My Computer

This is where those of you with morbid curiosities about what kind of workstation I dare call a desktop can go to find out.

Introduction

This page is devoted to my wonderful computer, Aurora.

Hey, wow, guess what? I *FINALLY* have pictures!!! Yes, some of you have, no doubt, been waiting a full year for these...

Specs

Aurora is now getting up in her years, she's about 3 or so. With age, overclocking has become impossible, but the system still works well. Ok, here's the basic system:

Motherboard

Abit BP6 (first edition, has a glitchy APIC but it works ok). I had to put an extra heatsink fan and some goop on the BX chipset to keep the thing happy, but it seems OK now.

CPU

This pretty picture is actually taken by me!

Two Celeron 366A's, with really big heatsink-fans on them. These both used to run at a 550MHz (100MHz FSB x 5.5) clockspeed, but age has made this impossible. I replaced the power supply recently, which stopped the crashes at normal clock speed, but aurora's 550 days are over.

RAM

256MB PC100 ECC. In one stick. It looks kinda like a metal can, it's totally covered in metal shielding.

Floppy

None. I couldn't afford an FDD, so I didn't add one. Honestly. The picture of the case below shows this if you look closely.

Case

AOpen mid-tower. The old 250W power supply has been yanked, and a new 400W installed.

Yes, that's an X10 (Radio Shack "Plug 'n Power") controller on top of aurora, as well as a speaker. The little black box behind the X10 controller is a computer interface for my TI-89 calculator.

Another picture of Aurora, this time, the picture was actually taken BY Aurora. The different color is not JUST because of the different program, but also because this was taken under MUCH lower lighting conditions. For whatever reason, the program can extend the exposure time a LOT longer than the Windows software.

Hard Drives

NEC Corporation DSE2010A, 2GB.
Maxtor 4K080H4 80GB (Quantum Designed) replaced the AS60.

CDROM Drives

Mitsumi FX240S 24x CDROM
Mitsumi DW-7801TE 4x2x16 DVD+RW

Video Hardware

Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra (nVidia TNT2 Ultra) 32MB AGP (dying, the video bandwidth dropped drastically and the card, while still in the machine, is no longer being used).
Creative Labs 3D Blaster Banshee (3dfx Banshee) 16MB PCI

Sound Hardware

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live PCI
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE/64 ISA

Other Peripherals

Acer 10/100 Network Adapter (Via Rhine chipset)
AverMedia TV98 (Bt848 chipset)

Monitors

Hitachi/Intergraph 4250 (20" tube, it's ancient but it does the trick)
AcerView 34T (14" tube, SVGA, better than nothing, but I'm glad I got the one above) *PULLED* not currently used.
Zenith Data Systems ZCM-1490-Z (14" tube, regular VGA, ultra-flat picture tube. Weights almost as much as the 20". Nice colors actually, for an old VGA. *PULLED* not currently used.

My Hitachi monitor, showing a KDE desktop at 2000x1000 with my webpage open. My ex made the signature "Windows" bugs (from those stupid "Y2K" bugs) and gave them to me as a gift.

My Zenith monitor, showing a KDE desktop at 640x480 running XMMS and gkrellm. Yet another windows bug adorns this monitor.

Final Notes

She's a little old, but still managing to scare people when most computers are ready to be turned into dumb-terminals. Oh, and the sound-system connected is equally contrived, but it gives me 4+1-point stereo for cheap. I'll probably eventually get around to replacing that though, I'm thinking of building something for a receiver. A picture of this mess is in the sidebar:

UPDATE: Stereo system mostly decommissioned.