Eliza is a 25 MHz 486SX (IBM PS/1 Essential model with 3 megs of RAM) that I got when my parents picked up a new computer. She’s running DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1. I’ve never had any trouble from her; the few crashes she’s had were the fault of either myself or a program that didn’t agree with her. Basically, I went from the Tandy’s DOS 2.11, where storage was a pair of 5.25” floppies to a 126 meg hard drive with 3.5” and 5.25” floppy drives. Until the Gate BBS closed up, her 2400 baud modem connected me to the world of dial-up Bulletin Boards. She doesn’t get as much use these days, but I still love her. I mostly use Eliza for transferring stuff from 5.25” floppies, the odd bit of BASIC programming (GWBASIC 3.23), batch file writing and a few things where I rely on her stability (keeping financial records, file backups and the like). Anytime I find a good DOS or Windows 3.1 program, she gets a copy of it.

If you’re wondering, she gets her name from two sources: Pygmalion or My Fair Lady’s Eliza Doolittle and a program named ‘Eliza’. This program acted like a psychiatrist, and made responses to whatever you typed in. I have a copy of it on her hard drive, though I don’t run it much (I kept intending to study the working of it, but that was one the areas I never managed to pick up).

Kate has a 60 MHz Pentium and 32 megs of RAM; she usually runs Windoze 95, except when it’s crashed again. I’ve installed and reinstalled the OS more times than I care to remember; I’ve done it so often that I keep a directory on her D:\ drive with the CD drivers, HIMEM.SYS, vanilla AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files. In just a few minutes I can wipe the C:\ drive, transfer the files over and be ready to begin reinstalling. It’s my intention to try out Linux (on the 486 with No Name); Kate will have that installed if I like the OS. I would have had it installed (after a crash on January 14, 2001) but the Red Hat installation thought a ‘small’ installation was 500 megs ... I’m not sure what kind of bloated install that is but Kate’s C:\ drive is only 540 megs before formatting so I’m stuck with 95. The temptation to just install DOS and use Arachne for web access was great, but in the end I wimped out. If I can find a hard drive of reasonable size (1-3 gigs), I’ll put that in her and try the install again. As it is, I have to have Kate running, as she’s my Internet computer. Her monitor is actually from the 486 wNN (see below), as the CTX 1451ES she had died on me. Kate’s name comes from “The Taming of the Shrew” and is entirely accurate. I’d considered a few other names, but none of them could be mentioned in polite company ...

Morganna (formerly The 486 with No Name) is a Gateway I picked up at a thrift store for $20. I replaced the motherboard, so it went from a 386 to a 66Mhz 486DX/2 with 8 megs of RAM. She is my Linux box - running dual boot DOS 6.0 and Slackware 3.0. I also added a second hard drive and a Turtle Beach MonteCarlo sound card. For those who are interested, her first hard drive has an 87 meg partition for DOS (/dev/hda1) and a 32.1 meg partition for Linux Swap (/dev/hda2). The second drive has all 340 megs devoted to Linux. LILO is installed in the master boot record, though this will probably change. She had a monochrome monitor that has recently been replaced with a color one - from an old 286 (see below). Setting up sound is something I haven't gotten to yet. Fear me - I am ROOT and I don't really know what I'm doing!

The Tandy 1000 is the oldest computer I own. It has 384k of memory and a pair of 5.25” floppies; no hard drives here, kiddies! The family got this in ‘84 or so, and I used it for years. This machine was used for typing up papers, BASIC programming and gaming. Unfortunately, “Defender of the Crown” and “Ancient Art of War at Sea” no longer run, though “Pirates!” still does. The Tandy is just being stored nowadays; I don’t have any use for it, but am reluctant to throw it out because of guilt associated with my C64.

The Commodore 64 is no longer in my possession. When I moved in ‘98 I nearly went crazy. Somehow I’d accumulated enough stuff that moving across town with a car and a pickup truck took 16 hours. In desperation, I tossed out a good number of things, including the C64. One day, going through a box, I found a few things from the printer and have felt horribly guilty ever since. That computer served me faithfully for over ten years; I gamed on it, typed up papers, fiddled with programs of all sorts and wrote more BASIC than I can recall. I had a copy of “Pirates’ on it that was played for years; my high score was 164 out of 100 points if I remember correctly. But I’ve burned a candle for the old C64 and gone on with my life. Yet on some dark stormy nights, ‘round about three AM, I can still hear its floppy drive whirring, whirring ...

A Timex-Sinclair 1000 was my first computer; it was a tiny thing with 4k of memory and a crappy little membrane keyboard that you had to hit just right. Too softly and it wouldn’t notice, too hard and you’d get repeated characters. Storage was on a cassette recorder - when it worked; which was fully 1/3rd of the time. It did provide me with my first exposure to computers in real life, as well as BASIC programming. After I moved off to college (and got the Commodore), it was traded to a friend for a coffee table which I still use. I think I ripped him off, to be honest.

Rose (AKA "Second-Hand Rose"): the only other computer I’ve owned; an old Packard Bell 286 with 1 whole meg of memory and a 40 meg hard drive. This used to be my experimental machine. After getting Eliza, I picked it up (for $25, including a printer) to test out various things that I didn’t want to risk on Eliza and that the Tandy couldn’t do. She was a good machine, except that she hated to be opened up. She'd throw a fit if her case was cracked, but would be fine after a day or so. Her OS was DOS 6.0; after I got Kate she found a good home with an aunt of mine, where she ran that OS and Windows 3.0. Unfortunately, Rose is no longer functional - her monitor is now on Morganna, so part of her is still running.

Well, there you have it - more information than you ever wanted about my computers. I hope I haven’t put you to sleep. Um, hello? hello? Wake up! It’s time to go home.