Chapter One: Accepting What's here or Voyaging on?
What was called originally by sophisticated computer users a piece of junk, became, with savvy and small scale bravery a maybe not so bad computer, but really not much more. Most of the 10 years were wiped away, kind of. Now it's an excellent up-to-date Windows 10 system, on a 500 gig hard drive, with superb graphics on a lovely 1080p monitor.
But it is annoying when I wake up at 4 a.m. and think, "But what if?" when I should be sleeping. There really is no point in any improvements. And really if I spent ANY money it would seem like cheating. So early one dark morning I slid quietly out of bed to start the list of "improvements" that can be made. Quietly, because how do you explain to a relatively sane and normal wife that you are going to make a list of things that will make the ancient desktop in the junk room even better?
The penciled note, which I still have, reads:
ram for sure - see #1 son
faster hd - should be in the old box
faster network card - big problem
It looks like the back packs are in the canoe, and ready to move on, but......
If none of these three can be solved, this story ends here.
Tomorrow -What's Ikea Got to do with Anything?
Biggest improvement would be with an SSD. Who knows? You might score an old one for free from somewhere.
"Biggest improvement would be with an SSD."
Jeez Mike. Where did you get your PhD? At a bible college in South Carolina? The book has been published and will appear in all the major books stores in New York City. What am I to do, scurry around and pencil in changes with a new SSD in every single book? The deed is done. The computer work is finished.
This reminds me of when you sold that computer to the Asian youngster, and I said you could get 25 bucks more. But no, who listens to Buster.
Geez Mike
Quote from: buster on August 18, 2019, 06:56:25 PM
...
Jeez Mike. ....
Geez Mike
Well Mr. English teacher. The least you can do is spell a word the same way when you use it twice. ;D
Chapter Two: What's Ikea Got to do with Anything?
Almost no married man goes willingly to Ikea on Saturday afternoon. Parking spots are hard to find, and once in the crowded store it's like an Xbox game - where are we, and how do we get to where we need to be to get the prize (in this case a chair)?
And escape from the store is also difficult, as it involves finding the 'warehouse' and using the appropriate 'codes' to find the chair you may or may not need. And after you pay finding your car after wandering forever it seems.
So why did I let my wife, who really wanted to go, take me into this warren on a lovely sunny day? All part of a cunning plan. My son lives not too far from Ikea, and I had presented the idea that a visit to Ikea could be combined with a pleasant meal at our son's house and a sleepover.
Meanwhile, during the previous week, I had quietly texted my son and he had found some 4 gig ram sticks, DDR3, in his desk drawer left over from years ago. They were packaged and ready for me.
So we left the store, fought our way through traffic, arrived at our son's house and ate a very good meal that he had dutifully prepared for his ancient mater and pater.
After dinner I casually asked my son, "Do you by any chance have some DDR3 ram sticks?"
He looked a bit surprised of course, but he's quick witted, and glancing at his mom he said, "I'm pretty sure I have some downstairs. I'll go and check."
So that day had the pain of Ikea balanced with the joy of holding the ram sticks in my hand. And a spouse totally happy that I would sacrifice a whole day to please her. And we drank a lovely Spanish red wine. And that helped quite a bit too.
Tomorrow : The Proof is in the Pudding
Let's hope your wife is not a silent subscriber to the forums. :)
Sometimes at Ikea if you are lucky, you get to see a cute little monkey all dressed up in a very fashionable coat, roaming around the parking lot. :-)
Delightful reading the chapters thus far. And 4 GB sticks of DDR3? You lucky bastard.
Chapter 3: The Proof is in the Pudding
Working with old computer parts is much like working on a garden. In general everything looks fine to the neighbours, but the gardener sees that the defeated aphids have infiltrated again under the cover of darkness, the weeds once removed have left tiny children who can be seen peeking out from hiding spots in the corners, and the only expensive plant I own looks as if it has measles. Still, in general, the garden is doing well.
So it was in this case with the ram sticks. Pretty good, but some disappointment to come. The excitement started when I unpacked them in the basement. The two of them very clearly said 16 g! The conversation at a club meeting would be so cool. "So I put in 32 gig of ram. I prefer of course 64 g, but this was all I could get free." Maybe I'd look a little bored as I said it.
