Well it’s been 2 weeks now with the new box and no Windows, a little different not using Windows for work but it hasn’t required any more effort. Some of the apps we used before for personal things, Quicken and iTunes, their are open source alternatives so we haven’t missed them yet. On the work side for the windows only apps I need, which are 2, they are on a server that can be accessed via tsclient. Their is one app I don’t have, Microsoft’s Communicator/Net Meeting, wihich is missed somewhat. We are not a company that traditionally communicates via chat so it’s use is still taking shape. I had hoped the web version was installed on the same server with the other apps but that is not the case. Maybe IT will get to that.
So far I’m pleased… except for the sound card taking a dive this morning. Lightning struck the power line outside the house which seems to have blown the integraded sound on the mobo. I never lost power and nothing else seems to have been affected so may have to scrounge a PCI one up. For these last 2 weeks I’ve also been using Evolution for mail, work and personal. I’ve switched back and forth between it and Thunderbird over the years but have never been able to stick with one or the other. It’s nice that both use mbox format for storing messages, makes copying that much easier. But I think it will be back to Thunderbird now and I’ll use the Lightning add on for Calendar functions.
Over the weekend I decided it was time to finally replace the PC that had been our main workhorse for the last 3 to 4 years. What prompted it was a month or so ago two of the three DIMM slots on the motherboard went bad leaving 256mb to work with. That wasn’t going to cut it with everything that goes on for work so I’ve switched to using the laptop for now. It’s got plenty of speed but hooking up all the extra stuff gets old everyday. So I headed out Saturday to pickup some new parts… I’ll say it now I should have waited.
I last pieced together a machine in 02/03, I think, when everything was IDE and DDR wasn’t near mainstream. My have things changed. Instead of shopping on the internet I went to a local shop and got a new motherboard, processor, and memory. Then went back to the local Circuit City for a power supply… should have thought of that one. So after using GParted to copy the drive to a spare for testing… that software rocks !!! I started in with the new stuff.
The first problem I had was getting the new board to reconize an IDE drive, as it has only one IDE connection. Fiddling with BIOS settings didn’t seem to help. So since the new board was geared to SATA went back and picked up a drive, and a 3.5 USB enclosure for the old one, and figured I migrate that way. Boy was I wrong.
It’s now late on Tuesday and I have just now been able to “attempt” to have the XP Pro CD recognize the new SATA drive. I should have known better than to assume after all these years migrating would be as simple as copying a drive, letting windows repair the install, and then away we go. This could be the “straw that breaks the camels’ back” with me and forking out $$$ for an OS. After a bit of googling the last two days I know now exactly what I need to do, unfortunately getting there might take a minor miracle.
The short of it is something like this. XP does not have SATA drivers on the CD you have to load them from a floppy during boot. After a considerable amount of searching I found what should be the correct drivers for the board I have but when downloading them from Intel’s site… no go. Intel has good instructions don’t get me wrong. But drivers are a quirky beast and it seems I’m not having luck finding the write ones. Not to mention putting them on a floppy, I haven’t used a floppy since 2001. I have one internal floppy drive that works and only seems to work with one cable. Moving that between two systems just to find out the drivers don’t work took a few hours tonight. So I’ll give it a rest for now.
BTW – Ubuntu loaded without a hitch. Oh I could go to Vista, it will recognize SATA drives, but I paid my $200 for XP Pro a while back as well as XP Home. If it wasn’t for work I wouldn’t need it… maybe I’ll just have the company fit the bill for a new machine and save me the headache.
We’ll see.
