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Journaling June - Day 17-18
Journaling June
Day 17-18
I listed it back on ebay since it is potentially worth a bit of money, but then the next day I got a message from someone... The seller who I'd bought it from somehow saw the listing. He politely asked if it was the one he'd sold me, and "please don't tell me it just worked!" I responded in kind to roughly outline the work involved; I always feel a bit guilty about relisting something for a profit, but I wanted he to appreciate that it took some work and I'd relisted it because I had no immediate use for it, and that's we'd both helped "save the board". He wished me well with the sell; it was a nice exchange. I've gained a fondness for retro boot screens. I used to disable them, much preferring to see the brief POST information without the cheezy graphics, but not so much now. I also like it when the CMOS is reset and the date rolls back to the start in the BIOS, such as 2002 or something, making me appreciate how old the thing is, or momentarily thinking I'm back then. Speaking of a fondness for retro, I've been working my way through the 200 pages of the Casio's User Manual.
I am so happy I got one of these old Digital Diaries with instructions because this thing is pretty archaic! The way I've come to understand it is that the screen doesn't really convey much in the way of a user interface as we are now more familiar with, but is more of a raw output of the contents of memory - there aren't really headings or icons (as my later digital organizer in the 1990s had), although the calendars and daily schedule are somewhat graphical. Instead, all the buttons form the various commands and functions, and you're pretty much shifting that data about on the screen; therefore you need the manual in order to know and learn the sequence of commands in order to get anything done, and then a lot of practice. There's basically a chapter in the manual devoted to each of the sections of the device. Page 98, for the 'Schedule Keeper' amused me when it begins with "Entering data [here] is actually quite simple....", as if it's more straightforward than the preceding sections (it's not!). The remainder of that chapter is 16 pages... One of the fun quirks here is you are instructed, as one method, to ender the Calculator mode in order to ender a date that you wish to search for in the Calendar/Schedule Keeper. Indeed, if wanting to search for a phone number in the Telephone directory, for example, you have to remember that names are inputted/stored before them and thus such a search has to include a blank field for name, and then the number, with a "Combine" command between them. Or if you search for Joe Blogs by searching for "j" or "B", it'll return no results. The one thing I feel this model lacks is a backlight, I'm also thinking my Amstrad Radio should have one too and I'm sure it should be relatively simple to retro-fit (no pun intended) some lighting. I'm not familiar with how such things are fit into units that have them as standard though, to have an idea about how best to go about doing that. Onto that 27" iMac I got for a good price but with failing hard drive; I received the Core i7 I'd got for a good price and spent the hour involved in dismantling the system to get at the i3.
Due to the work involved I elected to replace the CMOS battery whilst I was in there since it's mounted on the back of the mainboard (nice one Apple). Having managed to reconnect all of the various internal cables and not having any screws left I confidently reinstalled the screen and tried the system; indeed it worked and was happy with the CPU I'd chosen. I also re-swapped the 240GB SSD, now for a 480GB since I was planning on keeping the system for my own use. I'd for a "good price" for two of them. I did this because the seller hadn't stated anything in the way of a health report or wear level so I thought if I bought both of them I could just use the best one of the two. This turned out to be a good decision because one of them had a health rating of only 60-odd% while the other was closer to 90%. I'm not all that happy about having received one with such a low health rating but I'll part with it in another system at some point. Another thing I'm not so happy about, and I'm trying to resolve is that one of the fans in the iMac is running quite fast and I think it's because the original hard drive sent a temperature reading to the Mac, whereas the SSD doesn't have that facility. I need to figure out a solution in Kubuntu Linux that lets me change the fan speed because it's quite loud and annoying, especially since my current system runs pretty quiet. I now just need to transfer to stuff over to it and start using the thing...
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