The storage room I've been relegated to has one wee 40 W light bulb in the ceiling, and a desk with a flashlight. I tipped the computer case on ts side and stared into the components from my chair. Even with the flashlight it was murky. So all the cables were removed from the back, and the heavier than you'd expect case was carried into civilization in the next room, where the pale blue 16 g treasures were installed into the ram slots easily. A "Yes!" was shouted. Little did I know that this was like scenes where Snidely Whiplash used to exclaim, "Curses! Foiled again!"
Case carted back, cables installed in its back, and power button pressed. Harry smiled.
Quick search for ram, and there it was - eight gig ram. As in e-i-g-h-t.
Had the name of the ram sticks. Googled and found that it says 16g (4x4) on its side, at least from the picture. Phoned a friend who works commercially with computers and repairs and he said, "That was so much false advertising back in the day! They sold 'sets' of ram sticks in a 'four stick kit'. You get a total of 16 g, being 4 times 4 g, but they labeled each stick individually with a 16. The label does have 4x4 on it so they can claim honesty in advertising."
So anyway, moving from a weak 3 gig to a strong 8 gig of ram completes the first of the needed tasks. For this accomplishment I toasted myself with a fine pint of Spitfire Ale from Kent. And the canoe was moving with the current, looking for the next portage.
Also, looking on the bright side of things, I no longer had to practise my delivery of the "I put in 32 g of ram" in front of the mirror anymore.
Tomorrow : The Moral Dilemma
I would say that this is a pretty good outcome. Would you really need more than 8 gb of RAM in an old computer? (Some really old computers wouldn't even recognize more than 4.) So 8 gb of RAM; price = 0. Score: Harry 1, computer devil 0.
You mean Harry's not the computer devil?
And yes, Harry, you will do great with 8 GB - you should notice the performance increase.
Chapter 4: The Moral Dilemma
If I told you that I get emotionally attached to plants and inanimate objects, and that I talk to the six tall trees on our lot that I grew from seed and planted many years ago, you might have me committed. So of course I can't tell you. But we have neighbours who regularly talk to an invisible something, and so I think if I did happen to talk to something alive, and that I can see, I would be able to classify myself as normal. My trees do quite like me, as did my old cars, old furniture, an old TV that still requires tapping on the back each start up to make the lines go away.
How does all this relate to the moral dilemma? I have a relatively old Linux Mint on my first ssd, which is only 120 gig. But like all Microsoft things, my Win 10 covets that drive. But old Linux installs that have been trusted friends for years should not be discarded lightly. How would the PLUG members react? Would I have to leave the club in shame? Also I'm not spending money to get a larger ssd. But it is hard to betray an old friend like Mint.
As along with most people, I decide moral issues by doing what I want and making up really good reasons for the decision later. Also, on giving in to temptation, I echo Oscar Wilde who said it so accurately - "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
Flip Wilson put it more simply, "The devil made me do it."
Either way my friend Mint was being cast aside. Which leads to three immediate technical rather that ethical problems.
1. How do I hook up both drives with the limited hardware attachments in the old case?
2. The used space on the 500 gig Win 10 hard drive has to be reduced enough to fit onto a 120 gig ssd. How?
3. What software will move an image of Win 10 onto the grave of my late friend Linux Mint?
The canoe was approaching a string of rapids.
Tomorrow : Playing with Wires.
I'm guessing those aren't questions for us but considerations you're making? I, for one, find it deeply unethical to tell you how to move Windows 10 onto a drive when it's replacing Mint, so I won't but there is plenty of resources online that will tell how you to move it, assuming that your Win10 install is small enough to fit. And not to sound boastful but simply for your considerations, I will also note that I had Win10 and Linux on a drive that was half the size of your SDD.
All the drafts of Harry's adventure story require a lot of disk space. :)
Yes Jason, these are rhetorical questions as you realized. The thing is, everything I solved or didn't solve was finish a few weeks ago. I did wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if I could make it even better some time ago. So I tried. On Saturday you will know.
