And there was writing!
Lost in the shuffle of cons and cats and exploding electrical lines, was the fact that I came back from Narrativity having promised myself I would start writing again, settled down after a few days' recovery time with the best of intentions, and my writing laptop promptly died. Now, this was the not-happy machine previously mentioned, so it could have been worse, but watching it half-boot, crash, and restart itself, wash rinse repeat, was kind of a giant middle finger from the fates.
So I ventured forth (sporadically, because life) to find a replacement. Of course, none of the sources that other people had been assuring me with entirely unverified conviction would have what I wanted, did. The problem here is that what I'm looking for is really old -- pawn shops and the like don't deal in anything even remotely close, surplus stores generally cleared out that generation of laptops a decade or more ago, eBay lists a few but none of them are tested (and the prices are outrageous, though I'd pay that for exactly what I want if it were guaranteed functional). And even other people's closets are starting to be bare of the era of equipment I'm seeking.
So when the MSU surplus store offered a laptop that I could theoretically find a swappable floppy drive for, that would theoretically run what I wanted, I decided to risk ten bucks ($5 for the laptop, $5 for the hard drive) and see what happened. What happened was a lot of swearing; the machine powered up fine (as tested in-store), but getting a bootable OS onto the hard drive was another matter. My no-product-key Win98 CD was corrupted, so I went for plain old DOS, just to get something in place so I could test out the hardware. I FDISKed, I formatted, all the stuff was there that should be, but the machine kept booting to the KillDisk blank-drive message. WTF??? A trip back to Surplus didn't help. ("You could install Ubuntu" -- riiiiiight. I'm going to spend 6 hours of my life figuring out how to install an OS you're comfortable with, because you don't speak DOS? I think not.)
I finally gave up and ran the Win98 install from my other CD -- not ideal, because you spend an hour-plus going through the install before you find out if the product key you cribbed from another machine will actually work. But the install ran, and the product key did work! And then I got all the way through the setup and discovered that Win98 does not play well with more than 512M of memory, and this thing has 2 gigs. Oh, bugger. And none of the tricks recommended on the intarwebs worked; one managed to get me through the final steps of the install, but Windows still won't boot. Bug-ger.
On the other hand, I can now boot to DOS. Which won't let me run any of the other stuff I'd really like to have, but will let me run Textra, my word processor of preference, which is the one thing I really need. Which I had to install from diskette, but for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone the USB floppy drive works fine even though USB drives proper don't, so that was okay.
And so last night, after all that tech fiddling, I wrote. 334 words, on the post-HoM self-indulgent Thing that's been niggling hardest at my brain. (Of course, the instant I had a working writing laptop, the urge to write that's been hammering at my skull faded. But I sat down anyway, and words happened.)
I'm still using the external USB floppy, which is less than ideal. But I like the machine otherwise; the keyboard is comfortable, the display is properly-proportioned and brightness-adjustable, and it's sleek and just generally has a good vibe. It probably is worth my time to find it an internal floppy drive.
I am, for the record, still in the market for old, working laptops with built-in floppy drives. I could stand to have two such machines in active use, and spares are good, too. So if you've got one kicking around in your cupboards, do let me know. But in the meantime, I am at least up and running again. For the time being, but that's all we can ask in this world.
This entry was originally posted at https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/206361.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.
So I ventured forth (sporadically, because life) to find a replacement. Of course, none of the sources that other people had been assuring me with entirely unverified conviction would have what I wanted, did. The problem here is that what I'm looking for is really old -- pawn shops and the like don't deal in anything even remotely close, surplus stores generally cleared out that generation of laptops a decade or more ago, eBay lists a few but none of them are tested (and the prices are outrageous, though I'd pay that for exactly what I want if it were guaranteed functional). And even other people's closets are starting to be bare of the era of equipment I'm seeking.
So when the MSU surplus store offered a laptop that I could theoretically find a swappable floppy drive for, that would theoretically run what I wanted, I decided to risk ten bucks ($5 for the laptop, $5 for the hard drive) and see what happened. What happened was a lot of swearing; the machine powered up fine (as tested in-store), but getting a bootable OS onto the hard drive was another matter. My no-product-key Win98 CD was corrupted, so I went for plain old DOS, just to get something in place so I could test out the hardware. I FDISKed, I formatted, all the stuff was there that should be, but the machine kept booting to the KillDisk blank-drive message. WTF??? A trip back to Surplus didn't help. ("You could install Ubuntu" -- riiiiiight. I'm going to spend 6 hours of my life figuring out how to install an OS you're comfortable with, because you don't speak DOS? I think not.)
I finally gave up and ran the Win98 install from my other CD -- not ideal, because you spend an hour-plus going through the install before you find out if the product key you cribbed from another machine will actually work. But the install ran, and the product key did work! And then I got all the way through the setup and discovered that Win98 does not play well with more than 512M of memory, and this thing has 2 gigs. Oh, bugger. And none of the tricks recommended on the intarwebs worked; one managed to get me through the final steps of the install, but Windows still won't boot. Bug-ger.
On the other hand, I can now boot to DOS. Which won't let me run any of the other stuff I'd really like to have, but will let me run Textra, my word processor of preference, which is the one thing I really need. Which I had to install from diskette, but for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone the USB floppy drive works fine even though USB drives proper don't, so that was okay.
And so last night, after all that tech fiddling, I wrote. 334 words, on the post-HoM self-indulgent Thing that's been niggling hardest at my brain. (Of course, the instant I had a working writing laptop, the urge to write that's been hammering at my skull faded. But I sat down anyway, and words happened.)
I'm still using the external USB floppy, which is less than ideal. But I like the machine otherwise; the keyboard is comfortable, the display is properly-proportioned and brightness-adjustable, and it's sleek and just generally has a good vibe. It probably is worth my time to find it an internal floppy drive.
I am, for the record, still in the market for old, working laptops with built-in floppy drives. I could stand to have two such machines in active use, and spares are good, too. So if you've got one kicking around in your cupboards, do let me know. But in the meantime, I am at least up and running again. For the time being, but that's all we can ask in this world.
This entry was originally posted at https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/206361.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.