Ah ha ha HA HA HA ha ha

[cmdr_zoom]

My computer came today, finally, my new old computer: a bare-bones Compaq system, everything proprietary of course, weird internal layout. It is NOT MMX, as advertised, which means that my one old game that refuses to install on anything else won't run on this, either. (Apparently the folks who ported "Cyber Troopers Virtual-On" for Sega never considered that Moore's Law would someday allow their game to run on any system, so they thoughtfully put an MMX-hardware check right in the install program. Never mind that we're at least three generations past that architecture now.)

After beating my head against that one for most of the evening, I decided to try other games. They work fine, but I'm not getting any music, so I rip out the sound card and get ready to install the Genuine Sound Blaster 16(tm) that I've had forever. And hey... while I've got a screwdriver in my hand, why not pop out the motherboard of my P-100 and see if its sudden and unexpected refusal to boot up was just a short, rather than something permanently broken.

There's quite a bit of dust under there; well, some paper towels will fix that. Prop up the mobo on its side, reattach the power leads, turn it on... (just to see, you understand)... and it boots fine, except for the finding-no-HDs thing. Because I took those out to put in the other computer that came today that cost me a total of $60, you understand.

So now I have two old computers, each incomplete by itself, like conjoined twins: one with a processor supposedly twice as powerful as the other, but with unfamiliar hardware and an inconvenient layout; the other an old familiar machine I'd just resigned myself to tossing on the scrap pile that suddenly works again. That I could have "fixed" at any time.

See why I'm laughing?


hee hee hee...

To hell with it, I'm going to bed.

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[karjack.livejournal.com]

*points and laughs*