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May. 3rd, 2008 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariFive things happened last night to just let me know that if there is a Higher Power, it's a reallly sadistic sumbitch. Of the five, three of them happened to people close to me, and of those three, one was on the level of "I'm going to live pretty badly for a bit" and two were on the level of "Looks like my life expectectancy just got a lot shorter." If those people wish to tell their stories, they will.
It was also the beginning of the month - backup time. I shoulda known better, though. I have a Western Digital "My Book." 500GB for backups, of which, I use about 150GB each backup. The new laptop has no problem with that system. After I SYSed it with DOS 7, the MyBook is totally bootable with a copy of Ghost 8.3 on it. It's easy to do.
The older machine, though, HATES it. Runs great in Windows, but it refuses to boot to it, and getting the old PC to boot to DOS with a bum floppy disk (and the laptop has no floppy disk) is a real pain. I end up having to boot to a boot CD with goofy drivers that make the system see the drive twice which makes Ghost crap out unless I type a really long long long command line.
I found out, though, that the reason was the BIOS was buggy. It said it could boot to USB drives, but the code wasn't that good and an upgrade (from 2003!) was available. I hate updating a computer's BIOS. If you don't do it exactly exactly right, you can turn your nice computer into a brick. And getting that BIOS installed when you don't have a floppy to boot to DOS is a pain.
Eventually, I got into a DOS prompt, and ran the BIOS upgrade and crossed my fingers. "BIOS NOT INSTALLED! BIOS LOCK ON." I'd forgotten that my system had a BIOS lock, to keep viruses from rewriting it. It just needed to be turned off and run again. And when I turned on the machine...it became a brick. Powers on, no video, two low beeps, nothing else. The lock allowed the program to erase the old BIOS, but not put on the new one.
So now I need a new PC. Well, not necessarily new. It's just a fileserver. Don't need a supermachine for a fileserver. I just don't have any PCs anymore. No leftover motherboards or powersupplies. So a low-end PC is in order (I've had the same case and powersupply since 2002, it's getting ratty)...but I won't grab one of those until I move to Seattle.
First order of business, though, is to get a USB/IDE adapter to copy the hard drive contents over to the laptop, and to use the WinBook as an actual drive, instead of just a backup drive (then use the IDE drives as backup drives till I move to Seattle).
With all the news and events, I couldn't sleep. I just tossed and turned until my alarm went off, and here I am.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
erinlefey, I should still be at the movies. I'm going to try and get some sleep once I'm off work. So I should be okay (and maybe in better spirits...maybe) at the movie. If I'm not there, it's because I'm sleeping through three very loud alarms and am exhausted from having four hours of sleep in 36 hours. But I'm gonna try! I have to, I paid for the ticket already. :)
Anyways. Terrible night. Faith shaking night. The worst in some time.
It was also the beginning of the month - backup time. I shoulda known better, though. I have a Western Digital "My Book." 500GB for backups, of which, I use about 150GB each backup. The new laptop has no problem with that system. After I SYSed it with DOS 7, the MyBook is totally bootable with a copy of Ghost 8.3 on it. It's easy to do.
The older machine, though, HATES it. Runs great in Windows, but it refuses to boot to it, and getting the old PC to boot to DOS with a bum floppy disk (and the laptop has no floppy disk) is a real pain. I end up having to boot to a boot CD with goofy drivers that make the system see the drive twice which makes Ghost crap out unless I type a really long long long command line.
I found out, though, that the reason was the BIOS was buggy. It said it could boot to USB drives, but the code wasn't that good and an upgrade (from 2003!) was available. I hate updating a computer's BIOS. If you don't do it exactly exactly right, you can turn your nice computer into a brick. And getting that BIOS installed when you don't have a floppy to boot to DOS is a pain.
Eventually, I got into a DOS prompt, and ran the BIOS upgrade and crossed my fingers. "BIOS NOT INSTALLED! BIOS LOCK ON." I'd forgotten that my system had a BIOS lock, to keep viruses from rewriting it. It just needed to be turned off and run again. And when I turned on the machine...it became a brick. Powers on, no video, two low beeps, nothing else. The lock allowed the program to erase the old BIOS, but not put on the new one.
So now I need a new PC. Well, not necessarily new. It's just a fileserver. Don't need a supermachine for a fileserver. I just don't have any PCs anymore. No leftover motherboards or powersupplies. So a low-end PC is in order (I've had the same case and powersupply since 2002, it's getting ratty)...but I won't grab one of those until I move to Seattle.
First order of business, though, is to get a USB/IDE adapter to copy the hard drive contents over to the laptop, and to use the WinBook as an actual drive, instead of just a backup drive (then use the IDE drives as backup drives till I move to Seattle).
With all the news and events, I couldn't sleep. I just tossed and turned until my alarm went off, and here I am.
erinlefey, I should still be at the movies. I'm going to try and get some sleep once I'm off work. So I should be okay (and maybe in better spirits...maybe) at the movie. If I'm not there, it's because I'm sleeping through three very loud alarms and am exhausted from having four hours of sleep in 36 hours. But I'm gonna try! I have to, I paid for the ticket already. :)Anyways. Terrible night. Faith shaking night. The worst in some time.