After awhile I realized I had solved, for me at least, some interesting and sometimes difficult problems. And they together have some kind of narrative flow. So, Mike, I wrote one copy. Later checked each chapter for flow and grammar. Changed the emphasis here and there.
If it wasn't enjoyable to write, like fixing the old Compaq, I would never have thought about doing any of it.
Decided to start feeding the chapters out starting Sunday. Three to go.
Chapter 5: Playing With Wires
In the beginning of our computer lives, there were a whole lot of mysterious computer parts spread on some tables we used in our attempts to put these parts together. And patiently we learned how to connect things, and even sometimes how to label them for the next time. Until we saw that things that did fit together, should go together. And as time went on, and the fires and explosions became less frequent, we developed a sort of expertise that gave us a great deal of confidence. And in conversations with the less experienced we developed a bit of a swagger, as befitted our hard learned exotic knowledge.
However, in my childhood household, if I commented on how well I had done in a race, or I mentioned that the grade two teacher had used my picture to point out really good colours, my mother, like a TV evangelist, would raise herself as high as she could with her 5 foot frame and glower disapprovingly. "Pride Goeth Before a Fall', she would say sternly. It's not as bad as it seems fortunately, because even as a 7 year old, I knew that my mother didn't glower well. It wasn't, so to speak, part of her skill set. But the image she presented has never left me.
So as I gazed into my revived computer's innards, lying under bright lights on a table, I knew I would be able to get the ssd in and connected. The original hd and disc player were sata, so this should be a piece of cake. An image of my mother walked into the back of my mind. And you know what she was saying.
There was more of a problem to solve than I expected. I was in unfamiliar territory. There were only two sata power connectors available, and they were both in use. My ssd was a late comer to the party. And I searched all over that case and no other sata power connector existed. Failure already?
Google was going to have to be my friend. So far I knew that I had many sources of power, but none were in the sata format. I found the connectors I needed. They're called Molex to SATA and I poked about on Google with those exact words. Something disturbing was occurring. The word 'fire' kept appearing in my search as I went from page to page. Burning down the house didn't appeal to me one little bit. My mother glowered in the background.
I phoned my trusty friend who assured me they are fine. And further investigation let me see that already in the old box were 2 such connectors! I just hadn't noticed. So this left me with finding a means of acquiring one. My regular store sells them for $8.00. But that seems to go against the philosophy of this so far zero cost project.
A timely post led me to a bit of hard bargaining. Ultimately, I was forced to give up two stick of ddr3 ram for one little connector. The fact that the two together added to only 3 gig, and I had no use for them ever again (having just removed them from my free computer) shouldn't enter into this. He drove a hard bargain and I needed that connector. So I gave in. Discretion is the better part of valour.
One set of rapids safely run. Time to find a campsite and get some sleep.
Tomorrow : Throwing Stuff Out
I remember seeing that hard bargaining - it was like watching two well-established leaders debating the price over a great piece of ocean-front property in the far North.
Chapter 6: Throwing Stuff Out
If you have ever put things in a backpack that are necessary for a solo overnight hike on a wilderness trail, then you are aware that the biggest problem is what you are going to leave behind. If you find the pack is too heavy to get off the ground, something has to be removed from your burden. Some things you can't leave out, like dried food, water purifier pills, tent, tiny stove. Some others must to be left out. If you've never done it, know that a heavy pack on your back becomes surprisingly awkward and unpleasant. But if you are over-packed, you will notice it within 30 minutes. Best to stay on the creeks and small rivers with a canoe of course, but that's difficult in the mountains.
When you are going to squeeze 500 gig into 120 gig, something has to be left behind. So 2 virtual machines, VMWare, LibreOffice, qbittorrent, one music player, all media files, anything in the 'Microsoft Uninstall' that I could safely get rid of. Used the disk cleanup for anything it found I could destroy. Then defragmented C: Not sure if it helped but, it filled the early morning hours.
So the space used on C: was down under 50 gig. Is that a miracle or what? But there is the usual 'but'.
The drive had 4 partitions. #1 is very small, #2 is C:, #3 is Recovery, and #4 is the recovery for Win 7. So google, google, google.
