cabbitzilla

R.I.P
Toybox
July 07, 2004 - October 27, 2004
Good Riddance. Stupid POS.

nightambre will remember Toybox... it's the little Compaq I inherited from her and her hubby. Slow, too small, and next to impossible to work on, I'd put it back together to give to someone that just needed a basic machine to check email on and do light word processing. When Megan's machine began failing due to an imploded WinXP install, I'd tried to swap it in for her to use while I gutted and redid her machine... only to discover that it lacked the horsepower to really do much of anything at all with. It got set aside, pending a reinstall/upgrade to Win98SE and delivery to the girl it'd been promised to.

When the sudden need to move hit, I was caught by surprise; I only had ONE machine in my collection of beasts that had a modem in it. You guessed it: Toybox. Resigned to dial-up and virtually no real enjoyment but for painfully slow websurfing and IM chatting, I hauled it over her and hooked it up. I was pleasantly surprised when it fired right up and connected as desired to the old Mindspring account. My pleased outlook vanished in a whisp of smoke 10 minutes later when the modem just... disconnected.

Trial and error showed that it would stay connected, most of the time, so long as web pages were continually loading. And thus have I used it for about two weeks, though it was down several times as I soldered bits back onto the modem when they (and I mean this) fell off it. Tonight... tonight, I discovered exactly how to open my bedroom window; when my room's filled with smoke, something has to be done about it. Toybox's modem had given up completely, gifting me with a sizeable puff of grey smoke. Joy. I rummaged through my hardware cabinet, and came across my aging (but still very functional) Jaton Modulator V.90 modem. I'd taken it out of service simply because my upgraded machine (the Athlon XP 2000+ beast I run RO from) lacked an ISA slot. Hrm. I yanked out the dead winmodem from Toybox, slapped the Jaton in... and it refused to see it. At all. For any reason. And then I noticed that it has ALSO lost the onboard sound. It seems that the smoke didn't -all- come from the dying modem. *sigh*

But sitting out in the living room was the Windows NT Server machine, built on the old Slot A Athlon 950. Pulling the case off revealed... ISA slots. Booyah, we're in business. I yanked it from Toybox and tossed the remains in the corner, plugged it into the NT box, and booted her up. And came to a screeching halt; Dial Up Networking had never been installed on it... it'd always run on an internal LAN connection. And my NT Server cd? It's in Glen Burnie. At 11 PM, I'm NOT driving the hour round trip just for the damned cd. I shook my head and headed for the fridge to get a glass of orange juice, and tripped over a box.

A box that tipped over and spilled its contents over my hands and feet.

A box that, when the contents spilled out, disgorged my Windows XP Pro cds, damn near into my hand and right in front of my stunned eyeballs. Yes, God, I hear you, and I can take a hint when I'm hit upside the head with it. XP installed seamlessly, found all the hardware, and boom, there I am. Video works, no error messages in the hardware table, hallelujia we're in business again.

Modem only wants to connect at 26.5 and 28.8, but it -does- connect. Downloads take forever, but I don't get cut off in mid file. Of course, this is the machine that, due to heat issues from the only-50-ever-made Slot A Athlon 950 Thunderbird Enhanced CPU, sounds like a twin engine Cesna doing run-ups for take off. It works, and has enough horsepower to at least keep me from dying of boredom until the much anticipated DSL modem arrives.

The rage that resulted from Toybox's flameout seems to have cleared some of the cobwebs from my mind. I'm never happy with hardware failures, but at least there was some benefit from this one.

As for the rest, I'm currently working on downloading Trillian to this machine; in another ten mins or so, I'll have IM capability again. I've got most of the bits that were Toybox bolted back into that case; no point in leaving the pieces strewn all over the place. If it's salvageable, great. If no... the dumpster's not far. It's the last of my machines that're the original Pentium/AMD K6 architecture, and I probably need to let go of it anyway.

And that's about all from me, for the moment. Trillian just finished, so off I go.