The Saga
I’m on the fast track to becoming a luddite.
First of all, my dad’s computer is my old 486-66 (32 Mb RAM) from college. The hard drive was nearly 10% fragmented and slow as shit (even worse than before). Note that all of this took place over the last week or two, as time allowed, with each time going straight to the house straight from work only to return to my place at 10:00, check my email and head on to bed.
Then my dad couldn’t receive any data throughput when he uses his Internet dial-up. It connected, successfully did the password authentication, but then nothing. A few bytes sent, even fewer received. So we go out and get a new modem.
I put the modem in and 95 doesn’t see it. At all. So I futz around with the settings, add it manually, and it takes up COM5, which I can’t change. So I decide to focus on defragging the hard drive. I run Defrag, but there are errors on the drive which ScanDisk will need to fix first. So I ran ScanDisk under several different options permutations, and it still won’t defrag. Let me remind you all again that this is a 66 megahertz computer that’s 10% fragmentated. Each time I ran the bloody thing it took a good 45 minutes or more.
So I decide to go beyond the basic Microsoft utilities and download a (trial) copy of Diskeeper for Windows 95/98/etc. I download it from home (Remember the reason for this whole endeavo(u)r? No Internet.) throw it on a floppy and run the setup. Oh look. Diskeeper requires that Windows 95C—one of the different releases/versions of 95—be loaded. Bloody hell. So I shut down the computer, and bring it back up using a boot disk. I run ScanDisk, which actually finds the errors on the drive in the form of truncated system drivers, and "fixes" the problem. I pop the disk out, reboot the computer, and boom: Blue screen of Death(TM).
With nothing left to do, I reboot with computer with the boot disk again (with CD-ROM support) and copy over the Windows setup files from CD to the hard drive.
I run setup and go through the license agreement, yadda yadda yadda, and then boom: Setup has detected a previous version of Windows on this machine. You must use the upgrade CD if you wish to continue. Fahhhhhhk.
So I rename ALL of the system folders, even the ones that I know aren’t system folders, leaving just the documents folders and the ones that I had created. Re-run setup. It finally works. The software finally loads, then configures, and gets set up after a reboot or two. Next the Internet Explorer 4.0 Setup automatically begins. That takes up another hour after reconfiguring and all.
(Bored you to tears yet?)
Then I rerun the Diskeeper install again, runs fine, and then I let it do its thing over night. The hell if I’m waiting around to see it finish.
I come back and with a newly defragmented drive get Office 97, his email and whatnot setup. The computer is functioning again.
So I go into Device Manager and see if it recognizes the new modem. Nothing. I add it manually throught the Add/Remove Hardware Wizard. Nothing. I put in the old one. No drivers available.
I come back the next day (yesterday/Thursday), to get Windows to recognize the modem (I already checked the BIOS, and the settings were fine). I remove a PCI controller listed under "Other Devices" in the Device Manager and the manually added modem.
Reboot the computer, and hello, nurse! It finally shows up. Dials like a charm. So I spent the rest of the night tweaking dad’s settings and all and head home.
Once home, I load Adobe Acrobat (since I hadn’t reloaded it since the last time [#3 for those of you keeping track at home] I loaded Windows 2G on my new hard drive. It needed to reboot, it was late, I went to bed.
I woke up this morning to check my mail only to see the message Windows 2000 could not start because the following files are missing or corrupt: \winnt\system32\config\system.. It then goes to say that I can repair it with my Emergency Repair Disk I’ve made. In my mind I still hadn’t finished reloading everything since the last time. No ERD, or hope, for me.
I’m taking that as a sign. Mazama just gets to sit there in the corner with no attention while it thinks about what it’s done. I won’t even mention the other computer of my friend’s that needs mending. Oy.
So no updates from me for a while.
Friday 09.28.2001 
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i have an old 486 in pieces in my closet...you are welcome to use whatever you need from it...
( so said alissa 
Friday 09.28 )
actually, could you just fix it for me
( so said alissa Friday 09.28 )
take two: (i have bad posting karma today)
actually, could you just fix it for me? (ducks to avoid thrown objects)
( so said alissa 
Friday 09.28 )
i have a laptop that's a 486. 4megs of ram, beeyotch.
what's your snail mail address?
i'd really appreciate it.
( so said ron Saturday 09.29 )
Any 486 that's 66MHz+ with ~8MB of RAM makes a fine machine for running X Windows, ideally with fvwm as your window manager. (KDE and Gnome require too much RAM -- at least 32MB -- to perform decently on such a system.) Now you've got a damned fine system for web-browsing, e-mail, text editing and the like. Most people's systems are so vastly overpowered that they'd never know the difference if they moved to a 486/66 running Linux.
( so said Waldo Saturday 09.29 )
damn, brotha.
( so said .sara 
Sunday 09.30 )
The thing is Waldo, it's my dad. He's an art teacher. A visual learner, but is not terribly comfortable with technology. He was used to Netscape 4.7, but is now "learning" IE 5.
And I finally got the damn thing running again. :)
( so said Chad Monday 10.01 )
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