My motherboard blew up.
I hate when that happens…
860 words.
Now, here I was with a perfectly usable old computer (most of it bought some 10 years ago, Intel P35 motherboard, 4 GB of RAM, a Xeon X3210, previously a Core2Duo E6400) that suddenly broke.
Well, I guess I could buy a new motherboard.
If I could find one.
Yeah…we’re not doing that. At least not as a first option.
All that I can find are low end Intel G41 based MoBos at over 70 euros each.
Looking at the prices, I channeled my inner Uncle Scrooge:
“Too expensive. Let’s look for used ones.”
The used Socket 775 motherboard market was even worse.
All of them were (obviously) old, (very) used and expensive for what they were (40-50 euros).
And not a single one under “new” price was a P35 based board. In fact I think I didn’t find a single used P35 board nor P45 or even G41.
At best some Intel 945 based ones. Which were useless to me as they didn’t support Core2Duo/Core2Quad.
Well, guess that means a new computer is in order.
“Ain’t nobody got money fo’ dat.”
No, wait, I’m not some “urban youth”, my inner Uncle Scrooge came out again:
“No money for that, too expensive. Use the 2nd computer.”
Well, it could suffice for web surfing and assorted shitposting.
Boot it.
Command line login.
“Oh, I don’t have XFCE or LXDE installed?” (I only use one of those two, so yes, I did specify the names when I asked myself)
So I installed one of them.
“Done.”
vortex69@2ndcomputer:~$ xinit
Result:
blahblahdontcareblahblah
Error somethingsomething
Screen somethingsomething
blahblahdontcareblahblah
Look into graphic card drivers, no go, support for old pre-2000 cards was dropped long ago from Linux, the superior OS.
Couldn’t get it to work with a generic driver either. (I think that might have something to do with my card being a PCI SiS 6326, which seems to be a wonderful piece of problematic hardware)
(why not a more up to date AGP card? The motherboard seems to have an appetite for AGP cards and killed 2 of them by now. (or perhaps they just failed due to being old…who knows))
The solution to the problem was gladly given to many others who were on the same boat as me along the years on various Linux related forums around the web by Linux orbiter drones (the slimy cocksuckers): “buy a new card, lol, that card is old, it only has 8MB of ram, you need over 9000MB of video ram to display 1024×768, lol”, well, they said that but in more a more sheepish and cocksucker-y way, of course. (and without the Dragon Ball Z meme)
I used to use 1024×768 on my Riva 128ZX, on my first computer back in 1999. 8MB of ram, never had any issue, but I guess bits and bytes became bigger along the years, but only on Linux and only when it concerned image output.
So I was stuck using a computer with only a command line.
And worse than using MS-DOS, I had to use Linux.
For all the bad you can say about MS-DOS it’s actually pretty good as far as command lines go. At least modern versions.
Mouse support, ASCII “GUIs” (with modern style menus), quite decent all being considered.
Linux on the other hand…
The only “graphical” word processor I could find was WordGrinder.
A text editor with menus seems to be non-existant.
The closest thing to a spread sheet editor is “sc”. (works well enough for my basic needs)
Audio player with interface? I settled for “cmus”.
Internet browsing? Only one choice: lynx/links/elinks (well, technically those are three choices, but does anyone really see any difference?).
File manager? “vifm”, the lack of options on this category surprised me, DOS had a bunch of great visual file managers.
All of this tied up by using tmux…it gives that comfy desktop feeling (hey, the clock and date on the bottom right side are essential for my functioning as a human being)
I’m very close to activate Plan B: buying some cheap mini-itx MoBo.
Been looking at old single core Intel Atom 230 mini-itx boards, cheap enough I guess at around 30€ with shipping. Sure beats an old 775 motherboard for 60€.
Oh well, we’ll see, we’ll see…a dual core Atom (330 or equivalent) with 2GB of RAM would be just perfect for my 2nd PC, a single core Atom would be quite usable.
Any of them would be a nice replacement for my ageing Pentium 4 1.7Ghz with 512MB of RAM (Rambus, that’s how old it is).
Well, I’ve had an Atom itx board on my to buy list since they first came out…but my 2nd computer (little more than a file server/seedbox/linux learning machine) has been made of bits and pieces that people give me since almost the start. (only exception was a VIA EPIA mini-itx board, which was strangely the shittiest one despite the high price…consider one of the computers it is competing against in my 2nd PC list is a Pentium 3 literally found in the garbage)
Well, another pointless post of indubitable quality!
As usual.