Right click bottom left on the screen and call up Disk Management. It's mouse time. Right click final partition, click delete. As John Candy would say on SCTV, 'It blowed up real good!' Back to the third partition, and a right click does absolutely nothing.
Google, google, google
This particular rapid was getting tough. Found a little bay to the side that the craft could rest out of the fast flow.
That partition had to go away. I didn't want it to appear on the ssd. And I wouldn't know how to stop it when I transferred to the little hard drive.
Had a wee rest, drank not beer but water, and got ready to move out into the current again.
Tomorrow: Microsoft Promises Faithfully an Easy Solution
Chapter 7: Microsoft Promises Faithfully an Easy Solution
My spouse and I did a cycling holiday in Vermont sometime in the 80's, with our pretty good Italian Bianca road bikes. We had enough money to stay at various lodges if we could get a room, eat in restaurants sometimes if we could find them, buy a book entitled 'Bike Routes in Vermont', written by a biker we just by chance met in a little town. And most importantly, we each had 21 gears. Riding up the side of even a little mountain is much like having too much in your hiking backpack. But the other side of the mountain is wonderful, and a wee bit quick.
Not exactly lost, we were riding a quiet road and came to a General Store. Outside on a bench sat a pleasant older man who was considerably farther around that the two of us. I have no problem with that except I knew he wasn't a rider. We were hungry and asked if there was a diner or cafe we could reach without any huge hills.
'There's Blanche's Cozy Cafe not far at all.'
'Any hills on the way?'
'One little hill, but it's really nothing. I go that way all the time.'
What he didn't say was 'I drive my big diesel truck that way all the time'.
He gave good directions and everything seemed really reassuring until we turned a corner, left the woods, and saw what looked, with our fatigue, like Mt Everest in front of us. We did get up the 'hill', actually met the pleasantly plump Blanche and had good food. We survived.
This long introduction is a mirror image of my experience with Microsoft's 'easy solution'. I needed to delete Recovery, and right click delete did nothing, but this newly discovered Microsoft solution was right up my alley. Point and click with the correct procedure.
An 8 gig usb stick had just been returned to me. (It had a copy of Harold and Maud that most of us had watched at one time or another.) That was necessary equipment.
Next click the bottom left corner and type recovery. You will find a program called recovery drive, which makes a usb recovery drive for you. Maybe a good idea. Its directions ask you to insert the stick, and you follow the simple directions and it starts to make your own, personal USB recovery stick that you can boot from.
Here's the wonderful thing that's promised us. When, after 40 tedious minutes it ends, you will be offered two choices: Finish, or Delete Recover Partition on computer. Makes sense as you now have a functioning recovery USB stick.
Whoever wrote this article for Microsoft was like the diesel truck driver in Vermont. Everything is different on a bicycle, and everything is apparently different on a 10 year old Compaq computer. I was given only one choice. I could click finish.
Knew what I had to do and let the canoe drift back into the fast water.
The water was relatively smooth, wide and deep around the rocks, and it wouldn't take long.
On the bottom of the menu I typed this sequence of words:
cmd
And then
diskpart
list disk
select disk x
list partition
select partition n
delete partition override
Back to the mouse. Called up Disk Management.
Right click C:
Select expand. Go to maximum.
The hard drive has now only two partitions, tiny at the beginning, and C:
Found a really good campsite, built a fire from dead wood, ate pretty good food, and opened a little plastic bottle of lovely Australian Shiraz. Only a calm, peaceful stretch left to paddle.
Tomorrow: The Sadness of Leaving the River
Great story. I used to bike the route daily between Combermere and Barry's Bay one summer (32 km both ways) but I couldn't handle all the hills. One of them was a ski slope!
I have to note that you used the Microsoft equivalent of the terminal and you typed a whole bunch of commands. And this was in Windows 10 no less, correct? Just goes to prove my point that sometimes you need to use the terminal, even in Windows so learning terminal stuff can be useful.
Quote from: buster on August 24, 2019, 09:32:01 AM
....
On the bottom of the menu I typed this sequence of words:
cmd
And then
diskpart
list disk
select disk x
list partition
select partition n
delete partition override
Back to the mouse. Called up Disk Management.
