Today in my Tech missadvantures, i will write about the TowerPC that i found on the loft of my House.
At first the PC would not show a Picture on the Monitor and would beep all the time. My Stepfather then looked at the PC and was making diagnostics. He plugged various things in and out and tryed to find the issue. Later on, it would be able to boot into Windows (up to the Desktop of Windows XP). The Problem was that the Graphicscard was faulty (and also missing a chip), so that it would need luck to output Video signals or not. My Stepfather got the graphicscard out of the PC and it was a Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 460 with 64MB Video Ram(from Medion. MEDION!) I then orderd a compatible Graphicscard (a Geforce 4 MX 420, from MSI) from Amazon and my Stepfather builded it in (after a long time). After my Stepfather was done with building the Graphicscard into the PC, it was my Turn. It had Windows XP on (and many MP3s, a few games, a Pokémon rom with cheats on a old version of VBA, a HTML snapshot of a YouTube Video from 2010, old Firefox 2x and sadly no interesting Browsing history from my brother). I decided to install a "clean" (from a not so clean Windows XP ISO from the internet) Windows XP on the Mashine (which was a big misstake). After the installation it would not progressing any further. I tryed it multiple times. I then tryed the option "Disable reboot on system error", which showed a bluescreen with a stop code, that would indicate that XP needs additional Drivers for the Harddisk (which is a SCSI Disk). I then procedded to install Linux on the thing (Windows 7 would also not recognise the Harddrive, despite the fact that my Windows 7 DVD was legit this time). I tryed various *buntu and Linux mint versions, which did not worked or had graphics or font issues. I then tried Debian 9, which had graphics issues on GNOME, so that i needed to uninstall it and used X instead. On the X Desktop, it did not had any issues with the graphics. Later on i decided to install the Xfce4 Desktop enviroment, to replace the basic Window Maker enviroment with something more "professional".
Now that i have a more "professional" looking Desktop enviroment, i need to look how i could get internet on the thing (without using USB tethering and my D-Link DWA140/ST Rev D1 didin't worked also <it said that the firmware was not loaded and modprobe didin't worked ether).
The System has a AMD Athlon XP 1500+ Processor clocked at 1,3GHZ (unicore), 512MB of RAM, a 120GB IBM Deskstar SCSI Harddisk on IDE and two optical Drives (one CD <which needs a "kick start" to open the try> and one DVD). On Linux it saids that the Harddrive has 2 faulty sectors (and shows on bootup some cryptic Errors about the Harddrive), but it still works. Sadly, emulators are not working, because i could not find/install the drivers for the Graphicscard.
The System also has two USB 1.1 Ports, four USB 2.0 Ports, a Serial Port, a Parallel Port (Printer Port) and a PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse Port, so that the old Keyboards and Mices that i found are useful for something.
Overall it is a good system that can also be used for Programming (which is also the PC, where pkgmgr, my console interface for apt-get was made).
At first the PC would not show a Picture on the Monitor and would beep all the time. My Stepfather then looked at the PC and was making diagnostics. He plugged various things in and out and tryed to find the issue. Later on, it would be able to boot into Windows (up to the Desktop of Windows XP). The Problem was that the Graphicscard was faulty (and also missing a chip), so that it would need luck to output Video signals or not. My Stepfather got the graphicscard out of the PC and it was a Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 460 with 64MB Video Ram(from Medion. MEDION!) I then orderd a compatible Graphicscard (a Geforce 4 MX 420, from MSI) from Amazon and my Stepfather builded it in (after a long time). After my Stepfather was done with building the Graphicscard into the PC, it was my Turn. It had Windows XP on (and many MP3s, a few games, a Pokémon rom with cheats on a old version of VBA, a HTML snapshot of a YouTube Video from 2010, old Firefox 2x and sadly no interesting Browsing history from my brother). I decided to install a "clean" (from a not so clean Windows XP ISO from the internet) Windows XP on the Mashine (which was a big misstake). After the installation it would not progressing any further. I tryed it multiple times. I then tryed the option "Disable reboot on system error", which showed a bluescreen with a stop code, that would indicate that XP needs additional Drivers for the Harddisk (which is a SCSI Disk). I then procedded to install Linux on the thing (Windows 7 would also not recognise the Harddrive, despite the fact that my Windows 7 DVD was legit this time). I tryed various *buntu and Linux mint versions, which did not worked or had graphics or font issues. I then tried Debian 9, which had graphics issues on GNOME, so that i needed to uninstall it and used X instead. On the X Desktop, it did not had any issues with the graphics. Later on i decided to install the Xfce4 Desktop enviroment, to replace the basic Window Maker enviroment with something more "professional".
Now that i have a more "professional" looking Desktop enviroment, i need to look how i could get internet on the thing (without using USB tethering and my D-Link DWA140/ST Rev D1 didin't worked also <it said that the firmware was not loaded and modprobe didin't worked ether).
The System has a AMD Athlon XP 1500+ Processor clocked at 1,3GHZ (unicore), 512MB of RAM, a 120GB IBM Deskstar SCSI Harddisk on IDE and two optical Drives (one CD <which needs a "kick start" to open the try> and one DVD). On Linux it saids that the Harddrive has 2 faulty sectors (and shows on bootup some cryptic Errors about the Harddrive), but it still works. Sadly, emulators are not working, because i could not find/install the drivers for the Graphicscard.
The System also has two USB 1.1 Ports, four USB 2.0 Ports, a Serial Port, a Parallel Port (Printer Port) and a PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse Port, so that the old Keyboards and Mices that i found are useful for something.
Overall it is a good system that can also be used for Programming (which is also the PC, where pkgmgr, my console interface for apt-get was made).
