It is alive!

Many years ago we were given a computer for Christmas by my father in law. Now when we got this thing it was high speed state of the art but through the years it has become more of a paper weight as we have replaced it with a laptop and the work computer I was using.

The problem with the work computer is that it belonged to my fathers corporation and since I was no longer able to really put the hours into that kind of work (50+ a week if you want to make anything) he had to take it back and put it to better use. I do not blame him one bit and should we ever get the pain management down to a science where I am able to do that (or any really) kind of work then I will get back on board.

However with the loss of the desktop we are (or were) down to just the laptop as all the desktops in this house were DOA. In fact 1 of them is so old it would barely support Win 95 let alone 98SE or XP home so it is sitting in the closet right now. However this old computer is not so bad, it just needed a little TLC to get going and this morning I was able to breathe some life into her. I salvaged some parts from here and there and found an old hard drive that would work perfectly. I slapped it all together, re-installed Win 98 and grabbed the USB wireless key and away we go.

Surprisingly it only took me about an hour to get it up and running and most of that time was spent trying to re-configure the pins for the drive. Apparently the last time it was used it was set to slave mode and of course there were no instruction for it in the box it was in. That meant a few minutes online trying to find that info. I found some old speakers for her, a keyboard and mouse and now we are up and running.

While it is not going to be doing cartwheels it is good enough to get online and do some basic word processing. It should be perfect for the boys to play with as well. I took the old desk from the front and wheeled it into the family room, set up the wireless USB key on it and now they can be online and not be hiding in another room like it used to be setup.

Ok, I am beat so I am going to try and get the little guy down for his nap (that means I want a nap and so he must take one too!)