Procrastination

Well, a week in and I've already been unable to stick to something that even vaguely appears to be a schedule. Oops.

I guess the main reason is being stuck in university attempting to bash together four pieces of coursework, unfortunately three of which are group projects and the fourth is based off Matlab. Matlab. Ugh.
Why does maths have to invade every single aspect of my life.

So basically until approximately June (and maybe even beyond, because I normally procrastinate everything, sometimes even eating) the frequency of posting stuff of even vague interest will probably occur when I can make time for this blog and any other projects.

Speaking of which, I have recently ordered a proper Ethernet switch box and I have had news that a relative of mine has three spare laptops, so the current plan is to convert all relatively outdated but still functional machines in my possession into a Beowulf cluster, as I really don't have enough processing power in my life apparently. Hopefully I will make at least some semi decent notes on producing it, as there seems to be a distinct lack of tutorials and the like on how to build a cluster computer and what exactly you can do with them. I guess this will be a decent learning experience.

Basically, sit tight and interesting stuff should occur.

Blistering Data Transfer

Just a quick little post as I kind of maybe definitely left it a little bit late, but check out the absolutely insane download speed that I have been experiencing with my Windows 2000 machine.

An absolutely hair raising speed of 6.06 KILObytes per second. 

That is literally slower than dial up. 

Also the file did not take 8 minutes to download, it took almost an hour. 

(I'm regretting removing the CD drive now, although it was causing some instability issues.)

I guess this probably an issue with either the network card provided, or the issue of using an iMac G5 as a WiFi... wait sorry, "Airport" to ethernet bridge. Hell I may as well see what the relevant data transfer speed would be over RS232. 

(In fact, if my maths is right, which it probably isn't, a 115200 baud connection would transfer the same 9mb file at over twice the speed as the network, as it would produce a transfer speed of around 14kb/s.) 

Hopefully this will be the last windows 2000 related post for a while, as even I'm getting bored of the monotony of talking about the same machine, and it's only been two days of this entire thing being online.

Repairing a Packed Up Packard Bell

Alternatively known as repairing a computer the incredibly hard way. 

Yes you lucky people by some strange miracle you have been graced by my presence twice in one day. I can tell you now that this will not be a common feature.

Basically one of my more recent/successful/hasn't completely exploded in my face projects is that of an old Packard Bell 486 based machine from around 1993. As you can (probably) see from this frankly hideous photo that it is incredibly running Windows 2000, so how am I achieving this?

Well to be honest I cheated.

As Packard Bells from the era are not exactly well known for their reliability, I was relatively recently given a Desktop unit from a friend of mine with the aim of retrieving any data from the whopping 170mb Hard Drive. After a quick clean and a power cable sourced, it gave very faint signs of life. That of the lights turning on, the hard drive partially spinning up and a beep code that did not correspond to any beep code for the BIOS supplied in the machine.
A POST card and a visible inspection confirmed my suspicions, the internal battery had exploded, corroding a bloody lot of tracks and annihilating the onboard memory, giving a lovely error of "yeah, the first 64k of memory is borked to hell". Honestly I was surprised that enough of the bloody thing survived to give error beeps.

At any rate two options appeared: 1) clean and restore the motherboard as well as I could in the vague hopes that it would boot without errors (which in the process I managed to annihilate the real time clock chip), or 2) gut the case and put something newer inside it. You can probably tell already what happened.

So how on earth can I gut the case without causing an unnecessary headache to myself? Well, by using a slight quirk of the machine. The Original expansion slots of the Packard Bell were provided with a riser board, giving access to 3 16 bit ISA slots, if I used an Industrial Single Board Computer on a ISA card I could add newer hardware to the machine without causing horrific amounts of grief to myself.
The initial board ordered for the whopping sum of £30 inevitably became a dead end after one ever so slight problem arose, the delivery man decided to put the parcel into my recycling bin for safe keeping from the rain... on the day the bins are collected. After a day or so of emails and quietly swearing to myself, the inevitable outcome was to order a second SBC, a MITAC 1500e.
Fortunately this arrived without being binned and was hurriedly installed into the Packard Bell before any other fate could befell it. A small section of paper was used to electronically isolate the motherboard the riser, and the original power supply was pressed into service as the SBC fortunately has a typical AT power connector onboard it.

So what is actually inside it?

A second SBC, exactly the same type as in the Packard Bell

(The eBay seller threw this in as well as the operational one as it only gave beep codes)

The SBC contains an AMD K6-2, with a maximum of 256mb of ram. This is paired with an 80GB hard drive, with Windows 2000 courtesy of WinWorld.
As allegedly every single IDE hard drive I own is dead, you may be able to make out that a laptop style hard drive is currently in use as the master drive (the original drive was DOA).
I am hoping to source a proper 5.25 inch floppy at some point, as a modern DVD drive doesn't look as period accurate. (well, neither does a modern LCD monitor, but I'm a student with limited room.)

Windows XP also refused to install on this machine, and apparently you could install Windows 7... but that is near impossible due to the mere 256mb of RAM present, so Windows 2000 is actually the best OS for this Frankenstein monster. (I am definitely naming it Franky from now on.)

The only version of Linux I was actually able to get running was a very old copy of Puppy Linux, every copy of Ubuntu, Lubuntu etc I attempted simply did not boot. Mainly because  i586 support was dropped yonks ago, and I got sick of burning CDs.

Better than a 486 I suppose.
(which in itself will probably be subject to torture/a different project)

"Franky" completed, note the now completely ironic "Intel Inside!" sticker.

 (the Amiga 600 on top will probably be the subject of a future (much shorter) post) 

Well OK I really did not expect that post to be as rambling as it was, then again my original title of this blog was literally "the rambling geek".

Also it's worth pointing out that the background of this blog at the moment is the jumper settings that are present on the underside of the case.

An Introduction

Honestly I have absolutely no idea what on earth I am doing, but here goes.

Hello and welcome... whoever has somehow managed to stumble upon this strange and slightly bizarre corner of the internet. This may, or may not, be the start of several (hundred?) vaguely interesting musings about whatever interests me.
 Yes that probably doesn't sound interesting to the vast majority of people that currently walk this earth but to those lucky few who share the same interest in Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, vintage computing/technology, electronics, programming, increasingly poor grammar and spelling, and less than subtle references to homosexuality, welcome!

(Quick note about the title, I was quite stuck for a title and thought something similar to "Quite Interesting" would work, unfortunately I do not like the concept of the BBC breathing down my neck so I switched it to "Vaguely Interesting", which had already been taken by a teenage girl in 2004. Hm. So the obvious alternative was "Interestingly vague")

Also I will have to try and keep posts vaguely regular, so I think Monday, Thursday and Saturday seems fair enough. Yes I know it is a Friday, this was more of a spur of the moment thing. Also it seems nothing interesting happens on Saturdays and I am not entirely sure why.