Anyway, about 4 years ago he brought me his old 486 to play with. Some say 3 years. ???
What a new experience. Red Alert on windows 95. Though it would only play in dos mode. Luckily I remembered some dos from somewhere?
I thought all pcs worked from floppy's. This one even had a stiffy drive.
That was the start of a hunger for speed. I have always been a speed freak.
Having been through a whole series of cars, starting with beetles, which got souped up till I got to the Jetta's
First the first Gli. Then a 16v Cli which was stolen at the hospital one day while going for a checkup after a cancer op. Loved that car.
So, the search was on for pc speed.
Was given all kinds of bits and pieces from a variety of people till one day 1 of sister's old patients gave me an intel p3. Boy, was that thing fast.
Managed to oveclock the 550m cpu to 733m. Then it flew. And adding ram made it even better. Wonderfull. Got 98 and Red Alert came alive. Spent many, many hours fighting the bad guys.
By now, every time sisters p3 with xp, which has a habit of "crashing" (great word) crashed. I could format it and reload everything. Learned to hate product keys.
Oh yeah. I moved to xp too. Made things work even better.
One day Ian pitched up for the weekend. Bringing his laptop with him.
It took longer to boot than my p3, so I thought "what a waste of money"
Then he took out a little eye goodie, stuck it on top and plugged the cord in the back, and a "dongle?" in another hole ( learned that all them holes are actually called ports) then put his cellphone near the window (the dongle communicates with the phone dad and shakes his head) and before too long he was chatting to some chick in Canada. Mind boggling! We had a wonderfull weekend
Now the hunger grew even more. I needed a dongle goodie and one of these wonderfull cellphones. About a month later when Ian came again he brought a packet of "old" scrap cellphones for me to play with. The best candidate being a razr v3 which had taken a bath in a bag on shampoo. Now I thank telcom for the years of training in the electronics field.
Servisol.
A wonderful spray on product that cleans and protects electronic circuitry and contacts, and even fixes scratchy volume controls pots on radios. Good Stuff. And this advertising is free.
Also got Ian to empty his pockets every time he came so, we had a dongle too.
Took weeks , I think, to get this bluetooth thing working. But what do you know,
all of a sudden we had ie going.
Then there was the mail thing. Luckily, I got great neighbours, who helped a lot in this teething period. Then the exploring started.
Went great for a few months then CRASH
No probs. format and start again.
I am quite good at this now already. Another couple of months and I saw a sign?
(window?) saying upgrade xp. Great that will make it better right. Wrong.
"this is not a legal copy of windows bla bla bla.
Somewhere in this time I even joined Facebook. Good I didnt leave this out. Becomes very important later.
No prob. By this time Ians laptop had croaked and been added to my pile of pc parts with a legal copy of windows. Ha Ha Ha
By then they must have got my ip address or something like that.
Every month I was formatting. Learned all about antivirus packages and firewalls.
Even with all the antivirus protection and a good fire wall, rarely did a month go by without a problem.
Remembered Ian saying that linux was more stable so back to the neighbour.
" yes" I have a copy of 8.04 which I now know is Hardy Heron. Thanks Maaz.
Installed it and all looked good till I tried to get the bluetooth going. Neighbours again. Couple of days and I had a downloaded copy of 9.10 Jaunty Jackalope
Still battled with bluetooth. Sis got me a data cable for the motorolla and a whole new world opened up. Found there was a mailing list where you could ask for help.
I was helped to connect my printer and told what mouse to use and told I could even get help online. Now I was already used to "register" "pay $49" so was a bit weary off this online thing. Anyway I got info from the list guys on how to get onto irc and freenode and '#ubuntu-za' and #glug.za and #Floss.pro which have now become my home from homes.
And no one asked for "$49"
And I have been helped regularly (almost daily I think) with upgrade cd's and instructions on everything that troubles me. Even a whole 28g of software and all I ever heard is "You're Welcome" or "no problem" Thanks Guys.
There is even a bot lol (caught me that thing) that you can ask questions. I am sure I even tried chatting to it a few times (sure the guys were rolling on the floor laughing at this dodo.) But there is always someone who will correct you and help you out. I nearly fell off the stool laughing here when I was told about these bot goodies.
Sometimes when you need help you can wait quite a while. But I understand that all the guys have jobs to do and their own lives to lead and I am very thankful for all their help and patience leading the blind. This has really been a great experience for me.
Now we are getting to the real reason for this blog.
Next Chapter coming soon
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