7200.7 hard drive (pulled out of an Apple computer - must not have
gotten a lot of use (snicker)) for a mere $10!! Now, this is a good deal
if the drive works, and if it doesn't, well it was only $10 and maybe in
2 weeks I can get those guys to exchange it.
I really hope this has some life left on it. Now the case has the
potential of a viable hard drive. The guys who sold me the drive almost
handed me a Western Digital drive, but I insisted on a Seagate. Of
course, your mileage with drives may vary. People have reports of
various models of drives working for a long time or ones that die for no
reason.
The case has a Win2000 product key on it, but it's not going to get
Win2000. It has a tendency to scramble external drives plugged on the
USB, as I got to see with one friend's system. My drives are important
so I won't trust them to just any OS. I would really like to get a legit
Windows XP key though, retail version or corporate, whatever will work.
It won't see the Net at all - it'll be for the things I don't need the
Net to do, like play Playstation emulators (among others) and make DVDs
with DVD Flick.
I have a DVD burner picked out. I just need a deal on a good 16G
thumbdrive, perhaps from Kingston or SanDisk. It already has a CD burner
which is just fine for me. I could use that when burning disks for use
in the Playstation.
I found out that it has a Soundblaster Live! audio card, with extra
audio plugs on the back. Woot! Subwoofer time! And it has an ATI Rage
128 Ultra video card. Nice. I think the motherboard has a 2002
manufacture date, which means the BIOS should see the entire 40G drive.
It's a Pentium 4, but the memory is single channel. So it'll work, just
not like an AMD Athlon and 1G dual channel RAM.
I'm going to set it up to boot the Ultimate Boot CD and run some tests
on the drive, providing it does work and will spin up. The jumpers are
set to make it the Master hard drive, and plugged into the end of the
IDE cable where it should be.
After that, I'll see about installing XP if it'll take, then run SP3 on
it.
And hopefully have the right sound and video drivers on hand by then.
^_^ My Win98SE box has a Rage 128, but not an Ultra.
I think for other musings from time to time will involve episodes of
abuse as I remember them as a kid, which were dealt out by my father.
There was this one rather painful episode which involved the digging of
a garden at his 2nd house in Salem, OH. I was doing something, I don't
remember what, but part of what I was doing included not paying
attention to something my father was doing and then saying to me. I was
enlisted in helping doing some digging for a garden, among other things.
He was asking for a "spade," but as a kid at the time, I have no idea
what that is. My world at the time included the new spiffy LED watch I
had gotten as a gift some time before that summer day.
As it turned out, I had ignored my father's request for this "spade"
item, long enough to raise his anger to the point where he used the
handle of whatever garden implement he had in his hands at the time and
he swung it at me. It happened to hit me on the wrist where I was
wearing my watch. It may have struck me more than once, but the painful
blow on my wrist, the one I still distinctly remember, was strong enough
that it broke the wrist strap on the watch at one point where it
attached to the plastic body of the watch itself. I remember the injury
that resulted of that abusive use of a wooden handle, but I imagine it
would have entirely broken my wrist had it not struck the watch. My
watch saved me from serious injury, something I'm sure my father didn't
not realize he almost inflicted upon me, nor did he appear to care.
His patience was demonstrated at that moment to be non-existent with
children. And his common sense was such that had he gotten my attention
specifically and then asked for a "Shovel" which is a word I did know,
even as a kid at that time, he would have been promptly handed one.
But I'm sure I don't remember what happened after I was struck with that
wooden handle and ran into the house crying because of the pain I felt
after being hit in such a manner. It was after running inside and having
a chance to inspect the damage that I found out my watch was busted.
Well, some super glue was able to reattach the wrist strap, which began
a long string of watches repaired in this manner. I'm not saying he was
responsible for all those later watches, it just seems it started a
pattern.
I'm pretty sure today he would claim he doesn't recall something like
that happening or doing anything like that, but I am of the kind that
things like that don't go away. There were some good times, but I have
had enough of the abuse, not all of which was physical. Maybe I should
be lucky in that I don't recall any sexual abuse - which is likely
because nothing of that sort ever happened. I'm pretty sure of that.
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