SLOBuds
Gold Member
We bought a computer in 1997. It had this really neat operating system called 'Windows 95'. I went all out and put in 257 meg of ram along with a 15gig scsi hard drive. Pentium II.
Folks by the name of SAG sold it to us. They are all probably tilling acreage with a 3830 these days.
Anyway, SAG lasted through y2k and beyond those dark days when everything was supposed to end. It never had a virus, ever. It runs all of the time, every day of the year. We never turn it off.
In 2002 we bought a P4 with a delightful operating system called Windows XP. The SAG was networked in with the new P4.
Life was getting complicated at home where the wife works. So she was also on the network with a laptop, plus me with my work laptop from time to time, and then various business visitors with THEIR laptops connecting here and there. (I was the first PacBell DSL install in my area.)
Have Cat5, will travel ... until wireless came on board which just added that dimension. Then 3 printers. Fax machine. 2-line telephone with speakerphone. Then mobile devices like a Blackberry and synchronized cell phones (that take pretty good digital pictures, by the way). A nice digital camera now working somewhere in the 9400th image. More software than ANYONE should ever have.
My wife Susan liked to use SAG for her EMail. We kept Eudora on that 95 machine and it just felt natural to her.
About 8 weeks ago I had surgery to remove my kidney and donate it to my son. Lots of time on my hands. I got to thinking about SAG.
SAG was making noises. They were noises which sounded like big bugs getting zapped on those blue bug zapper electrode machines. Eventually SAG refused to boot. I tried and tried but no go.
So then I went for open heart surgery. SAG, not me.
Man, there is DUST everywhere inside those old PCs. Little tiny dust that builds up into big sand dunes. I cleaned out the dust, pulled out the hard drive, and connected it to Mr. XP so I could copy as much data as I could. That went OK except that not everything copied.
Then I put SAG together again and loaded a new operating system. Actually, it was an old discarded Windows 2000 that we had hanging around.
Booted up fine, but zapping noises continued.
I unplugged one drive at a time (the poor thing was loaded with all kinds of gadgets over the years). Finally I determined that it was one of the cooling fans. There is a cooling fan in the power supply - it wasn't going at all. There is a cooling fan for the CPU - I broke the wires off while trying to inspect it. There is a cooling fan for the cabinet - it was making a bunch of scratchy noise itself.
So believe it or not, all of these parts are still available. Today I ordered a new power supply, a cpu fan, and a cabinet fan.
SAG is currently antesthsized in our bathroom (my wife really loves me). It will stay there for a week or so until I receive all of the new parts and exchange all of the ones that were supposed to fit but don't.
Then we'll see if old SAG can come back to life again and give us its all for another 10 years.
I've had a great time working with SAG. It's almost as fun as the rotary phone we have up in our cabin.
Folks by the name of SAG sold it to us. They are all probably tilling acreage with a 3830 these days.
Anyway, SAG lasted through y2k and beyond those dark days when everything was supposed to end. It never had a virus, ever. It runs all of the time, every day of the year. We never turn it off.
In 2002 we bought a P4 with a delightful operating system called Windows XP. The SAG was networked in with the new P4.
Life was getting complicated at home where the wife works. So she was also on the network with a laptop, plus me with my work laptop from time to time, and then various business visitors with THEIR laptops connecting here and there. (I was the first PacBell DSL install in my area.)
Have Cat5, will travel ... until wireless came on board which just added that dimension. Then 3 printers. Fax machine. 2-line telephone with speakerphone. Then mobile devices like a Blackberry and synchronized cell phones (that take pretty good digital pictures, by the way). A nice digital camera now working somewhere in the 9400th image. More software than ANYONE should ever have.
My wife Susan liked to use SAG for her EMail. We kept Eudora on that 95 machine and it just felt natural to her.
About 8 weeks ago I had surgery to remove my kidney and donate it to my son. Lots of time on my hands. I got to thinking about SAG.
SAG was making noises. They were noises which sounded like big bugs getting zapped on those blue bug zapper electrode machines. Eventually SAG refused to boot. I tried and tried but no go.
So then I went for open heart surgery. SAG, not me.
Man, there is DUST everywhere inside those old PCs. Little tiny dust that builds up into big sand dunes. I cleaned out the dust, pulled out the hard drive, and connected it to Mr. XP so I could copy as much data as I could. That went OK except that not everything copied.
Then I put SAG together again and loaded a new operating system. Actually, it was an old discarded Windows 2000 that we had hanging around.
Booted up fine, but zapping noises continued.
I unplugged one drive at a time (the poor thing was loaded with all kinds of gadgets over the years). Finally I determined that it was one of the cooling fans. There is a cooling fan in the power supply - it wasn't going at all. There is a cooling fan for the CPU - I broke the wires off while trying to inspect it. There is a cooling fan for the cabinet - it was making a bunch of scratchy noise itself.
So believe it or not, all of these parts are still available. Today I ordered a new power supply, a cpu fan, and a cabinet fan.
SAG is currently antesthsized in our bathroom (my wife really loves me). It will stay there for a week or so until I receive all of the new parts and exchange all of the ones that were supposed to fit but don't.
Then we'll see if old SAG can come back to life again and give us its all for another 10 years.
I've had a great time working with SAG. It's almost as fun as the rotary phone we have up in our cabin.
