i have a hard time letting computers go. my parents have similar problems disposing of paper media, me, i've got issues getting rid of hardware. this is due to my fear that i might accidentally throw something away that i could actually use. i mean, time after time i've been able to slap together some disparate bits of junk and have a happy little server running in short order. my most recent example of this was my wonderful little router / fileserver atmosk. atmosk was a great little machine. ran like a champ.
atmosk spent it's first life as my desktop machine nearly ten years ago. it was the happy little computer i first ran jedi knight on. it was what i was using when i ventured out onto usenet and met the circle of friends i still currently run with. it was a great machine then, but it was quickly replaced by my first-gen athlon machine, and then second and third gen. it sat unused for about five years, untill i repurposed it as a server. for the past [almost exactly] three years, it has sat in a closet across the hall, serving up files locally and abroad. i've had problems every once in awhile, fans died, harddrive ate itself, video card exploded, etc, but it cost me nothing to set up and took the burden of internet conneciton sharing off my computer. it was also a great learning experience. nearly all of my linux experience is due to screwing around on atmosk. i finally became proficient with vim due to working on atmosk.
unfortunately, over the past few weeks, things have been going wrong. first the fans started dying. again. this happened once awhile back. the heatsink fan got to a point where the bearings were just all going to crap, so it was still moving air, but sounded like a revving car engine. then the bearings on both hard drive fans started going through the same deal. now, the hard drive cooler i could replace, but i knew from the last time that finding a replacement for a hsf would be nearly impossible. as of really recently, the psu started looking like it was trying to crap out. so rather than try and replace all this stuff i set out to find a replacement.
i quickly found that replacement boxes in the 500mhz - 1ghz range are almost impossible to find. the best/closest i found was a ~500mhz celeron box of questionable origin for $100. i really didn't want to buy new, but i was pretty much forced to. luckily, a quick trip to newegg proved that i could build an entire new computer, nice and small due to being microatx, and actually 64 bit for $200. so this is what i did.
all the parts came in last night, were assembled in under an hour, quickly had the parts being migrated from atmosk inserted and were brought back online with no problems whatsoever. they were thereafter christened 'eb0' [as-in, "atmosk's gibson eb-0, 1961 model"]. with this, though, atmosk is effectively gone. i have made this horrible tribute image in honor of the transition.
on the subject of the name, sadly, i think this is going to be the last pc i name from FLCL. this has been a tradition since i repurposed one of andy's old machines to make kanchi, a server up at UML. kanchi led to atmosk. after atmosk, i rebuilt my own desktop machine, currently named naota. after naota, i had to name my rio karma, so it got takkun. when i built my dad a new computer earlier this year it got named kamon. my laptop purchased this summer got the name haruko. when i bought my iaudio x5l a few months ago, it got the volume lable amaro. now with eb0, i think i'm running out of names that are easy to remember. i'd name something maimimi, but maimimi is one of those words where i don't know where to end it. so i just know i'd screw that up. so it looks like whatever i build next will be needing a new name. perhaps i'll move on to ocarina of time sages . . . [11.11.05@15:59]
