Firstly let me just state for the record, “the old dog” to which the headline refers is an old PC I picked up for the bargain price of £20 in December 2024, not me!
This is a project, an on-going one at that, whereby I aim to get up-to-date with aspects of computing which I have let fall away from the forefront of my mind. Now, I was never very geeky, I had an idea of what I wanted from computing – the world, but had no idea as to how to obtain it! In the 90s I wanted to write a book using one, then I discovered games but I am in no way a gamer, not the ADHD addled, kind of wired individuals who have YouTube channels and have so many Patreon subscribers that they are practically millionaires! No, I like playing Facebook games, pool and Chess – although I am still really quite bad at Chess as I never advanced beyond playing against the weaker opponents in Spark Chess. In addition as someone who desires to learn how to paly the electric guitar – and manual dexterity is largely a struggle for me, then it might be nice to some day be able to record and amend tunes of my own composition on this computer. I don’t ask for much do I? In addition, I don’t want to pay for operating system software – the “dog” came with Windows XP installed and I duly obliterated that as I felt it was a security threat to my home network.
Introducing the “old dog”
Seriously, has nobody ever noticed just how bad WordPress is for editing? It has a mind of its own and that mind is pretty damn messed up! Okay, now back to doggy! This is him, I can’t say in all his glory because I’m a terrible photographer, more of a snapper really, and this photo in no way does justice to him. That being said, he’s no pedigree, never going to win ‘best in show’ or even best in breed, you’d never say “now that’s one attractive computer”. I’m happy with that, I really think that in this day and age, normal is in itself a wonderful thing, there are so many beautiful things that the word loses its impact, gimme normal! I have managed to grab a copy of his personality profile – doh, I mean his vital statistics – no I don’t, I’ve got his technical specifications and they might have read as impressive in his day…I don’t even know when that was but I’m guessing he’s at least ten, more like fifteen, years old, oh joy an adolescent! The first thing I did was to ram a new graphics card in him, not that there was any other justification than “I had it hanging around”. The card was one from a similarly old PC I got for free a couple of years ago who was just too big and too slow and good lord he failed on all fronts! I kept his ram – two PC1600, 8Gbit modules, and the afore-mentioned graphics card and even the little PCI-E gigabit network card I’d bought off E-bay.
Can you teach an old dog new tricks?
The obliteration process involved installing Xubuntu XFCE over the top of the Windows XP setup. For the record I do have a few hard drives knocking about or I could have done a side-by-side install, I just didn’t want to complicate things, in itself this is rare for me! After a couple of weeks I was tired of the fault that he had, an issue with the video hanging when I cycled the KVM to which doggy was connected, it got annoying, quickly so! I formulated a plan whereby doggy would head up an alternate set up in a different part of my office on his own little network – it sounds far more cute than it was practical! The plan was adapted, he could go next to my art desk! And so he was moved to his new location and a new operating system installed that may be better at switching off video – which now when I think about it, rings as pointless as he’s no longer being run through that KVM! Doggy is now connected up to a 19″ TV … which is also an aging git! The TV works okay, for all I can do with it – it’s a far cry from being a “Smart TV” given that you can’t connect it to the internet and I have no aerial coax in my office so as far as being a “TV” goes – it isn’t! But the tv does have an HDMI socket (it also has a VGA one) to which I’ve connected a DVI to HDMI converter lead, Doggy’s original graphics card having been put back in place so that I could add in the network card which would not fit in when the (much) larger graphics card was present (keep up, it’s fun).
I was caught in the grips of nostalgia one day discussing Linux varieties and how I used to like using PCLinuxOS. Without much thought, I duly acted on this by installing this OS on Doggy – he wasn’t too happy about that and set about being disobedient whenever I tried to amend the display settings, it got very frustrating, computer-kickingly frustrating! I considered other versions of Linux. Ubuntu was a joke. I will never be satisfied with Ubuntu as it’s just so slow, and clunky and clumsy and I just don’t like it! Mint was next to the fore but this didn’t even get installed as even in Live view mode it struggled with the display set up. I remembered how my installation of Xubuntu on a little Dell lifestyle PC had essentially done everything I wanted it to and jumped on board the idea of putting Doggy back on Xubuntu – swings and roundabouts much? So this is where I’m at right now. The PC is up and running with two 8GB ram modules in it – I doubt this gives me 16Gb but…meh the BIOS screen seemed to be happy when I added them in! Xubuntu is behaving in that I can turn the TV off and on again without the damn thing freezing but I’m not just sticking with what’s working and what’s comfortable, hell no! I have a few different varieties available to install from one of my NAS boxes (yes, I have more than one NAS) and as soon as I have managed to acquire a real monitor then I feel I will be able to give them a proper trying. In addition, reading Doggy’s specs informs me that his onboard Lan interface is actually a gigabit – so it seems I can get rid of the little PCI-e one and put the big graphics card back in once again, I may go shopping for a replacement monitor (second hand) very soon!