[dba-Tech] R.I.P. Guinevere

[Gustav Brock]

Hi Arthur

I'm with Rocky. Since you have replaced the motherboard - how could you? - only the skin is back of your old darling.

By the way, I thought for a name for our main server doing not much more than hosting all our virtual servers, thus hidden for daily use. "serverone" was a little boring so I decided for "atlantis".

/gustav

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: dba-Tech [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] På vegne af Arthur Fuller
Sendt: 28. oktober 2016 18:00
Til: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
Emne: [dba-Tech] R.I.P. Guinevere

My ancient HP Millennium computer appears finally to have bitten the dust.
She has performed superbly for -- I can't even remember, now, something like 20 years. Since I bought her, I've done a couple of upgrades (replaced the motherboard, added a hard disk, and of course the usual OS upgrades.) Now she powers on and I can hear the fan running, and the hard-disk light blinking, but nothing else happens.

I'm going to try a couple of things over the weekend. First is to see if I can boot from an Ubuntu disk, and if that works, then I'm totally prepared to make her a Linux woman, Since I no longer write code for a living, but just as a hobby, most of the Linux stuff I do is just simple email and browsing.

The ethical dilemma I'm facing is that to repair her might cost more than a refurbished desktop from my favourite store. I just recently purchased a refurbished Lenovo for my best friend Audra's birthday, and her boyfriend kicked in 50%, so net, net, net it cost us each about $60.

I'm torn between emotion and economics. It might ultimately be cheaper to replace Guinevere, but that sounds more like a Trumpism than I'm comfortable with. Until recently, she has performed admirably. Even despite her mere 4 GB of RAM and about 500 GB of disk storage, she has performed very well and I don't want to pull the plug.

The computer I work on every day is called Avalon. And I also have a tablet called Lancelot. You may be able to guess from whence these names derive.

What should I do about Guinevere? Emotions or economics?

--
Arthur