old PC's are such a pain to work on

[daywane]

man you guys had it hard with those old PC's
each one is differant

find old manuals is not that Ez
1st one booted 95 but had problems.
updated to 98. did not like how it acted.
formated installed 98 se full OEM
now boots up and stops saying PC is configured wrong and sticks on scan disk 

2ND one
Packard bell wanted pass word from mobo.
took a few days to find the pins to move to disable pass word.
would only boot to safe mode. 95 no CD support.
booted floppy disk 98 start up
formated c:
installed 98 SE full oem
bios stops
vnet bios.vxd
track this down to network setting.
windows boots up after hitting any key
no sound.
find sound driver for azt3011 PnP sound
( sound, game input, modem all in one)
very long card. not pci also on a riser card
burn driver to CD
find out still no CD support in windows
is there at bios
and is there in dos from boot disk
just not windows

device manager has yellow ! marks for
Display adaptors
         pci vga compatible display adaptor
( there is no vga slot) 1 long slot ( dark brown) riser goes into
riser has 2 of these slots and and 3 pci slots

also  yellow !
hard drive controllers
primary ide controller

( secondary is not marked )

in the morning I will take out hard drive and toss it in this one as a second drive. copy drivers to the second drive and try again.

CD drive I hope hooking it to the hard drive as a slave will help.

[DrewKaree]

All my problems and issues with my old Packard Bell went away the minute I got a new computer and threw that piece of crap off my second-story porch (AND I never felt such a freeing sensation as I did when the cover blew off that thing like it was dynamite!)

Packard Bell, IIRC, required some specific hardware for their machines.  I bought a CD drive and found out later that I had to purchase either a specific model which no one on the face of the planet seemed to carry, or purchase one from PB, which naturally, while everyone else seemed able to make money around the $50 mark, PB couldn't seem to price these things under $110 minimum

If someone were to give me another PB (because I'd never pay one red cent for those useful-only-as-a-doorstop piles), my first experiment would be similar to the Owl's Tootsie Pop experiment - see how many sledgehammer blows would it take to get from one side of the case to the other without cracking the mobo.

I hope that helped.  It was quite the cathartic experience for me

[shmokes]

Packard Bell was my first computer job.  I worked tech support.  The average hold time for the poor ---daisies--- calling in was 55 minutes.  So if their PC problems hadn't pissed them off already, they were usually fuming by the time they got to a real person.  The phone system sucked, too, and cut people off on a regular basis after they'd been holding for half an hour.

But this is the fun part.  All the technical documents had a security rating from 1-5.  A 1 was information that could be given out freely.  A 3 was given out only on a need to know basis, and a 5 was given out to the public under no circumstances.  There were all kinds of funny things, like one of the computers had a faulty chipset that would fry if the user set it to a specific resolution/color depth.  If a user called with this problem it was immediately identifiable and we were to tell the customer that the video chip had burned out and we would replace the motherboard (integrated video).  We could not tell them that this was a known problem, or that if they did the same thing with their replacement motherboard it would fry in exactly the same way. 

[tommy]

All my problems and issues with my old Packard Bell went away the minute I got a new computer and threw that piece of crap off my second-story porch (AND I never felt such a freeing sensation as I did when the cover blew off that thing like it was dynamite!)

Packard Bell, IIRC, required some specific hardware for their machines.

[daywane]

got PC #1 up and running.

[Zakk]

All my problems and issues with my old Packard Bell went away the minute I got a new computer and threw that piece of crap off my second-story porch (AND I never felt such a freeing sensation as I did when the cover blew off that thing like it was dynamite!)

I used to be able to work on all types of computers until someone threw a PB off their second story porch and it dropped on my head.  All I remember was this cover blowing off and all sorts of evil laughter.

It's okay, I can now count to 12 on my own, unfortunately my new alphabet only has 24 letters...

[DrewKaree]

I used to be able to work on all types of computers until someone threw a PB off their second story porch and it dropped on my head.  All I remember was this cover blowing off and all sorts of evil laughter.

It's okay, I can now count to 12 on my own, unfortunately my new alphabet only has 24 letters...

....but somehow if someone drops a box of toothpicks on the ground and they spill all over, you spew out the exact number scattered about.  "537...de...definately 537.  Dad lets me drive in the driveway....I'm an excellent driver....Wheel of Fortune comes on at 7...definitely 7"

Also, you told us your alphabet has 24 letters.  An ampersand, percentage symbol, and the number 3 aren't letters.  Fix that, wouldja, rain man?

I thought nobody had yet heard my evil laugh

[daywane]

judge wopner
and jeopardy