That old PC
===========

Recently I have  got an old PC  which was used by one  of my colleagues
who quit his job.  It was considered to be too old  so the computer was
going to be recycled. But I recognised  it as my first computer which I
had here at the  university so I asked if I can continue  to use it. SO
now  it is  in my  office. I  recently  got also  my first  LCD (a  17"
ViewSonic VP171s,  the first  LCD at  the department) so  I an  able to
re-animate my old setup.

Back to the PC.  Originally I got it in January  2002. It was assembled
by the local company  (the Autocont - it still exists,  I think) and it
was (and  still is)  a boring gray  miditower. There was  a fast  1 GHz
Intel Pentium III  CPU and 256 MB of  RAM (and 20 GB HDD, but  I am not
sure). There was also a Matrox graphics board which supported dual head
setups (for  a some time even  under the Linux!). I  ran Slackware here
(starting from 9.0, I think). There was  also a floppy drive and 1 or 2
USB ports. The screen was 19" CRT, I do not remember the model.

The computer  was slightly  upgraded during the  time. The  machine was
quickly it was updated  to 512 MB of RAM (it was its  maximum). n I got
a  ZIP  drive  when it  became  cheap,  the  CD-RW  drive and  in  2007
The(probably, I'm not sure) I got  the above mentioned VP171s. It was a
big upgrade from a curved CRT.

The machine was  my only desktop (in  that time I had  no laptop except
the Toshiba 110CT with  the 90 MHz Pentium and 24 MB of  RAM) so it was
used for  LaTeXing and office  work but also for  software development,
numerical modelling  (the ANSYS and my  own tools, the GNU  Octave, the
Gnuplot and so on).


In  2009 there  was  an opportunity  to  upgrade the  box.  So the  old
internals were replaced with the 2.4 GHz Core2Quad CPU, 4 GB of RAM and
512 GB HDD  (there was only Intel onboard graphics  to save the costs).
There was dual-boot (This time the Ubuntu 8.04 and the Windows Vista).

Unfortunately  in that  time one  of  my colleagues  urgently needed  a
computer for numerical  modelling. So this PC was passed  to him (about
that time I stated  to be more a manager than anything else  so I got a
Dell notebook  and later an  Eee PC desktop for  my work). He  used the
computer until 2018. Then nobody wanted a "PC that old".

So now I have it back. It still  has a floppy drive, the ZIP drive, the
CD-RW drive and its Ubuntu installation  is intact (but don't ask about
the Vista...). It seems that it is  just little slower than by new Dell
desktop (got it  in 2018 as my boss  wants to allow me to  do some real
work once  more) it it  is slower at  all. I am not  sure if I  want to
upgrade the OS as the computer is  not connected to any network and the
things are working here.

I plan to use it for some numerical modelling (under Linux), mainly for
long non-interactive jobs.. I can also  connect my PDA here because the
Palm (and even  PocketPC) is supported under the Ubuntu  8.04. I should
try my "new" Toshiba e750 here.

I never thought that I can be so nostalgic about a boring old PC...