My house has been visited by the computer fairy!
First, some background for this post. I remember unpacking my family's first computer with my dad in 92, maybe 93. We'd splurged and gotten a 486 instead of a 386. HAAAAAAHAHHAHA!!! Anyways, we'd had computers in school for a couple of years at this point, so I sat there in the floor with my dad showing him what all the bits and pieces were, how to hook everything up, etc.
How fast they grow up...
Fast forward to today. Computers are my dad's hobby, something he tinkers with when the cigar store is slow. Over the past few weeks he's been Ebaying, buying 3 servers of varying age and completeness in order to build himself a gigando Frankenstein server. Whatever floats your boat, right?
Anyways, after taking his pick of all the parts, there was a ton left-over so he pieced them together for a new computer for me. Woohoo!!! I can't call it a PC b/c it's technically a server configuration. Can't call it a server b/c I'm not actually serving anything on it.
Semantics aside, I've got a nice new-to-me 'box' that will more than do what I need. 3 hard drives (two 18s and a 9), dual 733 mhz processors, and 788 in ram that'll get boosted up to a gig or two once he's finished picking over the parts. And since it's a 'server', there's plenty of room to grow.
My cost? Well, he won't let me help pay for the parts. Dad's, what can you do? Since it used to be a server, there was no sound card and no USB ports (which I need for my photographs). We went to Circuit City today and bought a sound card, a USB PCI card, and a USB hub for $75.
Having the new computer gave us the motivation to rearrange the office to be able to fit everything in properly. Here is our office, with all the freebies marked with a red X. And yes, there is one on the cat

January 28th, 2007 at 10:46 pm 1170024362
January 29th, 2007 at 01:04 am 1170032650
yeah, parents do the freebie thing a lot... i was visiting my mom yesterday and came home with two bottles of marinade for my BBQ chicken... gotta love mango pineapple teriyaki...
January 29th, 2007 at 02:15 am 1170036923
Growing up in the silicon valley, coming up with a computer deal was never a prob - hehe. Particularly with techie dads.
I think we have 5 computers we use and we used to have a wired network. Now we have gone wireless, and I guess that is more the norm. We have lost our shock value - LOL. Wireless network, boring.
I don't think we have paid hardly a thing for any of our computers, they abound around here, people upgrade every few months. My dh tends to buy newer computers every year or 2 for his video editing, but has never paid really much, gets most the parts for free and puts them together or simply upgrades his computer, etc. We use all the old ones for various things. Nothing else the kids will have plenty for what they need when we allocate the older ones to them.
We could probably use monitor upgrades though - what are these 10-15 years old. LOL. Probably could upgrade easily for free too since ours are so dang old.
January 29th, 2007 at 03:28 pm 1170084521
Those are quite non-standard specs you have there, but since it was a server, it makes sense.
As we speak, I'm trying to revive an old PII 233mhz for use as an internet appliance for my mom. The scarey part is that it even chokes on (Fedora) Linux it's that bad!
January 29th, 2007 at 03:34 pm 1170084893
BA: try scientific linux, it might be a smaller build and a little easier to handle. could the issue be ram instead of the processor?
January 29th, 2007 at 04:54 pm 1170089643
Actually, it was a kernel panic, but the computer has 64mb and that should've been enough. However, it's a good call though, especially for these modern linuxes. Fedora won't even let me install due to RAM limitation.
I'll take a look at Scientific.
January 31st, 2007 at 03:25 pm 1170257157
Yup, you would have fun out here!!!!!