eMachines keeps trolling me after so many years

I have been doing IT for some 7 years now, like I've mentioned a couple of times, in different fields which range from Call Center Technical Support, the cheapo and fancy version, up to personal support to customers and companies that range between your mom and pops business up to the thousands of employees Corporation, and never have I personally found something as disgusting or annoying as an eMachines Desktop.

Yes I get the point about building affordable systems for the common user but for the love of whatever it is that you praise do it right man and I am dead serious here.

All this comes here for one reason. Two days ago I bought this old L7VMM MOBO from the guy that gives me the old computers I refurbish and let me tell you that these two last days have been terror and horror to me but also they have provoked me to look for answers to things I had previously learned and with that I had forgotten since I never used them.

I couldn't quite remember how to format a PC from a floppy, yes I am serious about the floppy thing and I have a bunch of them stored in a box, and it has been a while since I saw a FAT32 Partition in something that isn't a USB drive. That said it's also been years since I've seen a K7 in use, an AMD Duron @ 650 MHz to be precise, and I wanted to put it to use since... well the codename of the processor is "Spitfire" and using a computer with a CPU named like that sounds killer although it turned out to be a complete bummer.

How did all of this really start?

First off I placed everything in a case, that ironically states outside that it uses a P3 Celeron 600MHz CPU and that this PC NEVER goes obsolete...

Next, I try booting straight from the HDD with no luck and I start working around with it. Then I notice, in horror, that this is one of those PC's that for the life of me won't boot up from the CD-Drive and I am not sure why this is even happening but it has me terrified.

My first alternative turned out to be a Windows 98 boot floppy with CD-ROM support, because maybe you don't know it but back in the day some things weren't supported like CD-ROM drives or Floppy Drives and USB was non-existent.

As mentioned further above it had been a while since I saw a full partition of FAT32 and from there on it just went downhill. I got the CD recognized and I ran the WINNT exe to get the installation going but at first it wouldn't do it mentioning something about not enough swap space. Some ten minutes later I figured that I had to delete the NTFS partition that was occupying 99% of the hard drive... yeah I kept forgetting how the commands work.

Next stop was trying WINNT and it partially worked, then died on me, then worked, then died again, then I decided to go for Nomad, the codename for a 4GB hard drive I got laying around holding Debian 6, and it went into a deep coma state that could only be prevented if I went into the recovery state which meant I had to mess around with it a lot more than I wished for it, openSUSE laughed at me too or cried, not sure at this point, but it didn't work, Windows XP from another machine didn't work either and I've had it with this PC that will only run floppy systems, nothing bad with them but if I try and sell it to the normal customer I won't get much out of it.

Then there's the suspicion that the CPU may be damaged but I have no way to prove this since yet again I have no way to load Hirens or any other tool to test this out, RAM is also an option but that would give me a whole different bunch of errors and from what I've read, seen and understood it seems the culprit is the motherboard which has to be flashed immediately after being bought because of buggy software on the BIOS ROM which can only be done inside of Windows.

Level of Patience, almost null.

One more alternative before I give away and ask for my 10 bucks back... Windows 98 2nd Edition. May work, may not work, I don't know and I don't care but I am not letting this bad boy go out without a battle.

And in the end that also failed... that sums it up after I saw Windows 98 getting stuck several times during the installation and having to force the "restart" physically. At this point I am pretty sure the culprit is the processor and well there's nothing much I can do about this except return it and get my money back and buy a soda or something.

Victim of the Box

I usually don't judge a book by its cover so when I tried this game out I knew I was in for some sort of surprise and it only took me 10 tries to find the real answer to the puzzle. Try it out!

QuickBASIC Modern Programs

Roaming around on the vast ocean that is the internet I found this site that offers QuickBASIC applications for old systems which can perform tasks such as sending and receiving e-mails up to TCP/IP traffic and HTML handling. While e-mail clients are not that uncommon in programming the Apache server is something I haven't seen, yet, in QuickBASIC so if you ever need to revive an old PC with dos then give some of this programs a try.

Facebook in a Spreadsheet!

No, it's not madness and no this ain't Sparta.

Go check out the app at the following link which allows you to check facebook in something that looks like an Excel Spreadsheet. How much more professional can you look at work while browsing Facebook?

Only limitation, from what I've seen, is that you don't get to see full-sized pictures but if you're addicted to Facebook you won't care that much, believe me, though in the future that may be fixed.

IBM: Why bother?

A lot of people, throughout time, have bad mouthed IBM hard. An example of this is the hatred against AS/400 (We're talking about the servers) and the programming language (Can't be considered one to be honest) RPG.

Then the prices are also something the normal user runs away from. The laptop I currently use was made somewhere around 2005 and from what I've read this was the top of the line for IBM and went for around 1500 up to 1800 depending on the configuration and the add-ons you decided to put into your purchase.

Is it worth it, should you bother?

Real simple answer: Yes.

Long answer: Even though IBM has stopped building laptops and desktops for the end-user, that is the business end-user or companies that had the budget for it, Lenovo continued this process and reasonably began to lower their prices and continued the "economical" line that tries not to sacrifice power but that is for the common user to decide in the end.

Back when I worked at a Factory we used only IBM for our end-users. During my time I had 5 laptops assigned to me and all but one were IBM products going from a T41, a T60, a G50 and finally a T500, not included a Gateway laptop that I hated because it was heavier than most laptops I ever used and that is including the G50 which is a monster. The reason why I mention these models is because they were, at some point, the main mobile army of IBM for the businessman which even though light were powerful enough.

Desktops and Laptop alike, IBM made some really tough material back in their prime days that can still be found in many recycling shops and computer stores and it's guaranteed that even though most of them had seen a lifetime of abuse that they'll continue to last for another couple of years before finally giving up and going into eternal slumber. If you ever have the chance to find a T40 or her lesser cousins or maybe a T60 and you are in need of something powerful then do not hesitate to give it a try.

E-Smart, make money while recycling old equipment

Remember what I said about being smart and using old hardware that you got laying around your home?

Well how about this for a change. Go to the PC Repair Shops in your local area, ask around for old computers that customers never returned for or that have been left there, discarded, because they are obsolete and the customer doesn't have a need for it. Another option is going to recycling places and picking up mostly working electronic equipment or pieces to build a nice one.

Before, or after, rebuilding some computers you'll need to find that market segment who's in need for a cheap PC to check their e-mail, news, social networking, etc. This section of the population is usually in the lower end of the market that not even companies can reach into, and with the current economy it's even lower at this point, so that leaves the independent guy with a chance to get a quick buck while putting some old hardware back into circulation.

That's three things right there.

Maximizing the use of old equipment and putting them back into use.

Less trash.

Money in your pocket.

It's all good, it's all smart and it's all for the benefit of a lot of people and the planet and it works, believe me, as I've sold a couple of those to that small market I'm talking about.