The office supports my wife's (MaMaT) genealogy work (see my links page) and my highly limited support business.
Pooh is MaMaT's main system. It's a Gateway G6-450 Pentium II, full tower case, with 384 MB RAM, nVidia 16MB AGP Graphics Accelerator, 14.4 Gig HD, Integrated SB PCI 64D, Boston Acoustics BA635 Speakers, DVD III-ROM, ZIP 100, Telepath 56K V90 Modem, 3Com PCI 10/100 Ethernet card, and a conventional keyboard. We added an SIIG SCSI PCI card to drive the HP 5P Scanjet. It works quickly. (Why 384MB RAM? Two Browsers, an editor, two chat sessions on different servers, editing graphics, scanning and web designing simultaneously. We added a Logitech Game Mouse, because my wife loves the feel of that mouse more than any other pointing device. Pooh almost never crashes (cross fingers please). After a year of use Pooh suddenly stopped talking to the rest of the network, except very, very, VERY slowly. The Gateway recommended cure was a full reformat and reinstall. Two days and a stack of CD's taller than the full tower case and Pooh is better than ever....so far. We just added a Umax E5470 USB scanner and an extension port. Installed beautifully with only one glitch, you must plug the USB scanner into the same port on the port extension everytime.
Tigger is a heavily modified NEC Ready 9701SE formerly MaMaT's main system. Not Recommended At All. A Pentium 166, with a new STB 4MB video card, and an added 3.2 Gig Maxtor HD, the original 2.1 Gig HD and an annoying combination Modem Soundcard, which works with the latest drivers. This one is being transferred to my stepson, in St. Louis. Good riddance.
Eeyore was MaMaT's RedHat Linux 5.2 practice server..but we never had time to work at it. It's a PowerSpec Pentium 133, formerly my main system, with 48 MB RAM, and 1.2 and 3.2 Gig Western Digital HDs, an upgraded 33.6 US Robotics Modem (Not A WinModem), a 12x Creative CD-ROM, a SoundBlaster 16 Value Edition sound card and a 2MB generic video card. I've moved it to the Guest Room for company and reinstalled Windows. Lo, how the mighty are fallen.
Piglet is MaMaT's Fujitsu C353 Lifebook laptop. Pentium II 300, 12.1 Inch SVGA TFT display, 32 MB RAM, 4.3 Gig HD, internal 56K V.90 modem, 24x CD-ROM internal and an internal 3.5" floppy. The battery life with the Lithium Ion Battery isn't going to beat the Energizer Bunny (TM) but we bought it because she prefers the magic button as a mouse substitute. We also bought a Logitech Mouseman for Notebooks, with the shape MaMaT prefers for use when table space allows. It plugs in and overrides the magic button, but is infinitely easier to use.
Nick is the simple hard working little server running both our printers. The only non-intel Processor in the place. It's a PowerSpec PS-2030R, 233 Cyrix CPU, 32 MB RAM some shared with the video display, 2.5 Gig HD, a 24X CD-ROM and a generic V90 modem. We added a NetGear 10/100 card and a 10.1 Gig Western Digital hard drive for network backups. Nick is still pounding away, the only problem was a dead processor fan, replaced with an Antec Model twice as large. I cleaned out a serious amount of dust and cat hair.
Rabbit is my main system. A PowerSpec 7130 (From MEI/Micro Center) 450 Pentium III, 96MB PC-100 SDRAM, 15 Gig HD, 40X CD-ROM, MDP7800-U Modem (Get the latest drivers via MS IE 5.0 Update) V90 56K, 16MB TNT graphics card. I replaced the rough, generic wheel mouse with a Logitech Trackman Marble +, and then replaced the Marble with a Logitech optical wheel mouse, the smaller, symetric B058. I like the Logitech better than the MS mice. I also use a pair of ancient (5 year old) Yamaha speakers, which work better than my ears. We added an Imation internal LS-120 IDE drive to insure compatibility with my system at work and the NetGear 10/100 card for the network.
Owl is my play with Linux system. Assembled from a TC Computers refurbished Mother board, FIC PA-20071 and a new Pentium I 233 MMX processor, with 64 MB of generic RAM, two leftover 1.25 Gig WD drives, an STB Velocity 4MB video card, SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects soundcard, Zoom K56 Flex Modem (not a WinModem). I have installed Corel TM Linux and Wordperfect. Now I need to change the modem hardware port settings and reinstall the OS.
Things would be so much easier around here, if I could shake this terrible sleep habit.
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