All My Computers

Here's a list of all the computers I have owned--Mac and PC, and where they are now. I've put them in chronological order, or at least as well as I can remember.

Computer	Platform	Where is it now	Notes
Apple Macintosh SE	Macintosh	Sold to a student in about 1990.	My first 'real' computer. $5000 with a dot-matrix printer, and worth every penny.
Apple Macintosh IIcx	Macintosh	Used as my computer at SFCM for some years; went to recycler.	I had a Radius Two-Page (monochrome) display with it. Great machine, still working just fine (save a broken floppy disk drive) when we included it in the group of computers to be given to the recycling people.
Radio Shack 286 PC	DOS	Sold (given?) to a colleague in about 1991.	Really basic-level PC with a 286 processor and VGA graphics, which were considered fairly high-end at the time. One thing I remember is that it had DOS 5.0 in ROM memory, so you could use it (sort of) without a disk at all. It had a small hard disk--perhaps 2-3 megabytes. It had an amazingly good keyboard, but beyond that wasn't anything to write home about.
Apple Macintosh PowerBook 145B	Macintosh	Sold to a student in about 1996.	Sturdy--practically indestructible--little laptop with a trackball and monochrome screen. Although it was no speed demon, it was more than serviceable. If it hasn't been scrapped, it's probably chugging away somewhere to this day.
Packard Bell 486 PC	Windows 3.1	Given to family members.	Not a bad computer, all things considered. It managed to run Windows 95 when it came out. I added a CD-ROM drive to it at one point and a better graphics card, and it served nicely as a 'play' PC. However, I never took it all that seriously as a computer. It was my SFCM computer for a short while--I remember learning WordPerfect 5.1 on it.
Dell Dimension XPS 90	Windows 3.1, then 95, then NT 4.0	Still have it.	I bought this about 1993. It was a very high-end computer at the time--a 90 mHz Pentium processor, no less. It ran Windows 3.1 like the breeze (and still can). Although I've enhanced it a bit over time (added a better hard drive and sound card) it still works just fine, and could be a perfectly decent computer for somebody. It can run Linux, although it's best either text-only, or running XWindow with a very lightweight window manager like FWM.
Apple Macintosh Quadra 800	Macintosh (System 7)	Sold to a colleague, then donated to SFCM bookstore. (The monitor was recently sent to the proper disposal site.)	"Buster", the glorious Mac Quadra, was my mainstay for a good long time. He then moved on to be a mainstay for one of my colleagues. What a superb piece of computer technology! He had the newest 68040 chip (more or less equivalent to the 486), with a fine Radius color card and--eventually--I got him a color Radius Two-Page display. Buster was, however, fated to be my last Macintosh for a while.
Dell Latitude LM (laptop)	Windows 95, then 98	Given to a friend, still working away.	Oh, it's got dents on it, and some broken plastic here and there. But it's sturdy as all get-out and may continue running long after I'm gone. I was never crazy about the keyboard--it's really stiff--but the computer survived being dropped onto hard linoleum floors several times, and spent quite a lot of time sitting in classrooms with me, doing presentations or acting as gradebook. Great machine.
Home-built	Linux	Scrapped.	This is a home-built that I created using a discarded Pentium 90 processor (I had upgraded my Dell Dimension to a 150 mHz processor) and spare parts I had around. It never worked all that well, mainly because I bought a very cheap case and power supply for it. At one point the power supply burned out and took the motherboard with it, and so I decided that was the end of that little messy machine.
Dell Dimension XPS R450	Windows NT 4.0, then Windows XP Professional	Donated to SFCM.	This is another example of Dell's solid construction. "Hubert" has been a trouble-free computer from the first day I got him. I wrote the Kapelle programs on Hubert, and then moved him over to SFCM and used him as my school computer. I started using my laptop as my regular computer at school, so Hubert came home.
eMachines cs333	Windows 98 and NT 4.0	Whereabouts unknown; possibly still at SFCM on Oak Street.	This ultra-cheap little box has some history. I bought it primarily just to experiment with networking--I was learning Microsoft Exchange as well as setting up an NT domain. Once that was over with, I gave it to a friend of mine who used it for several years. I then gave that same friend a somewhat newer computer, and took this one back. Until May of 2006 it was still chugging away at the old Ortega Street SFCM facility, acting as a shared computer and serving out the printer. I don't think it made the move to Oak Street in August 2006 -- although I could be wrong.
