Cammy's Gadget Collection

Computers

Computers | Mobile devices | Consoles | Other

2013 iMac

My desk with a 2013 iMac on it, plus a Blue Snowball and a Wacom tablet

Bought: 2014. I didn't pay for it.

Specs:

How it came into my possession: Let's just say I was not the best student in school, and a series of rather illegal decisions on the school's part led to me getting therapy and free computers for the entirety of my teenage years. I got four Macs in total from it: a 2010 i3 that later got upgraded to a 2011 i5 model free of charge thanks to Best Buy dropping it (thanks Best Buy!), a 2013 i5 (this one), and a 2017 Retina model. I still have the latter three in working order; the 2011 one is in its box in my closet, and the 2017 one went to my sister.

Condition/defects: Surprisingly everything still works on it! I'm gonna feel like a total asshole if I write this and it conks out in two days, but it's been very good to me.

What I use it for: It's been my daily driver since I got it! I've modded games with it, I've built websites with it, I've streamed on it, I've made albums on it, it's accompanied me across two different moves, across state lines to other people's houses, to college, and it's still where I work and play, every day, for damn near ten years. In fact, that's why I haven't upgraded yet (other than it still working and decently speedy): I want to say I managed ten years with it.

eMachines W3507 (the "eMachines Box")

The eMachines Box on my floor

Bought: I don't know when it was originally bought, but I'd guess 2006, since that's when it was manufactured. I procured it for free in 2020.

Specs:

How it came into my possession: A former friend of mine said I could keep it if I managed to retrieve her childhood art off it. It came as "not working"—someone had disabled the USB controller in Device Manager some time ago. After getting it re-enabled, all worked fine. Free retro computer.

Condition/defects: None! It was extremely nasty inside when I got it, but I've since blown out the carpet of dust with some compressed air (around the time the original hard drive started having issues) and it's in much better shape now.

What I use it for: Now that I have a desk that can accommodate two computers, this has become my comfy shutoff retro machine. I do some web and Gopher browsing on it, I update my sites, I play some admittedly older than its era games on it, notably WON Half-Life patched for WON2 and Unreal Tournament 99. I'd still like to get more RAM and a dedicated GPU in there, among other upgrades, but right now, it's working great and I'm super happy with it.

eMachines EM250 (the "eMachines Laptop")

The eMachines Laptop on my desk

Bought: May 2022 for $100. (I overpaid just to make sure I won the auction.)

Specs:

How it came into my possession: Bought off eBay. We had one of these when I was a kid and I was itching to own another. I'm fond of the whole netbook trend; good, chunky laptops that might not have been capable of much, but they had a lot of I/O and you could watch YouTube on them. Good enough for me!

Condition/defects: The battery on it is very worn, to the point of it not lasting even an hour off the charger. One of the hinge covers also likes to pop off.

What I use it for: Not a lot, now that I have a comfortable setup to use the eMachines Box with. It comes into occasional use for mobile retro computing and writing (I've been meaning to bring it to work and get my stories printed out on nice paper for my own records), but mostly, it just sleeps in its case.

You can read more about this machine and how I got it in the "Welcoming the eMachines Netbook" post on Letters From Somnolescent.

HP Mini 1104

HP Mini (and Snowman)

Bought: dcb got a bunch of these from a high school friend's dad's contracting company. He wiped them all, reinstalled 7 on them, and then donated all but one.

Specs:

How it came into my possession: I got the one, of course, shipped from him in September 2022 along with a Flareon 3D print that's still on my desk to this day. I think we had one of these when I was a kid! No longer have ours, of course, but dcb was happy to send along another since his collection's already overflowing. It took a bit to get here, but it arrived in excellent condition. Can't thank him enough, lovely little netbook.

Condition/defects: The battery might be a little worn on it, but much less than the eMachines netbook. Otherwise, very solid.

What I use it for: Home server! I'm serving my music library (the vast majority in Apple Lossless) to my other computers, and it runs WampServer to serve testing/pre-production versions of my sites without me needing to make changes to their live copies. The performance is great for both of those is great; it honestly all feels like it's running on my local machine, not over the network. (I run it without the battery in it so as to not wear that further.)

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B

A Raspberry Pi in case stuffed into a corner of my desk

Bought: December 2019. With a case and the power supply, probably $50 total.

Specs:

How it came into my possession: I knew I had a good use for a Raspberry Pi and when folks came bugging me about what I wanted for Christmas 2019, that was my answer. It served its time for a while as Somnolescent's internal filebase (a dropbox and offsite backup server for everyone's art and projects), but dwindling use meant I repurposed it as a general, world-facing server.

Condition/defects: Fine and working.

What I use it for: Somnolescent's Gopher and radio server! I have it transcoding four different MP3 streams 24/7, plus serving Gopher over Pituophis. It's been a lot of fucking setup and trial and error garbage, but it all does this pretty automatically after power failures too. I'm proud.

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mariteaux@somnolescent.net for questions, comments, and concerns. (I love getting email, hint hint.)

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