Recently I have got an old PC which was used by one of my colleagues
who quit his job. It was considered to be too old so the computer was
going to be recycled. But I recognised it as my first computer which I
had here at the university so I asked if I can continue to use it. SO
now it is in my office. I recently got also my first LCD (a 17"
ViewSonic VP171s, the first LCD at the department) so I an able to
re-animate my old setup.
Back to the PC. Originally I got it in January 2002. It was assembled
by the local company (the Autocont - it still exists, I think) and it
was (and still is) a boring gray miditower. There was a fast 1 GHz
Intel Pentium III CPU and 256 MB of RAM (and 20 GB HDD, but I am not
sure). There was also a Matrox graphics board which supported dual head
setups (for a some time even under the Linux!). I ran Slackware here
(starting from 9.0, I think). There was also a floppy drive and 1 or 2
USB ports. The screen was 19" CRT, I do not remember the model.
The computer was slightly upgraded during the time. The machine was
quickly it was updated to 512 MB of RAM (it was its maximum). n I got
a ZIP drive when it became cheap, the CD-RW drive and in 2007
The(probably, I'm not sure) I got the above mentioned VP171s. It was a
big upgrade from a curved CRT.
The machine was my only desktop (in that time I had no laptop except
the Toshiba 110CT with the 90 MHz Pentium and 24 MB of RAM) so it was
used for LaTeXing and office work but also for software development,
numerical modelling (the ANSYS and my own tools, the GNU Octave, the
Gnuplot and so on).
In 2009 there was an opportunity to upgrade the box. So the old
internals were replaced with the 2.4 GHz Core2Quad CPU, 4 GB of RAM and
512 GB HDD (there was only Intel onboard graphics to save the costs).
There was dual-boot (This time the Ubuntu 8.04 and the Windows Vista).
Unfortunately in that time one of my colleagues urgently needed a
computer for numerical modelling. So this PC was passed to him (about
that time I stated to be more a manager than anything else so I got a
Dell notebook and later an Eee PC desktop for my work). He used the
computer until 2018. Then nobody wanted a "PC that old".
So now I have it back. It still has a floppy drive, the ZIP drive, the
CD-RW drive and its Ubuntu installation is intact (but don't ask about
the Vista...). It seems that it is just little slower than by new Dell
desktop (got it in 2018 as my boss wants to allow me to do some real
work once more) it it is slower at all. I am not sure if I want to
upgrade the OS as the computer is not connected to any network and the
things are working here.
I plan to use it for some numerical modelling (under Linux), mainly for
long non-interactive jobs.. I can also connect my PDA here because the
Palm (and even PocketPC) is supported under the Ubuntu 8.04. I should
try my "new" Toshiba e750 here.
I never thought that I can be so nostalgic about a boring old PC...
