/current_lineup
ICARUS!!
she currently holds the title of daily driver PC, and is my very first PC build! her specs are pretty mid-to-low-range imo, but i don't play very many modern PC games so i don't mind. i didn't want her to look like a gaming pc at all, so she has a very plain, professional-ish looking case. no tempered glass side panels here!
her name isn't arbitrary; it's kinda related to her origin story. when my girlfriend and i were still living 800 miles away from each other, she sent me her old PC which was itself a hand-me-down from her older brother. i don't remember the exact specs, but it used DDR3 ram and had a GTX 1060. (← put a pin in that.) despite her and our friend emma's best efforts to pack it safely, it still kiiinda ate shit in the transport process.
a major bummer for sure, but not the end of the world. i just ended up purchasing my own parts and putting them together. the integrated graphics of my new cpu were fine, but i was itching for something more. here's the issue though — the gpu market was absolutely horrendous at the time, (this was 2021. bitcoin hype was overwhelming) so i had to settle. that's no fun...!
wait. the old computer had a GTX 1060... that'll still run lots of games with decent settings... at 60fps........
so of course i install it. why wouldn't i? all is well for a little while...until she starts having problems. the card apparently hadn't made it through transport unscathed as i had thought. strange graphical glitches, games crashing, the whole pc shutting off without warning. my friends tell me i should really just remove the 1060. no!!! i can make it work!!!! so i keep it installed until it's genuinely too fucked to use properly. i give up, i had flown too close to the sun. and so she is dubbed...icarus.
this story has a decent ending however. the crypto mass hysteria dies down a bit later and i pick up a decently affordable GTX 1660 Ti. for my purposes it's more than enough. (i still wish i could run bg3 at higher settings...)
anyway, her specs are as follows, if you're curious:
- MODEL: custom built, baby !!
- OS: windows 10 home 64-bit
- CPU: amd ryzen 5 5600G 6-core @ 3.9GHz
- GPU: nvidia geforce GTX 1660 Ti
- MEMORY: 4x8GB (32GB) DDR4 @ 3200 MHz
- BOOT DRIVE: 500GB M.2 SSD
- EXTRA STORAGE: 240GB SATA SSD & 2TB HDD
i've also got the full setup (peripherals included) on pcpartpicker
sorry i've got so much to say about her, she's a huge part of my life! and i can't thank my friend emma enough for loaning me the money interest-free (!!!) to buy her with :DDD
DAEDALUS
a dell inspiron from 2011 that belonged to my late great-grandma. i have a lot of fond memories of this thing! i played minecraft on it for the first time before i got my own laptop. and how could i ever forget coming across coolroms.com (do not actually use that site plz) and learning about emulators! i adored playing pokemon yellow in fullscreen on this laptop, and watching missingnoxpert's "let's glitch pokemon yellow" series. plus i've always loved its weird pattern! the circles are cool and their texture is oriented at different angles, so they look different shades depending on how you look at it. i'm not sure what you'd call that but it sure is neat
the name is a bit shallower than icarus's. straight up i just looked at the actual icarus of myth's wikipedia page, learned daedalus was his dad, and went with that. also it kinda sounds like "data loss." which is a lil funny.
her specs of course:
- MODEL: dell inspiron M5030
- OS: ubuntu 18.04 64-bit (originally windows 7)
- CPU: amd athlon II P340 dual-core @ 2.2GHz
- iGPU: amd RS880 (? thats what ubuntu says it is)
- MEMORY: 3GB DDR3 @ 1066 MHz
- STORAGE: 320GB HDD
obviously she's not here to impress, but she ran minecraft 1.4.2 at playable speeds for an 8-year-old. and the sims 3... Kiiinda. i installed debian before i did ubuntu and Eugh i just couldn't stand it idk. sorry debianheads. she was briefly used as a minecraft server too, but it was kind of iffy and that cpu really held it back. maybe i'll give that another chance later, but for now she's just here to sit there n look pretty. maybe if i need a computer out and about in the future she can come with me
/the_great_beyond
shitty hp laptop
myyyy first computer of my own. well, not actually, but it was the first one that was actually usable. my first first computer was some winXP desktop that iirc my great uncle gave my mom? idk? after that i had an emac that my mom got for free from the preschool she worked at, i think. neither of those had an internet connection. my most fond memory of the XP machine was changing the mouse cursor to those dinosaur ones. i was probably like 4 years old. btw the photo of it is the actual pc itself and i took it with my dsi years and years ago. i think it was taken in my first childhood home?
as you can tell by the lack of an affectionate name. i do not have that great of an attachment to it anymore. but it was fine for, again, an 8-to-12-year-old. it was a hunk of juuunk and i'm not sure if it was the hardware or me downloading anything and everything, sans obvious viruses. it is an hp so... who knows.
this was the first piece of technology i ever tried to "fix." i use that term loosely, because i just kinda opened it up mindlessly as if i knew what i was doing and caused more problems in the process. i am, in fact, the reason the hard drive ALWAYS fell out of the bottom of it every time you picked it up. no idea what i was thinking since i was very young and couldn't replace anything
here are its specs i got off google dot com.
