Why my desktop is like a space station and other assorted thoughts

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Way back in 2001 I set off for university armed only with a rudimentary grasp of the object-orientated programming model and my trusty desktop computer. Actually, that’s a slight misnomer; my PC at the time was a reclaimed, bright blue server case that stood nearly as tall as me.

It weighed an absolute ton, and virtually no desk could support it. Inside were 4 or 5 hard disks, of random size and origin, a bizarre selection of scrounged components and enough fans to build a quite effective hovercraft, all linked to a controller that I’d built myself.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the most stable PC ever created. It fell over, a lot – very often because a screw had been worked loose by the vibration from all those fans and landed on a circuit board. In the halls of residence we used to hold regular movie nights, with media streamed all over the super-fast campus network. If the film stopped, I would have to run back to my room to find the offending screw, remove it and reboot. (more…)