Life Among the Geeks

[nonelvis]

columbina is assembling his new computer this evening, so I did a quick census of all the various working and non-working computers in this home. Officially, there are two computers for every man, woman, and cat in this household, and only two of us are equipped with the opposable thumbs necessary to use the machines.

All but two of the computers (an aluminum PowerBook with a fried logic board, and columbina's freshly dead Win98 WinMe machine) are still functional. If you count the various PDAs in the house, we have three more "computers," all of which are also still functional -- a Palm V, some newer Palm thingy, and the Newton 2100 MessagePad you will pry from my cold, dead hands. (I don't use it anymore, but neither am I willing to let it go. It has sentimental value.)

For those of you who may have lost count, that's eight computers, plus three computer-like objects, for two humans.

I don't even want to get into what the boxes full of cables look like, but at least I think I finally dumped the AppleTalk boxes a couple of years ago.

Comments

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

We have twelve? for three adults. Plus three PDAs or equivalent. But four are mine, six are Indy's, and two are T.'s from work. All of mine work, and both of T.'s, but Indy has 3-4 working and definitely two broken. Sysadmins skew the numbers, it's not really fair.

Does that make you feel better, or not at all?

[nonelvis]

Slightly better, I think, since even though we have four computers per human, only six of them actually work. And really, even though we have all these computers, only four of them ever see any serious use.

It's really time to find someplace to recycle at least one system, and I am about a year behind on posting the aluminum PowerBook to Craigslist, since its RAM, hard drive, AirPort card, and enclosure are still perfectly fine; it's just the logic board that's dead. (Hey, if you know anyone who wants to cannibalize a system, let me know.)

[platypus]

We haven't gotten too extreme, really. I recycled two computers a few years ago, and Ken still has his last one in the garage. He buys things so rarely that that covers him for the last decade. And, er, we might have one borrowed from UCSD in the garage, too, because the person who loaned it to us then left the university and we sort of don't know how to give it back now. And of course there's a Mac Plus, Classic and PowerMac in my parents' basement.

But don't get me started on the cable box. We have cables with connectors that haven't been used since the Dark Ages.

[nonelvis]

Col and I did a big cleanout of the cable box a couple years ago, which is why I'm pretty sure the AppleTalk connectors are gone. There are undoubtedly still SCSI cables in there, though, and I think we only have one computer left with a SCSI interface, and no SCSI peripherals.

But it might be useful someday! I swear!

[anonuum.livejournal.com]

As for non-geeks, what part of the combo that makes up a PC would be called a non-working computer? (as far as I know there are no non working monitors around and probably no more than one outer shell, but it is possible to assemble couple of working ones other wise from the available parts).

The working computers - those we have 9 of (I had at first forgotten the one that just runs the network server).

The cats, though, have to be without (interestingly enough, they never sleep on the one that runs Mac - I wonder why, as the monitor does not look different from the Windows running ones that do not have flat monitors ...)

[nonelvis]

Well, like I said, the PowerBook has a dead circuit board; its individual components are still functional, but it will never run again unless I drop $1,200 on a new logic board, which is not going to happen.

In the case of the WinMe machine, the logic board is still fine, but the C drive finally failed, and many of the inner components of the system are close to being worn out.

I cannot explain your cats' mysterious preference for a Windows monitor over a Mac one. Perhaps they are trying to subtly shift you over to the Mac by shedding in the Windows monitor to kill it?

[anonuum.livejournal.com]

This one asks for a LOLcat poster, I guess: "Just shedding in your Windows monitors here!"

(I do not have suitable images at hand, since I have discarded the illustrations to the long ago "6 ways to sleep on a monitor" entries, the only one remotely suitable can only be titled as "Thanks for preferring the Windows monitor!" At least the cat looks suitable tired from the hard shedding work - understandable, as unlike Lynx Panther does not have thick underfur)

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/50797989@N00/271438602/)

[nonelvis]

IM ON UR MONITOR
SHEDDIN IN UR WINDOZE

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

I have three (unless you want to count my Motorola Q, too), though I usually keep one in my midtown office. But what's truly fun is that one of them is my 1985 Mac Plus, which still runs. I just had an adventure with it, but I'll post it over in my journal with pics when I come up for air and the story gets resolved (so far the Genius Bar geeks at the Apple Store haven't succeeded in accessing my files of my same-vintage 3 1/4" floppies, but they haven't given up yet).

[nonelvis]

Oh, I look forward to this story.

One thing I love about Macs is that they last forever. The oldest one we have in the house (still not as old as yours) is an early 90's-vintage Power Mac 7200, the one that came with a PC logic board built-in. columbina still uses it occasionally to play DOS games.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

Hey, if the Apple Store can't get my files off the floppies, do you think your 7200 could swing it? I have an external drive with about an inch of double-sided pins that connect to my Plus; if the 7200 has that port, we might be in business if you can network it to something that has a flash drive (my ultimate goal is to get the files on my flash).

[nonelvis]

The 7200 has a floppy drive, so there would be no need to bring your drive. Of course, we still have to figure out how to connect it to the network, but I'm sure we can work that out. I should also have a floppy drive for the Lombard PowerBook, though it might no longer work since I upgraded that machine to OS X.

Let me put it this way: if the computers we have can read your data, we can get a copy of it to you somehow. If the floppies are corrupted, though, there won't be anything I can do.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

No, the disks are fine. The run great on my Plus. Only problem is printing them out -- my ImageWriter II runs fine, except that after 21 years, the ribbon's dried out (go figure). I think I actually found a ribbon for sale on the internet, so I can print it out, but I'd still like to get the data on to something I can access on a modern device.

[nonelvis]

Ah, of course -- I did the same a few years ago with my college papers, all of which were on 5.25" floppies.

Let me know if the Genius Bar fails you; one way or another, I'm sure columbina and I could help.