Here's the latest stage in my Frankenstein-like assembly of a new system (not a phone but a traditional computer that does not connect to stuff through a telephone company). This box offered by a refurbisher was new enough to be expandable to a reasonable degree but old enough to have connectivity to some stuff I had laying around and thought it would be interesting/odd/funny to use.
This is a four to five year old Win10 box with a fast but not-recent 3.2ghz processor, however maxed out on RAM. The HDD option chosen was the cheapest conventional drive offered, since I had to take Windows and couldn't get the thing with no OS. If I didn't need another Windows box, why did I choose the worst 250-gigger of the seven available drives? Should I not get a big, fast one and wipe it?
I usually wipe them but elected to get it this way so as to have a backup Windows option, but the ability to use slot 2 to add another drive later - not as secondary storage but as another primary. The future second drive will have some Linux or other on it, perhaps be a platform for virtual images, and will be bigger and faster than the original one. Simply pop the cover, change the power and data connectors from drive to drive and PRESTO, the box becomes another computer. But wait. That's not all.
The thing has PS/2 connections I used to attach an IBM-style clickety keyboard that was old enough to vote several years ago. PLUS it's using an adapter to convert to PS/2 from the earlier AT connection that's about as big as those huge German DIN plugs seen on reel-to-reel stereo decks back in the day. The outboard HDD enclosure has a not so amazing 30g of storage in an ATA unit the origin of which I've forgotten. And the VGA monitor has at least 10 years on it. All peripherals were just laying around, and referring to the refurb box price as its only outlay, I'll call it The Amazing $89 Computer. Or maybe the Ratbag 3000. Or The Box With Two Brains, or The Incredible Two Headed Transplant. I did upgrade the memory so as to spend a little more on it. But in coming up with a backup Linux platform, I decided to offend as many of my tech buddies as possible.
Next step: maybe a 900g SSD and MX Linux or something.
