G Western Digital Caviar drive and it would only see it as 17MB due to the bios and OS (win95) so that's what prompted me to build my first PC. I'd bought the MB combo from a friend a month or two before for $150 complete, just had to add a new audio card and AGP graphics card (of which is now in the current box to supplant the on board AGP and it's shared memory).
Rochester Gay Men's Chorus
(Anonymous) 2007-10-08 12:54 am (UTC)(link)wnyjockbear here...you know who I am. If you forget, I'll have to send a picture.. Haven't talked in a while. Hope all is OK. RGMC is trying to contact alumni for the 25th year. Drop me a line sometime. jockbearwny@yahoo.com
no subject