More minimalist Puppy Love

Remember the computer I bought at the salvage yard for ten bucks?

I'm on it right now, running Puppy Linux on the 128 Megabyte Compact Flash card, which I plugged into one of these:

40PinToCF.jpg


The computer's BIOS is tricked into believing that the flash card is a primary Hitachi hard drive.

Once again, the simplicity of all of this is breathtaking, and there is no noise except the CPU fan.

The flash adapter cost 99 cents, and the flash card was just something I had lying around, leftover from an old digital camera I no longer use.

The bottom line is that for almost nothing, I have a super fast, solid state PC.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I hope the geekier readers will forgive my amazement, but I have long been accustomed to thinking of computers as expensive propositions involving machines with hard drives and operating systems that actually cost money, that have to be maintained with anti-virus, and worried over. This instant, on-the-fly, almost disposable computing is forcing me to go through a mental readjustment, and it is changing the way I think about computers.

posted by Eric on 05.20.10 at 01:53 PM





TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/9686






Comments

Nice.

TallDave   ·  May 20, 2010 07:02 PM

Skynet will wake up any day now.

Gideon7   ·  May 20, 2010 10:36 PM

I like hearing your computer tales. I use an old Dell with improved memory and hard drive. As my work using the machine is dependent on MS, MS is my OS. I have done some cursory ventures into Linux, but MS Access I use for my work is easier for me to use than fooling around w Linux.

Gringo   ·  May 21, 2010 07:19 PM

It makes me wish I hadn't dumped a lot of my old hardware in my recent moves. I want one! :-)

Now I wish I could find a local source of junk computers. Most in my area have gone out of business!

Dean Esmay   ·  May 24, 2010 12:15 PM

Post a comment

You may use basic HTML for formatting.





Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)


May 2010
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

ANCIENT (AND MODERN)
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR


Search the Site


E-mail



Classics To Go

Classical Values PDA Link



Archives



Recent Entries



Links



Site Credits