I still have my old Compaq Presario 1210 sitting in my bedroom. It's been with me for a good 15 years. Was originally my mom's, but she pretty much abandoned it and eventually said "here, son, it's yours if you can get it working".
So I did. Upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows 2000. Saw that the modem broke (was some cheap WinModem that Win2000 didn't support anymore), but was happy that it ran a somewhat-modern operating system at the time. Then switched to Win98SE to get the modem working again (which not only failed at that task, but also caused the sound to not work). Switched back to Win2000, then DOS 6.22 + Win3.1, then Win2000, then DOS + Win3.1, then Damn Small Linux, then FreeDOS, then Softlanding Linux System.
During that time, the power supply partially failed (would hang if taken off AC power, even with a healthy battery), the CD-ROM drive got buggy, and the lid had a hard time staying up. It finally died a few months ago (fans spin, but nothing on the screen and no floppy drive initialization; perhaps the BIOS went kaput for some reason?). It's like your dog dying; it's something that you come to expect as the years add on, yet you're never really prepared for it. Yet, unlike the death of a pet, at least there's some hope of figuring out which part it is I need to replace.
Thus, it's only a matter of time before I fix it again. I'll never give up on you, buddy, 'cause you never gave up on me.
So I did. Upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows 2000. Saw that the modem broke (was some cheap WinModem that Win2000 didn't support anymore), but was happy that it ran a somewhat-modern operating system at the time. Then switched to Win98SE to get the modem working again (which not only failed at that task, but also caused the sound to not work). Switched back to Win2000, then DOS 6.22 + Win3.1, then Win2000, then DOS + Win3.1, then Damn Small Linux, then FreeDOS, then Softlanding Linux System.
During that time, the power supply partially failed (would hang if taken off AC power, even with a healthy battery), the CD-ROM drive got buggy, and the lid had a hard time staying up. It finally died a few months ago (fans spin, but nothing on the screen and no floppy drive initialization; perhaps the BIOS went kaput for some reason?). It's like your dog dying; it's something that you come to expect as the years add on, yet you're never really prepared for it. Yet, unlike the death of a pet, at least there's some hope of figuring out which part it is I need to replace.
Thus, it's only a matter of time before I fix it again. I'll never give up on you, buddy, 'cause you never gave up on me.