Catching Up

Published on January 31, 2005 By MrBadAxe In Current Events

As I tend to do, I completely forgot I had this blog for several months. Shit happened. It's now the start of 2nd semester at UMass and I got too much shit to talk about. Where to start?

I suppose I should tie up the loose end from the last article. The IBM Thinkpad I returned? Apparently, since I had attempted to install Linux on the laptop to replace the preloaded Windows 2000 in an attempt to see if it was a software problem, I had voided my warranty, and thus USANotebook refused to refund ALL of my money. I still got about 80% of it back. Remember: even if you think you can fix it, If it's under warranty, DON'T FUCK WITH IT. You can just as easily let someone else deal with your problem for free or at least, very cheap.

Unfortunately, no warranty with my desktop, seeing as how it was built from parts, like any non-Mac-using poweruser worth his weight in silicon would do. Note: I'm not disparaging Mac users for failing to customize their desktops, because, lets face it: what kind of customization can you really do with a Mac other than the drop-down menus at the online Apple Store?

As a side note, it would be cool to house my all-purpose WinXPbox in an aluminum Mac G5 case.

I've been thinking about older computers for quite some time now and I've been seriously thinking of building a box and installing DOS in it. Just because hardware is cheap enough now that I can. I've narrowed the process down to four options:

OPTION 1: Buy a brand new entry-level desktop. Dell, Compaq, IBM, eMachines, HP, they all sell them for about $400.

OPTION 2: Buy parts from discount parts stores such as Newegg, ComputerGeeks, and MWave and assemble them myself. Vastly superior to Option 1 in that a) I spend about half as much, and

I get to put together a computer. Fun.

OPTION 3: Pick up a used PC from a yard sale. Hardware quality is not guaranteed, but for at maximum half the price of Option 2, still a good one.

OPTION 4: Use the 433 MHz eMachines my brother used until last christmas (at which point he got....another eMachines! albeit this one was a 2.8GHz), which would cost me, last I checked, zippo.

Assuming that I don't find a used PC at a yardsale for $20, I could use my brother's old 433 MHz eMachines. Of course, that would involve reformatting the hard drive, which is, of course, the only true way to get rid of Shitware, a term I've designed to mean those free applications and shortcuts you get with any Windows installation.

Examples of Shitware:
-Any and all forms of spyware.
-Free AOL Subscriptions.
-A program that leads you through trivial tasks with too much handholding.
-"Do More With Gateway" and similar apps, whose purpose is to make you buy peripherals branded with Gateway logos and lobotomized software at inflated prices.
-Microsoft Internet Explorer.

So once my drive is formatted, I'll need to go about furninshing my PC with the proper hardware. Floppy disk drives are a must. In this case, floppies are more convenient than anything else, since all of the old DOS games I play are on floppies anyway. And I'm not talking just 3.5" floppies; I'm adding a lever-locking 5.25" floppy drive. I may never use the damn thing, but it would definitely look retro. And I can also test the computer knowledge of my peers by asking them to insert a CD; If they realize the OldBox has no CD drive, they're friends worth keeping, if they insert the CD in the 5.25" drive, I'll inform them that they ruined my important data CD. After they hastily and nervously apologize, I'll tell them that it was just a blank CD-R, laugh at them, and hope that they too can laugh at themselves.

Disk space probably won't be a major concern. The smallest hard drives from ComputerGeeks will probably suffice, since I'll be using programs written in a time when hard drives were measured in megabytes rather than gigabytes, or even earlier, when personal computers had no hard drives at all. Programs are SMALL. Consider this:

Excel 2003 (just EXCEL.EXE, which probably requires several other files), circa Now: 10073144 bytes.

VisiCalc (just VC.COM, that's all it needs), Circa 1980: 27520 bytes.

VisiCalc runs just fine in DOSBox 0.62 on my system, and can do everything I normally use Excel for, with the added bonus of being 1/360th the size. How times have changed. Gives you something to think about. Now, consider this:

Excel 2003 as part of Microsoft Office Suite: $100-200

VisiCalc + DOSBox: can be downloaded for free, if you know where to find it

And, of course, to run killer apps like VisiCalc, we need an OS. And that, of course, is FreeDOS. I won't go into detail about FreeDOS, but I will say this: It's DOS. It's Free. And it's open source.

What more? Internet access would be nice. Modems are dirt-cheap (a 56k modem from Newegg costs less than $6) but so are NICs ($4 if you don't mind no-name brands, and I don't). All I need now is a proper packet scanner program, a copy of Arachne, and I'm set to go.

Finally, would be nice to have a sound card. Commander Keen sounds so much better with Soundblaster effects. Also cheap. $8 for a card (assuming the motherboard hasn't got onboard sound) and the pair of CyberAcoustics speakers I use with my laptop when I'm away from my desk.

Hardware is the only tricky part; after that, all that remains is the right software, which, as I mentioned, can be downloaded with Arachne.

After that, it's on to whatever the next project I think up will be. See ya!

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