jawtheshark's Journal: Baloo is dead!

Yes, my beloved Baloo is dead. I think only a true nerd can mourn something like Baloo, because it is our family computer. The computer that I loved most on my network. No it was not some shiny new Athlon XP 2GHz or something like that. Baloo has been in usage for over 5 years. It was bought in february 1997, and didn't let us down ever. Apart from my old laptop Bagheera (P120/32Meg RAM which has no networkcard) and the server Mowgly (a P166 with 112Meg RAM) it is the weakest computer on the network. Still I loved it. Why? Because it is a rarity on itself. It was a server-class machine back in the day and cost about the price of a small car.
Yes, this is a vintage Pentrum Pro 200, and when we bought it it came with a whopping 32Meg RAM and a 9 Gig SCSI harddisk, a 4x SCSI CD-Writer, a 100Meg Zip SCSI and a 4x SCSI CD-Rom. Not much changed over the years: it got upgraded later to 96Meg RAM, later to 128Meg RAM, and beginning this year 256Meg RAM. For the gaming capabilities I extended the Matrox Mystique (excellent 2D card) with a VooDoo2 about 3 years ago. Over the time the CD burner died, as did the Zip100, which both were never replaced. The 4x SCSI died too, and was replaced by a 40x Plextor SCSI CD-Rom. Because the 9Gig HD became a bit small, two years ago a 18Gig SCSI harddisk was added. Apart from this it stayed about the same over the years. And it was a true kickass Workstation! It ran about every OS you can imagine, from Linux (Redhat 3.0 did a kernel panic on it because it didn't know the Intel 440FX motherboard) over OS/2, Windows 95, later only NT4 and now -the last two years- it ran Windows 2000. Like a champ I tell you. You could do about everything you expect from a modern machine with it.
Alas, last saturday it stopped booting. I suspected that the powersupply was dead so I replaced it, but yet it would not boot. Because the CPU overheated a lot lately (broken fan... not noticed in time, you get the picture), I suspected the CPU was dead. Luckily a coworker had a other Pentium Pro 200 lying around that he was going to throw away (broken motherboard) and he gave it to me. I exchanged the CPU's but it didn't help. Yes, I now sit here with two Pentium Pro 200 CPU and two broken Pentium Pro motherboards.

So Baloo is dead! But what am I going to do? The temporary solution I found was to give Shere-Khan to my family which is my desktop (P-III 800, 768Meg RAM). This is my "project" machine, so I cannot play around with it anymore because it's nearly always on for usage of the family. We need to replace Baloo quick, because with one less computer one feels the emptyness. I'm thinking of a Dual Athlon MP 1.6GHz with a healthy dose of RAM. Yet, I find that a bit overkill for my family. They could as well keep Shere-Khan. However -for reasons that I still have to announce in my journal- I will need Shere-Khan very soon for my own usage. So what is the solution? Buy me the Dual Athlon and sell Shere-Khan to my dad? That's not possible because I'd like to keep the SCSI configuration that Baloo had, and Shere-Khan is IDE-based and got upgraded with many goodies for my own usage. Besides, what would he give for a P-III? Nowadays such a machine is not even worth 250Euro. Above that my account is getting empty: I only have 5000Euro left. *sigh* Of course my dad is not going to pay me a Dual Athlon and "only" get the P-III, that would be insane.

Yes, I mourn Baloo. It is already being missed. It shouldn't have died. It could have lasted another two years as a good desktop, and later have lived a good life as a server in the basement. Nobody got a working ATX dual-pentium-pro motherboard for me lying around? I have two CPU's now after all ;-)

Re:

[account_deleted]

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Re:Truly a sad day, a bear of a machine gone....

[jawtheshark]

Thank you... Not that I think that my family cares too much. My brother seems to be rather pleased with the fact that he can play RTCW now. My sis got Akela, her own machine (okay, it really is mine, but it's in her room), and my father got Raksha, his laptop.

The day I meet Kipling I'll have to thank him for the great naming scheme he gave me for my network. ;-) Seriously, I gave it the name "Baloo" back in the day because it was a "bear of a machine", just as you say. Of course, I only knew the Disneyfication of Kipling's work, and now -having read Kipling- the name Baloo made much more sense because Baloo is a *old* wise bear.

Dual-Pro motherboards seem to be easy to find in the AT formfactor by the way. I even found some ATX motherboards (PR440FX) on ebay, but of course they don't ship to Europe. Ah, the pain.