Are there similarities between restoring old computers and old cars?
Image by Jörg Buntrock from Pixabay
Since I resurrected my old enormous RGB shining gaming laptop from the dead to a new life as a blog typewriter, I have been trying to figure out if there are any similarities between restoring old computers and for example old American cars? Old cars aren’t really usable as a daily driver either, I told my wife. Yes, but at least old American cars can be beautiful. An old laptop with RGB cannot. She has a point. It got me thinking: Have I ever seen a beautiful computer? I can’t think of one honestly, but I can think of several beautiful cars. Both are tools meant to be used, so what is it that cars have that old computers doesn’t seem to have?
I was thinking that a computer is an artefact that has a very defined purpose for a specific time (read. Operating system). And that does not age well. A car built in the 1960s will have no problem at all driving on a road that was built yesterday. But a 15 years old computer will struggle with even the most basic of tasks online. But one thing it can do very well though, and that is word processing and writing. The lack of horsepower for modern internet can actually be a very good thing. It is much easier to focus on the task at hand, if the computer is pretty much useless for anything else than what you are doing. I like to think of it as a mechanical typewriter with RGB.
The past week I got a couple of upgrades to my old Dell. A new laptop battery – how amazing that they are still available – and a fresh CMOS battery. I am also considering some new thermal paste on the GPU and CPU, but I am not sure if it is worth the effort… Other than that, every specification is pretty much maxed out as far as possible. It was when I was installing the recent upgrades that it crossed my mind, that this utterly pointless work of reviving an old computer might have some similarities with old car restoration. But one fact remains thought, I find it thoroughly enjoyable to work with computer hardware: Restoration, fixing and making things work again. Maybe it is the challenge that captures me. I want to try if it is possible to make it work.
Even with a completely fresh battery, the battery life is only around one and a half to two hours max. It’s ridiculously short by today’s standards. But that is also a good thing when you think about it. That means I have to finish writing the blog post, before power runs out. Yet another constraint to boost creativity. If a problem seems hard, it might be because you haven’t made it hard enough. When you crank up the difficulty to an extreme level on a given problem, you will instantly find the weakest link in your chain – and that is what you need to fix. If you have 10 hours of battery life, chances are that you will spend way too much time writing that post that you should have published long ago.
Anyway, I am quite satisfied with this old Linux machine. I have had some serious problems with my internet connection lately. It dies on me just when I need it the most. But when you are using a purpose built machine like this one, nothing can stop me. Not even a power outage! I even have a little battery powered router so that I can get the post online whatever happens. But now I remembered another necessary upgrade to my blog writing setup. I must buy extra antennas for my little 4G mobile router, so that I can get enough juice to connect to a signal further away. Because sometimes when we have a power outage, the internet also dies after a while, and the next mast is so far away that a regular device can hardly access it. But a pair of amplification antennas will solve that problem.
I have spent several hours cursing when my writing was interrupted by external factors. It’s a bit funny that the tool needed to create a fail safe writing environment was a laptop that many would have thrown away years ago. I think I have an old Pentium 2 laptop somewhere. Maybe I have to revive that one too?