Jul
18
Ages upon ages ago when Sarah and I started dating, she had an old laptop. To give you an idea when I say “old laptop” what I mean, try doing a Google search for a laptop called “UMAX,” specifically an “Action Book 320T.” As you can see, Pentium I, 3 gig HD, Windows 95, 32 meg RAM. All of that fun stuff.
Well, when she and I first started dating, this was her only computer. And while she had it and it had an ethernet adapter and a modem and all of that fun stuff? It just wouldn’t work. Whenever you’d try to load up Internet Explorer (which was so old on the initial install of the upgraded Windows 98 SE, it was just “Window’s Version), it would give you an error message. Just wasn’t cool, to say the least.
I decided that with us spending a few weeks at her parents and at mine, well, I would be going through internet withdrawals if I had to share a computer and have limited time. Much greater than that, how would I update all of my friends here on my blog? Or even scarier, sync up my iPod nano?
I’m being facetious here. I am addicted, just not that addicted.
So, I set to it last night, starting to see if I could figure out what was going wrong with it. I suspected that there was an issue with the internet driver, so I started plugging away at the old 3Com Fast Etherlink XL card (3C-575TX, for those keeping score on models and all of that fun stuff), and I finally made a breakthrough when I got the computer to do something wonderfully awesome.
Yes, my friends, I got it stuck in an endless reboot loop. You can’t top that.
I broke the loop with a safe-boot to the DOS prompt and then? I tanked the sucker with a reformat. It hadn’t been used since 2003 sometime, so it worked well, to say the least.
All of that accomplished, I had a fresh install with Windows 98 SE running just an hour or so later, and then I put it aside for the evening after updating the ethernet driver and limping around online with Firefox 1.5.
This morning, I picked it up again and started plugging away and figuring out what I could and couldn’t do. I’ve got a few ideas that I might put the laptop to use for, but I got Open Office 1.1, GAIM 2.0, IE 5.5 (because 5.0 wouldn’t run Gmail), and Classic FTP all installed with a few more tricks up my sleeve to apply, and here I am.
Yes, here I am. I’m actually typing this from the laptop. So you can expect that if we stop at a hotel with free internet in the room that I’ll actually be online.
Even if I am limping along with an amazing Pentium machine. Its not like I can sync my iPod nano to it anyways, you know? There’s sort of this issue with the fact that my nano has 4 gigs of space and this HD only has 2.4 gigs free… Yeah, might be a small problem…
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Twitter: AdamJCohen
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About The Site
Thanks for stopping by, folks! My name is Adam J. Cohen, and I'm a guitarist/songwriter in Champaign, IL, recently relocated from Orlando, FL where I'm a UCF grad. Here, you'll find vignettes on my life, setlists and show reviews, and whatever else crosses my mind. Enjoy!