About Me
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| Yes, that's me. Excuse the Green Day poster. I went through a phase.. |
Well, where to start?
I suppose you could call me a geek, and I guess I am. Although I don't think I'm your stereotypical geek. I'm not spotty, I don't wear glasses, I've had girlfriends, I have long floppy hair. But, I enjoy computers. That doesn't mean I have sexual relationships with them, that just means I cream myself with someone asks me if I can repair their computer.
I'm a bit of an Apple fan too, although less now than I was after they turned me down for a job, but I've owned my fair share of Apple hardware.
My Apple Collection
Well, I can't really call it a collection anymore as I only own a 15" G4 PowerBook
and an old Blue and White G3, but over the past years I've owned a few apple machines and I'll tell you about them.
My First Mac - Apple Performa 630
This was actually given to me by my next door neighbor. And he actually gave me two of them. Two machines and one keyboard/mouse/screen. At the time, my main PC was a 100mhz AMD K5 with 32mb of RAM and a 6.4gb hard drive running Windows 98. The mac was a 33mhz 68k with 8mb ram and a 500mb HDD running OS 7.2. This Mac blew my PC away. And it actully did when one of them exploded, but while I had this mac, I didn't use my PC at all. Especially seeing as it had a modem and getting on the internet was extremely easy, albeit costly.
As it was my first mac, I had no idea how to use it. Although I quickly tuned into the operating system, and managed to download (probably illegally) a copy os OS 8 and burn it to a CD. Although, thats when I hit a brick wall. OS 8 needed 8mb of ram, and the performa only had 4mb. So I opened it up with the intention of putting the DRAM module from the broken mac into this one to give me the 8mb ram OS 8 needed. Ah.. problem. The performa's RAM was soldered to the motherboard, and there was only a DRAM port, which was empty. So adding extra ram wasn't going to happen, unless I could find a stick somewhere. Which, I couldn't. So, OS 8 was out for me, which was a bummer, although I still had OS 7 on there, which I used for a while before getting slightly sick of the random lockups (the system was corrupt).
My Second Mac - Say Hello to iMac
This was bought about 5 years ago now, and although it wasn't the fastet mac ever, it was my first new-world mac. It had a 233mhz Power PC G3 processor, 256mb RAM and a 10gb HDD. It wasn't awfully fast, but it ran OS X 10.2 quickly enough to be helpful. I'm not going to bore you with details, but lets put it this way, I loved OS X so much, that for about 6 months, the iMac replaced my PC, which was about 20x as fast.
My Third Mac - iBook
Just after Apple decided to switch over to Intel, I boght a brand spankin' new iBook g4. 1.3ghz, 512mb RAM (Upgraded to 768 shortly after) 40gb HDD and a Radeon 9500gfx chip. Although I had it just over a year, and decided to sell it. The iBook's were great little laptops, but no where near fast enough. And with an awful resolution of 1024x768, was too small for me. So, I "upgraded".
My Fourth Mac - PowerMac: The Daddy
This was bought on a whim really. Someone on a forum was selling a Dual G4 Power Mac. And I couldn't resist. So, I bought it. I got the unit with an 80gb HDD, 2x 867mhz G4 Processors, 1GB DDR Ram, a Geforce MX400 graphics card, and an amazing 17" Apple Studio Display for a mere £350.
Although, this machine was very loud. I remember the day I received it, and boy was I annoyed. Although, aside from the noise, I loved it. I upgraded the crap out of it. Just before I sold it, I had upgraded the processors to 1ghz G4's, added an extra 512mb of RAM, added an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and upgraded the hard drive with a 160gb Hitachi Deskstar.
Although I started noticing the slowness of it about a year after using it. I'm not sure what the problem was, whether it was overheating, or something worse, but it was very very slow. Although, it may have been that I was running a Dell 2005FPW at 1680x1050 and another TFT monitor at 1024x768 that caused it to slow dow, I'm not sure.
My Fifth Mac - PowerBook
This mac came just after the PowerMac, mainly because I got a good deal on it, and it had a much bigger screen than the iBook, and I swear, even though its 330mhz slower, its faster.
There isn't much to say about this laptop really, apart from hard drives don't last too long in it. I've been through 3 so far, and I've had it just over a year.
My 6th Mac - PoweMac: The Kid
I was browsing ebay one day, and noticed a company selling a G3 PowerMac for 20 quid, bidding hadn't even started and there was 2 hours left. Seeing as it was 4am, I didn't think anyone would actually be around to outbid me, so I put a bid on. And won. For £20 plus £5 shipping, I got myelf a perfectly good G3 PowerMac.
Again, I pimped this bad-boy out with 1gb ram, a 40gb HDD and a DVD drive. Although these were just spare parts I had lying around, I really wanted to spend some money on it and upgrade it with a new graphics card and a G4 processor. But I decided not to. Although I still could.
My 7th Mac - iMac Take Two
I used to work for a company called EWD, who mainly designed websites and repaired computeres. After I left, I received a call from them, asking me to repair an old iMac. So, I get hold of the iMac, and repair it. And some how it stays at my house for 3 or 4 months. I nearly gave it to a friend of mine as I didn't think I'd ever hear from them again, but I did, and they had it back. Although I wonder if they've still got it...
Ok, so I've only ever owned 6 mac's, but I worked very hard maintaining and repairing the ones I did own. I've read pretty much everything there is to know about apple hardware, and could probably answer any questions you may have. So, if you've got a broken down mac, give it to me, and I'll repair it, for only the cost of the new hardware!