Right click C:
Select expand. Go to maximum.
...
Your fingers (and brain) must have been burning for days after that round of activity. ;)
I was hoping no one would notice. :)
Chapter 8: The Sadness of Leaving the River
Anyone who has left the real world to come back to civilization has experienced this. There are bathroom showers, good beds, and air-conditioning to look forward to, but there's a sense of loss as well when you leave the river's flow, the wildness, and the stillness of the nights.
Finishing improving a totally unneeded computer feels much the same. It parallels taking yet another scenic picture, solving chess puzzles, camping over 2 months with my family, kids 5 and 6, across Canada in 1970, or running a marathon. It's not the end of it that's satisfying as much as the process itself. The doing is where the pleasure is. I'm sorry that the work on this Win 10 machine is drawing to a close. Mostly the Compaq case will be ignored for the rest of its life and sit crying softly of loneliness in the dark room. Well, maybe not quite that.
The rest of the trip should be gentle and smooth. I need only some software, and the courage to press the button that says start.
The software I chose was Macrium Reflect, and they offer a free version. I was nervous because I have never done anything like this before. Fortunately for me it is absolutely simple to use, as many Windows programs are.
I had to delete the two partitions on the home of my good friend Linux Mint, who lived on the little ssd I needed. So it seemed appropriate that I have some Scotch on ice to toast his demise. Goodbye rituals are important.
It was all mouse clicks. The process took about 50 minutes. I turned off the computer and disconnected the mechanical 500 gig drive. And went away for awhile. There was a huge sense of disappointment that the journey was over. I knew that the computer would work just fine. But still. The trip was over.
Later I booted the Compaq. And it was quick and bright and clear and beautiful, and as good or better than most of the Win10 computers in use today. But the trip was over.
I called the driver who was going to pick up the canoe and packs, and when she arrived, she asked her 14 year old son, in Mandarin, to help load everything, which he did quite willingly.
The canoe was on the car roof, a shower and good food were available soon, and there should have been a sense of a tough job well done. But leaving an absorbing set of continuous computer problems is like lifting the canoe from the river at the end of a trip, where we go back to the usual problems and pastimes of our ordinary lives and hear the continuous chatter around us. T.S.Eliot described it with this haunting line:
'Till human voices wake us, and we drown.'
Epilogue
I would like to thank Dougal for helping me get a free part, and two people at Benchmark Computers who gave me advice quite happily. If my mother were still alive I would point out to her that, in fact, 'Pride Goeth Before a Fall' seems to be absolutely true, at least in my case. Similarly, I would thank my father for constantly insisting that 'Faint heart never won the fair maiden'. That motto is sound advice.
I realize that all I did was fix an old computer and make it pretty good. But it seemed to fulfill the human need to create, like painting a landscape, building a cabinet, planting a garden, creating a child.
That last one is rubbish of course. We don't even think of creating at that point. That's something entirely different. Often the creating is an accidental byproduct.
One step is still incomplete - the high speed Ethernet card. But I have it on the best authority that Mike and Dougal are working on that.
Best of luck to all who resurrect old hardware. May the force be with you.
Great story, Harry. I liked the way you were able to impart emotions that all of us computer hobbyists feel when we're building, fixing or retiring old computers. I was a bit confused about the woman who picked up your canoe and supplies with her 14 year old kid. It seemed abrupt and I'm not sure if that was a metaphor for them picking up the computer you set up. Because, if not...
... you're missing an Epilogue where you put Linux on the machine because it runs so much faster than Windows 10. :)
If you’re not going to use it, I think you are obligated to find it a home with someone that will.
Jason wrote, " I was a bit confused about the woman who picked up your canoe and supplies with her 14 year old kid."
Yes Jason. I have to try to remember that you and others didn't see her in Tim Hortons, or meet her son as he bought Mike's computer. She was kind enough to write a review of this book, which can be found in the thread 'Arriving soon:Further Adventures with an Old Computer'.
Hui Yin Tao and I had become friends before this, and she said if I phoned and gave directions, she would come and get me. Her son came along to help.