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My Computers

When I was a teenager I used to acquire as many computers as I could to play with, but as an adult I've
calmed down on that front. These days I only ever have a handful of non-work issued computers
in my house at any particular time. This page contains details about the current fleet.

A picture of the E520

Lenovo E520

CPU: i3-2350M@2.3GHz
RAM: 128GB SSD
RAM: 6GB
Cost to me: $0CAD
OS: Linux Mint
I picked this computer up quite literally out of the dirt at the local e-waste drop off center. It was wet and dirty, but ultimately worked just fine so I cleaned it up a bit and installed an SSD. The battery doesn't work and rebuilding it is on my list of things to do, but it's not a big deal.

Overall a very nice laptop, it more than meets my daily requirements and I'm surprised it was thrown out by someone.

Lenovo X201

CPU: I'm not sure
RAM: 128GB SSD
RAM: 8GB
Cost to me: $85CAD
OS: Linux Mint/Windows XP 		A picture of the X201
I bought this computer for $85 on eBay several years ago and used it full time until I got the E520 I've written about above. When I got it I upgraded the spinning disk to an SSD and added an additional 4GB of RAM.

Today the Laptop runs Mint like the E520, but it also runs Windows XP for legacy software I want to run (such as the Palm Dev Suite).

The X201 is in my opinion the perfect laptop, but the old CPU is really showing it's age at this point with things like my bank's website.

A picture of the Mac Classic II

Macintosh Classic II

CPU: M68030 @ 16 MHz
RAM: 2GB via ZuluSCSI drive
RAM: 10MB
Cost to me: Way too much after all the repairs it needed
OS: System 7.1
I bought this Classic II in the summer of 2021 thinking it would be an easy project computer to fix up... I was wrong. This Classic II took the longest time to fix of any computer I've ever owned and the most money.

When I got this Mac The internal clock battery had leaked, ruining the motherboard and analog board which should have prompted me to give up immediately, but what's a little sunk cost fallacy right?

I bought a replacement motherboard from a guy on 68kMLA, a donor Classic I on eBay for a compatible analog board, new RAM, a ZuluSCSI hard drive emulator, and a new, quieter fan.

It took over a year to get everything put back together, cost way too much, and wasn't worth the effort, but I do legitimately enjoy this computer and have written about it here.

When you consider the cost of a known working Mac SE/30, the cost to fix this machine is downright embarrassing, but I've calculated it at just under $800CAD. Don't make the same mistakes as me, just buy a proven working computer.

Palm Pilot M100

Cost to me: $20CAD
OS: Palm OS 3.5.3 		A picture of the M100
The M100 was one of if not the cheapest PDA offerings from Palm, but 22 years later it's still working just as good as it did when new. It's a bit of a weird device as it's more chunky, yet has a smaller screen than other Palm Pilots of the era, but I guess both of these come down to cost cutting.

Do I really use this in 2022 when cell phones exist? Yes and I have personal reasons for doing so, but I plan to write about that in the future so I won't explain my rationale here.

I prefer to sync it with the official Palm Desktop program, but these days JPilot is a more practical solution. Syncing is still easy these days with an official HotSync cable and a CH340 serial adapter.