My Pimpin' Computers
Apex
Apex is the computer that I built from scratch in February of 2000. At the time, all I had was a laptop (catharsis) and being my geek self, I knew that I needed something with more power, lots of space, and a huge freakin' monitor. Model numbers for the items are in parentheses.
| Case: | Antec full-tower ATX case (link this) |
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 750 |
| CPU Cooling: | Arctic Circle active heatsink (Modified Panaflo Orb. Rare, not sold anymore. HardOCP Review.) |
| Motherboard: | Asus K7M Rev. 4 |
| Memory: | 384MB at 100Mhz (128 PC100 + 128 PC133 + 128 PC133) |
| Video: | Asus V6800 GeForce 256 DDR Pure |
| Monitor: | iiyama Vision Master Pro 450 19" (A901HT) |
| SCSI: | Tekram DC-390U2W |
| Sound: | Sound Blaster Live! Value |
| Network: | Netgear FA-310TX |
| Hard Disks: | Seagate Cheetah 18LP 9GB 10kRPM U2W (ST39103LW) |
| Western Digital Enterprise 18.3GB 10kRPM U2W (WDE18310-0040) | |
| CD-ROM: | Plextor UltraPlex 40max UltraWide SCSI (PX-40TSi) |
| CD-RW: | Plextor PlexWriter 8/2/20 UltraWide SCSI (PX-W8220Ti) |
| Keyboard: | PC Concepts Wave 107 (SK-6000) |
| Mouse: | Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse (M-BD58) |
| USB: | ATEN USB 2.0 Controller (IC-250U) |
| Speakers: | Altec Lansing AVS300 (linkme) |
| Operating Systems: | Slackware 8.1 and a particular OS from Seattle for gaming. |
Shadowfax
Shadowfax is a Dell Inspiron 1100 that was bought to replace the aging Pentium II, Catharsis. I was really eyeing a nifty, sleek Apple Powerbook, but they are way out of my price range for now. The Inspiron 1100 is a stop-gap measure so that I can program, do homework, and play the occasional game when I'm at school or out of town. Coincedentally enough, Catharsis spontaneously refused to boot a mere two days after I placed the order for Shadowfax. Its time had come, I suppose.
Shadowfax currently dual-boots between Windows XP and Fedora Linux, although I use Windows 90% of the time. Although Fedora looks very nice, Windows is just much faster and doesn't seem to break as badly when you change one minor thing. I make up for this indiscretion by running FreeBSD on my workstation, Apex. To its credit, everything on the laptop works well under Linux (with a bit of tinkering). I have not tested the built-in modem, however.
All said, the Inspiron 1100 is actually quite a nice little machine for such little money. My largest complaint was that it came with a paltry 128MB of memory when it shipped, making even the pre-installed applications run slower than all heck. I can't imagine what Dell was thinking when they decided to do that. I ordered a 256MB stick, however, and will likely give it another good boost a year or two down the road. Other than that, I have had a generally positive experience with this laptop. (Note that Dell seems to be changing the specifications of this machine very slightly every so often. The specs listed below are accurate for my Inspiron 1100, not necessarily anyone elses.)
| CPU: | Intel Mobile Celeron 2.0GHz |
| Motherboard: | Intel 845GL |
| Memory: | 384MB (128MB PC2100 + 256MB PC2100, both Samsung) |
| Video: | Intel 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] |
| Sound: | Sigmatel 9750 Intel 82801DB AC'97 |
| Hard Disk: | Hitachi Travelstar 80GN 30GB 4200RPM (IC25N030ATMR04-0) |
| CD-ROM: | Matshita 24x/10x/24x CD-RW (UJDA360) |
| Display: | 14.1" Active Matrix TFT |
| Operating Systems: | Fedora Linux |
| Windows XP Home Edition |
Powerface
Mark I:
This PC had modest beginnings. I bought the case sometime around 1996 at a
computer swap meet for $42. A few months later, I had a 15" Techmedia monitor
that I "saved" from the dumpster. A bit after that, a keyboard (the one I still
use daily on another machine). And then finally, there was hardware. Someone
gave me a box full of old 486-era stuff including a Cyrix 40MHz 486-SX
motherboard/CPU, an IDE/serial/parallel card, and
a 512k Oak VGA card. I swiped a good hard
disk, a floppy disk, and a 387 math coprocessor from an ancient 386
was finally in business. The only
problem was that the thing was next to useless. It ran DR-DOS fine, but
could barely keep up with Windows 3.1. It would have made a fine Linux machine
at the time, but even then most distros wouldn't install on a machine with
only 4MB of memory. The most work it ever saw was in drafting my high school
writing assignments. The name of the computer came from
a local band in Michigan. My
friend's wife is a cousin to the drummer of the band, Chris. I got to meet them
all at a nice little show called Localpalooza where we managed to get a whole
bunch of leftover signs and bumper stickers after the show. At some point, I
slapped one of the bumper stickers on the side of the case and it "stuck."
Mark II:
I took the computer with me when I moved away from home. On the
local Linux User Group mailing list, one fellow mentioned that he was giving
away a bunch of old parts. One item, was a Baby-AT motherboard
with a Pentium 90 CPU and 48MB of memory.
I ended up trading an spare stick of 32MB PC100 memory for the motherboard.
When I went to pick it up, the fellow (Aaron was his name) warned me that the
fan on the heatsink of the CPU was pretty pathetic. (And it was.) On the way
home, I picked up a beefier heatsink and some other miscellaneous parts. After
installing Slackware, I dropped in a Pentium 166 (no MMX) CPU that
I had laying around. Soon after I purchased a pair of network cards and two
60GB hard disks. Since then it has performed one or more of the following
duties at one point or another: broadband firewall, NFS server, Samba server,
email server, and dynamic content web server.
Mark III:
The third generation of Powerface came about mainly because the P166 was having
a hard time keeping up with some of the web apps (namely a python-based wiki). I
purchased a new case from a computer swap meet (again), used the motherboard from
an old eMachines computer that was given to me, and installed a spare
Celeron 366. At this point, the machine no longer has any parts in common with
the Mark I version of Powerface. I probably should have changed the name, but
I'm much too lazy for that. I didn't really feel like bothering with changing
the hostname anyway. It has been behaving remarkably well despite its
eMachine roots.
| Case: | Generic mid-tower |
| CPU: | Intel Celeron 366 |
| Motherboard: | eMachines |
| Memory: | 160MB (1x 32MB + 1x 128MB) |
| Network: | D-Link DFE-530TX+ |
| Netgear FA311 | |
| Hard Disks: | Seagate Medalist 1276 AT 1.2GB, ATA (ST31276A) |
| Western Digital 60GB, ATA/100 (WD600AB-32BVAO) | |
| Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60GB, ATA/100 (5T060H6) | |
| CD-ROM: | Boss V 40x EIDE |
| Operating System: | Slackware 8.0 |