- MODEL: hp 2000-2b19wm
- OS: windows 8.1 (originally windows 8 ouch)
- CPU: amd E-300 dual-core @ 1.3GHz
- iGPU: amd radeon HD 6310
- MEMORY: 4GB DDR3
- STORAGE: 320GB HDD
just an absolute trashfire all around. to end on a positive note though, i do have pretty fond memories of watching homestar runner on this thing in my room before i went to sleep because the wi-fi signal was so weak in there. video streams were basically out of question with those almost dial-up speeds so homestar runner was my go-to. we also had a desktop computer when we moved and my siblings would join my minecraft lan games. i played a lot of minecraft back then. i didn't have any money on my old steam account lol
FLUTTER-BAT
ahhh, high school. this thing was a godsend. i was still really into my little pony when i got it, so i named it "FLUTTER-BAT" which sounded cool to me at the time. i did end up changing it to just "SAMSUNG" later out of embarrassment but i think its cute now. anyway, this one actually had a dedicated GPU! i got it for christmas and my mom and step-dad actually did a p good job picking it out. it had a touch screen, which was neat for me because i was just starting to try out digital art, and a decent mobile GPU to Actually Play Games with. not at high settings mind you, but who cares.
i basically lived on this thing. especially after i switched to online school after freshman year. i met and hung out with my best friends (to this day!!) on it. i spent summers constantly on call with them. i didn't have enough in common with any of the kids i had gone to school with so i didn't get to have the experience of going over to your friend's house and playing games or hanging out, but i think i got a pretty good substitute for that.
she met her unfortunate fate in early 2021 when i spilled cherry limeade sparkling water on her while i was ON CALL with my friends. embarrassing and sad. i was fucking DISTRAUGHT over this and desperate to dry her out and disassembled her as soon as i could but it was too late. i packed away the parts i thought were salvageable into plastic bags and put her and the parts back into the original box, where she remains. i doubt i'll ever be able to fix her in the future, water damage is a menace. i held on to her anyways, just in case i had the chance some day. (i can't actually remember if i brought her with me down to texas and i can't be assed to check rn)
some specs:
- MODEL: samsung notebook 7 spin 15" (NP740U5L)
- OS: windows 10 home
- CPU: intel i7-7500U dual-core @ 2.7GHz
- GPU: nvidia geforce 940MX
- MEMORY: 8+4GB (12GB) DDR4
- STORAGE: 1TB HDD
i'd honestly still recommend this one today. it's much much cheaper than its original msrp secondhand. but for all that is holy, get one with an ssd already in it, or replace the hard drive. mine lasted a few years but there were just so many bad sectors and the computer slowed itself to a crawl sometimes (and froze tf2 CONSTANTLY) in desperate attempts to fix itself. i even had to wipe it clean once. (which didn't end up helping) i just hate hdds as boot drives!!!!! GAAAHHHH
josie
my old 2007 chrysler town and country lx. she was also my late great-grandma's. many a ride to and from elementary school was taken in that van. when my gram's health was declining, i moved in to take care of her. with gram's neuropathy and actively worsening dementia, it wasn't safe for her to drive the van anymore, so josie fell into my hands. (i'm the one who named her that, btw)
she was my ticket to freedom, my only viable option to get anywhere in a tiny town with no public transport. i used to drive her hours and hours.... just to be in the moment. i'd go on daytrips to joplin because i felt like it. i'd drive all the way to kansas city and back and not even do anything in kc. to feel the wind on my face and listen to my 2000+ spotify likes on shuffle. just me, my car, and the open road. with how hard things were at the time, i needed that. it was comfort and confidence in an adulthood i was suddenly forced into. she helped me learn and grow a lot in the short time she was mine.
and for that, i could never forget her. and i could never thank my gram enough for giving her to me.
i ultimately ended up losing her in a car accident, (no major injuries or deaths! don't worry!) but thinking about it is still really hard for me. she was like a friend to me, and y'know.... she was my grandma's. even further unforseen life events meant i couldn't use the insurance payout to get a new car, so i felt like i had just. blown up the most valuable thing to my name. i dunno. i miss her. a lot. i wish i had appreciated her more back when i still had the chance.