It's been several months now since I resurrected Thunk from certain death in the trash bin at my wife's company. All it needed then was $30 to replace its CMOS battery. I went ahead with additional memory and disk, since the thing was free anyway, so that was another $200, totaling $230 for a working Thinkpad. It came equipped with an Ethernet PC Card, but no floppy, no writable CD. The only way to get data out of that thing was over Ethernet, and certainly the only sane way in, other than a CD here and there, was also Ethernet.
It had Windows 98, originally, and that was not very delightful to me. I grew tired of screwing with that, and I happened to have several packs of unused NT CDs hanging around since a project from well before the 9-11 incident. After a harrowing installation, (which, even aided by a working XP and a Hi-speed Internet, took several days of dismal, almost dehumanizing work finding all the up-to-date drivers), I finally succeeded in making life even more difficult for myself.
I had a USB optical mouse, but NT couldn't handle it (I'd forgotten that about NT -- no USB.). But I downloaded many snivelly drivers for an eventual fix of most NT issues, which are not issues at all on XP. Finally, though, NT was a viable OS again -- firing long dead NT neurons in my brain -- Thunk now had a slightly more obsolete brain than W98, but at least NT has less nonsense, less "thunk mode" stuff, and is more efficient with memory and processing. And I found a USB driver for NT, so the mouse now works.
Anyway, when the Ethernet card died a couple days ago, I thought, "Well, that's that. It was a good old clunker." It was good enough for me to write some code, and to write most of the entries in this blog. I wrote several Web server modules and Ruby interfaces for Intra/Internet stuff -- but that all depended on the Ethernet card working.
Also, I backed everything up using XP, and writing to XP depended on Ethernet. When Ethernet died it was like giving water to a dog that can't pee. I could type stuff in, and run various programs on Thunk, but it no data could get out. I thought about using the serial port for a really bad connection to the XP box, and I might have eventually done that.
But, by employing my XP box's Internet prowess, I looked up Fry's online store and found that they had a $30 Netgear Ethernet PC Card, which isn't such a big deal, except that it had to run on NT. It came complete with a CD that had NT Drivers! (NT does really limit your choices in today's world. There is no going to "Office Depot" for NT stuff. But Fry's could still handle that old NT technology, right off.) I felt as though I was buying parts for Studebaker or a Hudson. Yet, I still didn't know if that was really the problem. The insides of the Thunkpad might have been screwed.
But it worked! I'm back in the saddle again, plugging away on software and this blog, having spent only $260 in total expenditures for old Thunkenstein. It's still cranking out 300mhz Pentium instructions like a champ. If I can get this old clunky machine to run fast, things really run fast on my 3.6ghz dual processor Dell. Usually, software developers make things run fast on new hardware, and it sucks badly on older stuff. I try to go the opposite direction.
So, Thunk writes yet another blog entry. Scarred, old, and proud of its shiny new black Netgear Ethernet card, it is actually somewhat zippier and smoother than with the old Xircom card that had burned out. But I imagine something else will happen eventually, and Thunkenstein will again teeter out to the edge of the recycling bin.
Until then, Thunk proudly hums, and makes those strange clinking noises every so often, and kind of the crunchy noise of NT doing whatever it does to the disks periodically. It sounds like a billy goat absent-mindedly biting through a two-by-four, but that's just the normal sound NT always made.
Thunk is not happy about the Windows Vista hoopla. Even XP is becoming obsolete, and XP would not work very well on Thunk. But eventually, I'll just buy some newer laptop will cost a little more, but run circles around Thunk. Then, Thunk will play games for my granddaughter -- old and clunky games.
It had Windows 98, originally, and that was not very delightful to me. I grew tired of screwing with that, and I happened to have several packs of unused NT CDs hanging around since a project from well before the 9-11 incident. After a harrowing installation, (which, even aided by a working XP and a Hi-speed Internet, took several days of dismal, almost dehumanizing work finding all the up-to-date drivers), I finally succeeded in making life even more difficult for myself.
I had a USB optical mouse, but NT couldn't handle it (I'd forgotten that about NT -- no USB.). But I downloaded many snivelly drivers for an eventual fix of most NT issues, which are not issues at all on XP. Finally, though, NT was a viable OS again -- firing long dead NT neurons in my brain -- Thunk now had a slightly more obsolete brain than W98, but at least NT has less nonsense, less "thunk mode" stuff, and is more efficient with memory and processing. And I found a USB driver for NT, so the mouse now works.
Anyway, when the Ethernet card died a couple days ago, I thought, "Well, that's that. It was a good old clunker." It was good enough for me to write some code, and to write most of the entries in this blog. I wrote several Web server modules and Ruby interfaces for Intra/Internet stuff -- but that all depended on the Ethernet card working.
Also, I backed everything up using XP, and writing to XP depended on Ethernet. When Ethernet died it was like giving water to a dog that can't pee. I could type stuff in, and run various programs on Thunk, but it no data could get out. I thought about using the serial port for a really bad connection to the XP box, and I might have eventually done that.
But, by employing my XP box's Internet prowess, I looked up Fry's online store and found that they had a $30 Netgear Ethernet PC Card, which isn't such a big deal, except that it had to run on NT. It came complete with a CD that had NT Drivers! (NT does really limit your choices in today's world. There is no going to "Office Depot" for NT stuff. But Fry's could still handle that old NT technology, right off.) I felt as though I was buying parts for Studebaker or a Hudson. Yet, I still didn't know if that was really the problem. The insides of the Thunkpad might have been screwed.
But it worked! I'm back in the saddle again, plugging away on software and this blog, having spent only $260 in total expenditures for old Thunkenstein. It's still cranking out 300mhz Pentium instructions like a champ. If I can get this old clunky machine to run fast, things really run fast on my 3.6ghz dual processor Dell. Usually, software developers make things run fast on new hardware, and it sucks badly on older stuff. I try to go the opposite direction.
So, Thunk writes yet another blog entry. Scarred, old, and proud of its shiny new black Netgear Ethernet card, it is actually somewhat zippier and smoother than with the old Xircom card that had burned out. But I imagine something else will happen eventually, and Thunkenstein will again teeter out to the edge of the recycling bin.
Until then, Thunk proudly hums, and makes those strange clinking noises every so often, and kind of the crunchy noise of NT doing whatever it does to the disks periodically. It sounds like a billy goat absent-mindedly biting through a two-by-four, but that's just the normal sound NT always made.
Thunk is not happy about the Windows Vista hoopla. Even XP is becoming obsolete, and XP would not work very well on Thunk. But eventually, I'll just buy some newer laptop will cost a little more, but run circles around Thunk. Then, Thunk will play games for my granddaughter -- old and clunky games.
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