Toshiba Satellite S5202	Windows XP Home	Sold to a colleague.	I only sold this laptop because of my moving over to Macintosh-only computing. It's a beautifully made multimedia laptop with superb features. However, it did have a bad habit of turning itself on in the middle of the night sometimes, and running its battery down. So I got in the habit of storing it in its case with the battery removed, and all was well. I sold the Tosh for considerably less than it was worth, but I wanted it to have a good home.
Compaq Presario	Windows XP Home; Linux	Given to a friend.	I bought this Compaq as a higher-end "second" computer for networking and such at home. It proved itself admirably when my main Dell Dimension 8200 (listed below) went on the fritz and was out of commission for about four months. Once all the dust had settled, I gave the Compaq to a friend of mine and took the eMachines cs333 that he had, giving that to SFCM.
Dell Dimension XPS 8200	Windows XP Professional	Replaced by Dell.	This is to date the only Dell computer I've owned that gave me trouble, although it made up for that by giving me a lot of trouble. It started having severe, mysterious problems after about 9 months of use. A protracted period of waiting for replacement parts ended with a technician replacing the motherboard, the processor, and the video card--and it was still troubled. I requested that it be replaced, and it was. (I think it was probably the power supply.)
Dell Dimension XPS 8300	Windows XP Professional	Still have it.	This is my last big-box desktop PC. It was sent to me as a replacement for the 8200 that died. It has been utterly trouble-free, a superbly engineered and very fast computer with excellent high-end features. (2.8 gHz Pentium IV processor.) "Sariputta" is still very much on hand, nowadays running Ubuntu Linux quite nicely, but is probably due for donation or a cheap sale sometime soon.
eMachines T3092	Windows XP Home	Sold to a colleague.	I bought this as a network-storage computer, replacing a Compaq Presario (see above.) I didn't really use it very much, or keep it for all that long. I decided to start using external USB or FireWire drives for backup and so I didn't really need this one any more. It had a short period in which it was acting as a music server, but finally I decided the best thing to do with it was to sell it, which I did--it was an easy sell, being as it was more or less brand-new and a really good machine, although rather noisy.
Apple Macintosh iMac G5 17"	Mac OS X 10.3, then 10.4 (Tiger)	Sold to a colleague.	I was curious about the latest Macs, following Apple's dramatic renaissance during the late 1990s into the 21st century, and so bought this virtually on a whim--a rather pricey impulse buy, to say the least. But it turned out to be my ticket back into the Macintosh world--I rediscovered the Mac and realized that I wanted to be a Mac person again.
Apple Macintosh PowerMac G5, dual 2.7 GHZ	Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger)	Up for sale soon.	I rank "Ananda" as one of the very best computers I've ever owned--right up there with "Buster" (Quadra 800) and "Hubert" (Dell Dimension XPS R450)--if not the very best of all. Gleaming aluminum, quiet operation, power, elegance and gorgeous design. Oh, Ananda cost a lot of money--but he's worth every single penny. Besides, he didn't cost as much as either of my first two Macs, but he was the top of the line.
Apple Macintosh PowerBook G4 15"	Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger)	Sold.	This exquisite computer "Kassapa" got me rediscovering everything you can do with a laptop when it's light enough to carry around easily, and has so many convenient and elegant features.It was the least expensive laptop I've owned--although not an el-cheap-o by any means--but it has an honored place as Best Laptop. That is...until the MacBook Pro came along...
Apple Macintosh MacBook Pro 17"	Mac OS 10.5	Still have it.	I decided to upgrade the delightful PowerBook G4 in order to take advantage of the latest Apple technology, in the form of this marvelous MacBook Pro "Citta", the successor to the PowerBook. The big 17" screen is great, and I love that it has an Intel Core Duo processor and can actually run Windows and Linux as I wish. Not that I have any great desire to run Windows, but it comes in handy sometimes given that all of my eartraining software is, after all, Windows-only.
Apple Macintosh MacPro, dual Intel quad-core 2.8 GHz, 8 cores in all.	Mac OS 10.5	Still have it.	Herbie is now my main jack-of-all-trades desktop computer. Like Ananda (the PowerMac G5), Herbie is whisper-quiet gleaming aluminum; in fact, you might not even notice that Ananda has been replaced at first. However, Herbie is even quieter (unbelievably so, really given his blazing speed), and is just about as powerful a computer as you can get these days -- except, I guess, for the slightly faster 3.2 GHz models. Herbie is fully tricked out with lots of memory (10 GB), a huge terabyte hard drive, and an excellent ATI Radeon 3870 video card. There's really nothing that Herbie can't do, computer-wise.