I was in a down mood because it was raining so much
and my new dual Xeon workstation was taking longer to
complete than I expected ($). The vicious computer hardware
upgrade cycle was getting to me and I decided to take stock
of all the electronics I have sitting around that I can still use
reliably.
There’s an old Abit VP6 dual socket 370 motherboard with dual
PIII 933, a gig of PC133 RAM and a soudblaster audigy card
sitting on my desk (caseless) that I use for music, video editing
and DJing. It’s currently running windows 2k and BeOS Max. I
run Win2k because I use the awesome Traktor DJ program to
mix tracks. BeOS Max handles the heavy-duty mp3 and video editing.
Around back, under the desk, sits a Via mini-itx board,
caseless and totally silent, running linux and acting as the web/print server. Next to the to the web server sits a NAD power amplifier
attached to 2 cerwin vega monster loudspeakers. Both the amp and speakers are from 1988. They’re built heavy and strong and still outperform most of the junk built today. I’ve never felt the need
to upgrade them and they’ve never let me down.
Forgetting about the Xeon workstation for a while, I power up the
NAD, smiling as the lights in my room dim for a bit, wait for it to
setting down and load some tunes into Traktor to begin another
evening of wondering about nothing other than if my mix will turn
out right. 8)
(I hope my translation is correct)