So... I'm officially in the in-between at the moment. A little bit of time off before starting yet another grind. I'm rather happy for the breathing space. It's been a bit of a haul, and I'm hoping that the next round of work is a bit more even.
So, back in town for a bit, I decided to make a run to the Computer-Shop-Across-the-River, to check on a couple of errant computers I've left in their care for far too long. Alas, the great Dell behemoth that I should never have bought is still dead in the water, as the owner of the Shop continues to try and find me a GPU for a decent (rather than Dell-approved) price. We shall continue that saga later.
The crusty little Thinkpad T23 that had originally went in to let them replace the fan unit, and which had suffered a broken piece of keyboard had, however, been fixed. Lovely! I was happy to take it home, even if I have absolutely no use for the poor thing. A Pentium III with no wireless card, and me lacking the desire to upgrade it. (I did install the CMOS battery that I'd bought shortly after getting the system way back when. Works like a charm now.) (And, alas, no I'm not using it to write this via Ethernet... This is the T30, though running an identical copy of Puppy Slacko 5.6 for good measure.)
Amusingly, the shop owner ran back to his little computer stocking shelves, and came back carrying a great heap of black plastic & metal. "Got some stuff here for you!" Seems that someone from the local "recycling center" had dropped off a load of computer junk with him. (I'm going to sound a total fool and say I didn't even know we had a recycling center here. But I don't get out much...) I found myself staring at a stack of 3 Thinkpads in various states of disrepair.
What was there? Well, the best of the lot appeared to be a T43, on which was a note saying that battery wouldn't charge, but it would boot, but there seemed to be some Windows problems. Going down the list was an X41 Tablet computer, missing a hard drive, a single key off the keyboard ("g"), the central Trackpoint click button. Oh, and the screen latch was shot. And last on the list was an ancient Thinkpad 600, the note on it stating that it would start to boot, and never stop. And it was missing the cover to the memory slot. A memory stick was hanging out of it, which I quickly clicked back into place.
Since I was more interested in getting the T23 up and running, I only really played with the T43. I think the battery wasn't properly seated, which was the charging problem. The greater concern was that it seems to have some more serious problems. The copy of WindowsXP on it keeps asking to be registered, which I really don't want to do. A Linux run showed that it would boot into both Puppy Raring and Puppy Slacko, go to the desktop, and then freeze. Puppy Precise wouldn't boot at all. I was going to give Puppy Wary a go, but was getting a bit on the tired side, so... A quick check of the X41 showed that the right Trackpad button was also stuck. I'll look into fixing/replacing later. If I can get it to boot a Puppy from USB, which I'm not sure it's capable of, I might even think about a replacement hard drive. As for the 600, I really haven't a clue. Not even sure if it will turn on, and haven't really given thought to a replacement memory slot door (if you could even find one without just buying another unit, which would be pointless.) And, to be honest, I think my 380XD eats the 600 for breakfast, and it's really just scraping to run Puppy Wary.
Still, I've got the things, and it might be good for a weekend of fiddling around. Who knows?
The things I get myself into...
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