Not a traditional Sunday afternoon
It started off with my brother and I deciding to fit our ancient Windows 95 hard drive in our new computer, just for fun. About two hours later (and all sorts of problems starting up the computer even after putting everything back to normal) we’d given up due to the fact that merely inserting the old hard drive had mucked up our system (and due to it being a hardware problem, I was clueless).
Then the computer started switching itself off. No warning – one second it was fine, the next it’s singing sine waves at about 100Hz and the screen is black.
For the near future, then, our computer is broken. Apologies if entries/email replies take longer than usual…
Matthew @ 15:57, April 3, 2005 to Geek | Comments (12)
Comments:
Thomas
Why do you still have a Windows 95 hard drive and what made you try and install it in your new computer?
Comment added at 22:48, April 3, 2005
Sheepie
We were getting rid of our obsolete computer (which had Win 95) and had to remove the hard drive so it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. And we thought, “Why throw away a good 4 gigabytes of disk space?”
Thus…
Comment added at 11:29, April 4, 2005
Matthew
Thus indeed. I was thinking I could use it as an opportunity to learn how RAID works, or just to see how incredibly fast Windows 95 runs on an Athlon processor. (Apparently it won’t work because the Athlon’s too fast…)
Comment added at 12:00, April 4, 2005
Sparticus
Did I ever tell you the story about how I once broke our computer so badly I had to manually back everything up in DOS and ended up with around a thousand files all called xx-~xxxx.mp3? No? Good, it’s a rubbish story.
Comment added at 23:31, April 4, 2005
Matthew
Is it a true one, though? I remember your brother fixing our computer when I’d completely disabled the ability to run .exe files, and couldn’t remember which configuration file I’d edited to manage it… all true.
The computer is fixed, incidently. I opened it up, wiggled a few metallic objects around and put it back together. It now works…
Comment added at 12:51, April 5, 2005
Cat
This is a shining example of why I don’t go anywhere near the insides of my laptop…
Comment added at 00:14, April 6, 2005
Matthew
Laptops are easier to break, as most aren’t supposed to be upgraded by the user. Seeing as we built our computer from scratch, I figured there shouldn’t be a problem… after all, adding a new hard drive is rather easy compared to installing a motherboard and processor.
Comment added at 11:38, April 6, 2005
Rory
Backing up everything in DOS (and thus having to resort to 8.3 filenames) and disabling the ability to run .exe files are both things I’ve had the pleasure of doing. I also managed to crash my OS X iBook to the point where it needed a complete OS reinstall. You and your hardware problems, Matthew. You need a friendly geeky Scot present at all times, it seems. Firstly – it was RAID? That may have been the start of your troubles. Also, if you were intending on running Win95 on the computer – did you remove the other HDD first? Windows 95 has problems with AMD processors – indeed, if you have a K6-3, you need to get a patch in order for it to even run. It is likely to be similar with later processors, such as the K7-Athlon. And patches probably weren’t made: who in their right mind would run Windows 95 on a >1GHz Athlon? Computers are funny. Sometimes just leaving them fixes them fine, and sometimes taking stuff out then putting it back in will fix it.
Comment added at 21:25, May 6, 2005
Matthew
There was no RAID involved in the end – I thought I might possibly be able to get the two hard drives to act as one, but that would have been stupid. Windows 98 works (blindingly fast) and we thought it’d be amusing to see 95 run even faster. And no, we didn’t remove the other hard drive, we set the Win 95 one up as slave (but forgot to change the jumpers, causing our problems).
Comment added at 11:25, May 7, 2005
Matthew
Oh, and how on earth did you manage to break OS X so successfully? You weren’t playing with the rm function were you?
Comment added at 11:27, May 7, 2005
Rory
I broke OS X without even touching the terminal. Call me a god if you will… Setting up the Win95 one as slave is a bad idea, it won’t boot from it then. And all you modern computer kids, with your jumperless systems – in my day jumpers were the key to existence!
Comment added at 23:59, May 7, 2005
Matthew
We’ve given up trying to get it to work, Rory – and it would have booted from it, because I could have got Grub to boot from the slave hard disk. You forget we are prompted every time we switch on the computer which OS to run. But it doesn’t matter.
Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t know what a jumper was until someone told me that was what had starteed our problems off? Of course you would. I’ve always told you I’m a software guy.
Comment added at 14:43, May 8, 2005
Post a comment:
Most XHTML auto-generated via Markdown. Email addresses are required but will never be displayed. If you have a website (or want to link to someone else's) please enter it in the URL field. Otherwise, leave this blank.
If you have a TypeKey identity, you can sign in to use it here.