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Addendum Issue 002
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Addendum Issue# 2 - 14th February 2002
URL: http://members.optushome.com.au/addendum/
=================== Ultra-old Ultra-rad hardware ===========================
* Written at school in a free period:
Well the good news is that I am in the process of building a 486DX2
built especially for writing this zine. So I will be able to write it whenever
I want even if somebody is using my main computer. I tired to build it last
night but unfortunately I must have had the CPU in the wrong way round because
it melted, fed power back into the power supply and fried that as well. I
don't even know if the motherboard is still functional. So I came back to
school with the fried CPU and Power Supply and got myself a whole new box.
I am unsure what to do with it, should I grab the bits out of that one and
put it in the old box. Or should I abandon the old box and just try and get
the new one working. I'm not sure.
I'm also not sure what operating system I want to run. I'm temped to run
Windows 1.0 just for the fun of it but I would probably not be able to
Network it, and let alone browse the web with it so I may go for 95 or even
3.11. Then theres Linux. I might be able to run that and then nobody would
use it apart from me and I would get the added bonus of knowing how to work
Linux. But theres the hardware compatibility thing. Will all the ultra-old
Hardware work with it. Who knows?
Talking of ultra old hardware there is really something ultra-rad about
having an old 486 that is from the time of the dinosaurs and writing an old
style zine in good-ol ASCII and uploading it to an e-text archive.
It kind of feels like being back in 1995. Now all I need is an Amiga 500 with
separate 730k double density disk drives and power supply.
* Written at home after four and a half hours grouling hard/software work:
Old hardware is very temperamental. I got the new box home and plugged it in
all ran well when I booted it up except that the hard drive could not be
read and was giving me a "Primary HDC Failure" this was ok though because
I just took the old hard drive from the computer I got yesterday and put that
In. And it still did not work, so I swapped over the IDE controller card, its
strange to thing of IDE control coming on a separate card, after that though
It worked like a charm.
So I went forth and put a 1.4mb floppy disk drive in and all hell broke loose.
it would not even turn on. So back to the old hardware. I grabbed the old box
and put together a working unit using bits from two different computers,
between the two I managed to get one working, plus grabbing a floppy drive from
my sisters 350Mhz Pentium II, they can do without it.
Casualty Report : Dead components
1x 486Dx2 66MHz (now stuck to my lockers door)
1X 200W power supply (now in the school bin)
1X Motherboard (unknown make)
1X IDE controller card (now where did that go...?)
1X Floppy disk drive (DOA)
1X CD-rom drive (DOA)
As for operating systems, I have decided to run MS-DOS version 6.22 because
that was my first PC operating system. It runs like a charm on a 486 DX2 66 MHz
and there are no problems, it take up all of 6mb (compared to win2k which takes
up just under 1000mb) and is great for running old dos games.
I'm going to use it for writing this zine mostly as I have said before
and for that I am going to use q-edit. So yeah....suck it down.
Until next time my feathered friends.
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Addendum Issue# 2 - 14th February 2002
(C) Steak February 2002
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