My own electronic cubbyhole
Back in the day, having even a single PC to use for your own personal convenience was a complete and total luxury – yes, a luxury – even if you were studying or working to earn money from that PC.
A 286 DX was top of the line and Windows were opened to let in the fresh air. There were faint rumblings about something called the 386 and its immediate successor, the 486, which didn't have a separate math-co-processor (gasp) !
The latest in phallic envy was to own the 386 with 4MB of RAM.
What about now?
I originally had a single P1 933 MHz original Intel PC with 20 GB HDD and 256 MB RAM. The OS was Win 98 because I didn't see the need to go onto anything as fancy as ME or XP. I didn't know much about NT based operating systems and didn't care as long as I could hack at my assembly language programs and play Quake. I had an internal 56 Kbps modem to connect to the phone line. I had a 52 x CD ROM drive and one 4 x CD Writer.
Quaint isn't it? This was nearly 4 years ago. At that time, it was almost the latest and greatest I could possibly afford. And it was good enough for a college student.
This system satisfied me until about 6-7 months ago. Then I started using VmWare. Immediately after that, I started praying to VmWare to work even a bit faster than a semi comatose snail.
A few months ago, after having read so much about what home coders around the world have as their personal desktops, I succumbed to upgrading my junk yard.
I first got myself another PC – a P3 1.6 GHz ASUS motherboard machine with 256 MB RAM and two DLink NI cards. This was meant to be my main Internet server and firewall machine. I originally tried Win XP SP2 on it with ICS turned on, but the default firewall sucked, and Norton was a messy screw up. The system slowed down so much that I had to re-format it every 2 weeks. I gave up on Microsoft and went the Linux way, at first trying to install Mandrake 10.1 – a pleasurable experience for the most part, but eventually made me feel like NOT using Linux at all. It was all too dumbed down for my liking. Then Bain suggested that I should use a Debian distro instead. So I tried installing Knoppix onto the HDD. A frustrating experience to say the least. But once installed, it was definitely more hands on and close to the metal than Mandrake. When I next spoke to Bain, he told me to go to Ubuntu. I was already beginning to get weary of Knoppix, so I decided to switch over to Ubuntu. Best move I ever made.
Being a Debian derivative with a very calming and pleasant GUI, Ubuntu is by far the best I have used so far. No unnecessary bells and whistles, no fancy bouncing icons eating into precious processor cycles, no interminable waits to fire up Firefox or Hard-Drake. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but it was pretty close. And now I'm in love and too comfortable in this relationship...
This machine is now my Internet gateway + firewall. It is also my MySQL server, CVS server, IP masquerading server, NAT box, et all.
Other software it has : Azureus, GNUCash, Eclipse, Ajunta, OO.o, the KDE Games, VLC, and GFTP.
I have just recently upgraded its RAM to 726 MB RAM. Now it barely if ever uses any swap space – It doesn't need to!
Pretty soon, I even replaced my first PC to something with more bang – a P4 2.6 GHz, 845 GVSR motherboard with an on board 10/100 NIC. It had 512 MB RAM and an extra 40 GB HDD. Plus a 16 x DVD Writer. This one started off with Windows XP SP 2 directly. It became my primary development platform (I am also a Windows hacker in case you didn't already know).
But of late, I just didn't think that 512 MB RAM and 60 GB would be enough. So I upgraded the RAM to 1.5 GB. And just yesterday, I have bought my latest hardware upgrade: a Seagate 160 GB hard disk drive. This one will replace my first 20 GB HDD.
So what about my first ever PC? Oh its still there. Its still got its 256 MB and now its going to get its 20 GB back. It wont have a monitor or keyboard or mouse for itself, but that shouldn't matter much, because I've also bought a 4 port KVM to care of that problem!
What next?
I'm thinking of replacing at least one (or both) of my 15 inch monitors with a single 17 or 19 inch flat LCD display. With the KVM at my disposal, I don't need more than one monitor!
I also realize the need of a good seating arrangement and a desk. That'll be next.
And after that, a wireless router and dongles for all PC's
Then a laptop that supports WLAN.
