Silly computer…
I’ve mentioned my status as ‘geek’ on more than one occasion. As it relates to computers, I have a laptop (which I’m using more and more as it’s nice to sit in the living room and write blog posts about how I’m able to sit in the living room blogging) and a desktop (which I use for media storage and playing games).
Unfortunately, it seems like the desktop is on the way out.
I built the desktop, way back in late ’05, as a middle-of-the-road gaming machine. Fancy enough to play games pretty well, but not so fancy as to be ridiculously expensive. It’s served me faithfully, although it hasn’t seen as much use for gaming after its transition to Ubuntu full-time. (It’s a post-op Windows-to-Ubuntu desktop, if you will…)
Right now, it gets most of its use storing media: 50+ gigs of music, 20+ gigs of photos from the last ~6 years, various documents from highschool. And, of course, 600+ gigs of downloaded TV shows and ripped DVDs. Those are accessible on the XBox in the living room, so we can all watch, say, Daria or Scrubs on a moment’s notice.
Sadly, when I came home yesterday, there were all sorts of graphical artifacts on the screen and it froze shortly after I sat down. I left it off overnight, hoping it was a one-time thing, but no such luck. It’s still booting, and I managed to get the most important things – mainly photos and my personal documents – off to an external drive, but I’d be really sad to lose the other 700+ gigs of music, movies, comics, and other random crap I’ve accumulated over the last decade.
I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get the old Mac G5 a friend of mine has promised me working, and make that my primary computer for the time being. Maybe buy a 1TB external (it’s ridiculous those are only about $100 these days) and back up everything on my current desktop before the whole system dies.
I have a suspicion that the problem is really just the graphics card, which would make sense from the stuff I’m seeing, but what I really want to do is spend ~$1,000 to build a new computer. As such, it seems like a waste of money to spend $50 or $100 to buy a new graphics card and give my current desktop a life extension if the G5 works fine. (I also say it’s not worth upgrading the current desktop because the motherboard is outdated and wouldn’t be able to take the newest CPUs or GPUs anyway, so I’d be putting money into something of a dead-end.)
I’m more trying to figure out what to do with it if the G5 works fine and/or I save the money to buy or build a new system. The case is a little clunky (as well as much larger than anything I really need), the 3 500 gig drives are fine, but I don’t know if wnat more space, the motherboard and CPU are fine but showing their age… I my previous desktop, from highschool, sitting in my closet for this same reason: it seems stupid and wastefull (not to mention environmentally unfriendly) to toss any of this stuff, and I feel like I should be able to find a cool project for it all, but I’m not sure what. Particularly now that the MAME arcade cabinet is up and running, I don’t know that I need yet another desktop in my life…
Any thoughts?
Themocracy
My dad is a programmer and Linux enthusiast, so this post made me smile.
Also, having just whiled away my whole day off playing video games… You have an Xbox? A 360? What games do you play? Do you have Live?
::grin:: Glad to hear you’re spending your time as well as I’m spending mine.
I have an original XBox, but it’s used exclusively as an XBox Media Center to watch DVDs and stream movies from my (now ailing) desktop.
As of late, I’ve been playing games mostly on my Wii (Rock Band 2 and Metroid Prime 3 being the most played for a while). I’d love to exchange friend codes (stupid Nintendo requiring friend codes…) but I’m afraid I don’t have a 360. One of my friends has two(!) broken ones, and I’m trying to get him to give me one to send to Microsoft for repairs, at which point I’ll definitely let you know. Not that I need another toy, but….
How about you? With what games did you while your day away?
Too bad! Do let me know if/when you get a 360 — it would be fun to play together.
My current obsession is Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, which is the game that sucked away my Saturday. If you’re into RPG/adventure games, it’s great — it’s shear size is amazing (in terms of map, quests, concept). I also spend a fair amount of time playing Call of Duty zombie mode with my roommate, and we’ve recently been playing Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 as well. We just got Xbox Live this week, so my whole house is reveling in the joys of Netflix instant viewing right now.
: )