I've replaced the two stolen computers with new ones built from scratch. Both are slightly above mid-range machines, with nice Antec boxes, dual core processors (one AMD Athlon X2, one Intel Core2Duo), 2GB RAM, 320GB disks, PCIx16 video cards (both nVidia, one 7600 GT, the other an 8600 GS), etc. One is running Fedora Linux, the other Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition. The AMD/Linux machine came together nicely, feels rock solid. I still do a lot of my work on an ancient 333MHz Pentium, but I'm gradually shifting over to the new box. The Intel/Vista machine has been a lot of trouble, with several hardware failures and software I never managed to get to load -- wound up having to take the machine to a dealer/builder here twice, first for hardware diagnosis and again to install Vista. Finally did get it working, but I've hardly used it thus far. Just hooked up some speakers and a thermal printer, but haven't turned it on yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Anyhow, those machines aren't the topic here, although they do offer mixed lessons on building vs. buying -- the former's a good idea when it works and a bad idea when it doesn't, and from my sample the main difference is Linux vs. Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether my new Intel/Vista box will turn out to be better than what I could have bought in one of the box stores, but it certainly wound up costing more, and taking a lot more time to get working. And it's a machine I'm hardly ever going to actually use, so it certainly wasn't cost-effective for me to build. Such projects often seem smarter on the drawing board than in retrospect. What I want to write about here is another computer project, done (I suppose) because I managed to get through the last two without too many scars.

I have a lot of old computers, mostly collecting dust in the basement: the oldest is an Ithaca Intersystems S-100 bus, Z-80 cpu, with 64K RAM and two 8-inch floppy disks, bought circa 1980 -- actually, my second computer. A relatively recent one is a Gateway from around 1999 that still runs Red Hat Linux decently, although it had a tendency to crash since I upgraded the RAM and video card a few years ago. I was using it as a print server and a development machine for websites, and figured it would still be good for those things if only I solved the memory flakiness. So my big idea was to rebuilt it with a new motherboard/CPU/RAM. I set a budget of $200, and sent off an order to Newegg:

• Intel Celeron 430 CPU (Conroe core, 1.8GHz, Socket 775), in retail box with fan: $57.99
• Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2 945GC Socket 775 micro-ATX Motherboard, with 1 PATA, 4 SATA, PS/2, LPT, ethernet, sound, Intel G945 video: $54.99
• Kingston 2x1GB DDR2 667 RAM: $82.99
• Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA Hard Disk: $52.99

That actually overshot the budget a bit. My original thinking was that I'd use 1GB in the upgrade, and 1GB to replace a bad module in the Vista box, but after Kingston agreed to replace the bad module, I figured to splurge on the upgrade. The SATA disk wasn't necessary, but the Gateway had three PATA devices whereas the new motherboard only had one bus for two devices, and the old hard disk was 13.6GB, hardly worth salvaging. I've added lots of upgrade equipment over the years, but never a new motherboard before. So there turns out to have been things I hadn't thought of: the old 200W power supply only had the original ATX 20-pin power connector, whereas the new motherboard expected a 24-pin connector plus the extra 4-pin 12V spike, so I had to get a new power supply; and the Gateway case didn't have the usual standard removable back plate -- just holes for the PS/2, COM, and LPT connectors -- so I would have had to cut a large rectangular slot out of the steel backplate to fit the new connectors. So I went to a local computer store, looked around, and spent another $60 for an Apex 800 mid-tower case with a 350W power supply mounted in the bottom front. Compared to the Antecs it's cheaply built and noisy -- even without the missing (optional) case fans, just the CPU and power supply fans -- but it solved the problem without digging too deep a hole.

So when I assembled the whole thing, the only part of the old Gateway I reused was the CD-ROM drive. Tried to power the machine up and got nothing, but soon found a power supply switch hidden under the front grill, and that did the trick. Put Ubuntu Linux in the CD-ROM drive, which chugged for a while, reporting disk errors. So I pulled the Gateway drive out and replaced it with a Lite-On DVD-ROM drive from the new Intel/Vista machine. That booted Ubuntu fine, then I did the install painlessly. Booted the machine from the hard drive. It found the internet and loaded upgrades to 138 packages. I then scrounged around for a few things that Ubuntu doesn't normally think to install, like emacs, apache, php, and mysql. Set up the printer. Machine works fine. In the end I took the DVD-ROM out, although I'll probably add one at some future point.

So my project to rebuild the Gateway failed. Instead, I built a perfectly workable low-end Linux computer for $330, not counting the borrowed DVD-ROM and the monitor, keyboard and mouse, which I share through an IOGear KVM switch. Had I planned on building a low-end computer from scratch in the first place, I would have shopped more carefully for the case and power supply. There are a number of comparable alternatives in the $50-60 range, with some dropping down to $30. I'd also pick up a $30 DVD burner. (I've bought a Sony OEM drive for that.) The only other weak spot in the system is the onboard video, which limits screen resolution to 1024x768. Newegg lists more than 50 PCIx16 video cards ranging from $33-50 that would solve that problem. The power supply I got only has one SATA connector and no PCIx16, so if you need more that's something to look out for; on the other hand, it's easy enough to find adapters. The rest of what I picked out is very solid. With a $50 video card, it would probably benchmark out about the same as a $1000 computer three years ago. That may be inadequate for running Windows these days, but works fine for Linux.