The junk yard isn't a brand new shiny space station (“ooh shiny!”) yet, but its going to get there pretty soon.
A 286 DX was top of the line and Windows were opened to let in the fresh air. There were faint rumblings about something called the 386 and its immediate successor, the 486, which didn't have a separate math-co-processor (gasp) !
The latest in phallic envy was to own the 386 with 4MB of RAM.
What about now?
I originally had a single P1 933 MHz original Intel PC with 20 GB HDD and 256 MB RAM. The OS was Win 98 because I didn't see the need to go onto anything as fancy as ME or XP. I didn't know much about NT based operating systems and didn't care as long as I could hack at my assembly language programs and play Quake. I had an internal 56 Kbps modem to connect to the phone line. I had a 52 x CD ROM drive and one 4 x CD Writer.
Quaint isn't it? This was nearly 4 years ago. At that time, it was almost the latest and greatest I could possibly afford. And it was good enough for a college student.
This system satisfied me until about 6-7 months ago. Then I started using VmWare. Immediately after that, I started praying to VmWare to work even a bit faster than a semi comatose snail.
A few months ago, after having read so much about what home coders around the world have as their personal desktops, I succumbed to upgrading my junk yard.
I first got myself another PC – a P3 1.6 GHz ASUS motherboard machine with 256 MB RAM and two DLink NI cards. This was meant to be my main Internet server and firewall machine. I originally tried Win XP SP2 on it with ICS turned on, but the default firewall sucked, and Norton was a messy screw up. The system slowed down so much that I had to re-format it every 2 weeks. I gave up on Microsoft and went the Linux way, at first trying to install Mandrake 10.1 – a pleasurable experience for the most part, but eventually made me feel like NOT using Linux at all. It was all too dumbed down for my liking. Then Bain suggested that I should use a Debian distro instead. So I tried installing Knoppix onto the HDD. A frustrating experience to say the least. But once installed, it was definitely more hands on and close to the metal than Mandrake. When I next spoke to Bain, he told me to go to Ubuntu. I was already beginning to get weary of Knoppix, so I decided to switch over to Ubuntu. Best move I ever made.
Being a Debian derivative with a very calming and pleasant GUI, Ubuntu is by far the best I have used so far. No unnecessary bells and whistles, no fancy bouncing icons eating into precious processor cycles, no interminable waits to fire up Firefox or Hard-Drake. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but it was pretty close. And now I'm in love and too comfortable in this relationship...
This machine is now my Internet gateway + firewall. It is also my MySQL server, CVS server, IP masquerading server, NAT box, et all.
Other software it has : Azureus, GNUCash, Eclipse, Ajunta, OO.o, the KDE Games, VLC, and GFTP.
I have just recently upgraded its RAM to 726 MB RAM. Now it barely if ever uses any swap space – It doesn't need to!
Pretty soon, I even replaced my first PC to something with more bang – a P4 2.6 GHz, 845 GVSR motherboard with an on board 10/100 NIC. It had 512 MB RAM and an extra 40 GB HDD. Plus a 16 x DVD Writer. This one started off with Windows XP SP 2 directly. It became my primary development platform (I am also a Windows hacker in case you didn't already know).
But of late, I just didn't think that 512 MB RAM and 60 GB would be enough. So I upgraded the RAM to 1.5 GB. And just yesterday, I have bought my latest hardware upgrade: a Seagate 160 GB hard disk drive. This one will replace my first 20 GB HDD.
So what about my first ever PC? Oh its still there. Its still got its 256 MB and now its going to get its 20 GB back. It wont have a monitor or keyboard or mouse for itself, but that shouldn't matter much, because I've also bought a 4 port KVM to care of that problem!
What next?
I'm thinking of replacing at least one (or both) of my 15 inch monitors with a single 17 or 19 inch flat LCD display. With the KVM at my disposal, I don't need more than one monitor!
I also realize the need of a good seating arrangement and a desk. That'll be next.
And after that, a wireless router and dongles for all PC's
Then a laptop that supports WLAN.
The junk yard isn't a brand new shiny space station (“ooh shiny!”) yet, but its going to get there pretty soon.
posted by Uv | 11:18 PM
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