# Stuff and Things > HISTORY, veterans & science >  My computer is now a mutt

## pjohns

Well, it is now official (or semi-official, anyway):  I have a computer that is a mutt.

Not just a mongrel.  But a mutt.

Just yesterday, I purchased a Logitech keyboard.  (The previous keyboard--which was probably 25 years old, or more--was skipping; I needed to re-type many letters eight or 10 times.)

It was originally a Dell system; and I still have a Dell monitor.

I have an Acer CPU.  (Yes, it is a desktop.)

And I have a Staples mouse.  (No, I have no idea just who manufactures the mouse for Staples.  I just know what brand name is imprinted on it.)  

But just as long as it works...

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## Old Tex

I love my Dell computer. Sorry to say but the mouse & keyboard that came with it broke within 2 months. I've still got the monitor that came with it BUT it's sitting on the floor in the corner. I replaced my monitor with something, don't know what brand it is. I moved my couch further back from the computer so I bought a much larger monitor so that I could see it better. I've got a logitech keyboard & mouse but I'm a bit unhappy with the keyboard. It's not a plug in so it skips letters sometimes & I have to sit a certain way for it to connect. That seems to be a common problem with logitech now days. 

I had to get this keyboard because one morning about 4am I got up to get more coffee. I filled the cup & then had to take the dogs out before returning. Finally I grabbed my coffee & headed back to the computer which had gone into sleep mode. I sat in my chair (in total darkness) & sat on my keyboard. What a pain in the ass in more ways than one.

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pjohns (06-27-2020)

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## Lone Gunman

asus, evga, corsair, intel, noctua, venus, thermaltake, cooler master, etc. 

whatever works.

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Big Bird (07-05-2020)

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## Jen

> Well, it is now official (or semi-official, anyway):  I have a computer that is a mutt.
> 
> Not just a mongrel.  But a mutt.
> 
> Just yesterday, I purchased a Logitech keyboard.  (The previous keyboard--which was probably 25 years old, or more--was skipping; I needed to re-type many letters eight or 10 times.)
> 
> It was originally a Dell system; and I still have a Dell monitor.
> 
> I have an Acer CPU.  (Yes, it is a desktop.)
> ...


My keyboards don't last long because, for some reason, my cat likes to barf on it.  If I'm here I move it out of the way, but most of the time....... she does it when I'm not looking.  Do you know how hard it is to get wet gooey cat barf out from between the keys?  After a while, they stick so badly  it's not worth it to even try to use the keyboard.  I have a laptop that has never been barfed on, but I prefer a large monitor and a real keyboard so I have a docking station.

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pjohns (06-27-2020)

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## JustPassinThru

They used to make a sealed keyboard - flexible, you could roll it up, but sealed, too.  You could probably immerse it to wash it if you wanted.

You can find computer keyboards at a lot of second-hand shops.  Five dollars, or thereabouts.  Often they're fine.

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pjohns (06-27-2020)

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## JustPassinThru

> Well, it is now official (or semi-official, anyway):  I have a computer that is a mutt.
> 
> Not just a mongrel.  But a mutt.
> 
> Just yesterday, I purchased a Logitech keyboard.  (The previous keyboard--which was probably 25 years old, or more--was skipping; I needed to re-type many letters eight or 10 times.)
> 
> It was originally a Dell system; and I still have a Dell monitor.
> 
> I have an Acer CPU.  (Yes, it is a desktop.)
> ...


That's quite a time-run.

What are you using for an OS?  Win95? 
I've got quite the pile of parts, also.  I'm typing on a Logictech wireless keyboard, on seven-ish Mac.  Bought it secondhand, four years ago.  I remember when new computers didn't last four years.

Mouse is about 15 years old - and with a cord.  For some reason wireless mice don't last - something happens, they no longer recognize a held-down key.  If you're highlighting or moving files, it can really mess up your work.

Monitor is two years old.  Already going dimmer.

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## UKSmartypants

> They used to make a sealed keyboard - flexible, you could roll it up, but sealed, too.  You could probably immerse it to wash it if you wanted.
> 
> You can find computer keyboards at a lot of second-hand shops.  Five dollars, or thereabouts.  Often they're fine.


Back in the 90's if you spilled a cup of coffee over a keybaord, you could take the screws out, dunk all the parts in a buckets of warm soapy water to clean it, leave all the bits propped up against  a radiator, and reassemble it next day and it would be clean and work fine.

The keyboard i use at the moment is an old 90's HP keyboard. It can be cleaned by that method, and in fact you can unclip individual keys and clean them with a toothbrush.

I also use a large industrial trackerball, orginally made by IBM, and was used in a local engineering firm back in the 90's for a CAD/CAM system. I retrieved it out a skip one day, and when they stopped putting asynchronous serial ports on computers had to cobble together a serial to USB interface to keep it working. The ball is 4 inches diameter

The monitor I use is a 32 inch ALBA flat screen TV, which was an export only model made for the Russians, and the on screen menu and settings only work in Russian. But it was dirt cheap at the time, and still works great 10 years later

The box is an HP  8300 small form factor i5 3200Mhz from 2010, but only has slots for 4GB ram, which makes playing Minecraft a bit tricky.....I have two 1 Terabyte HDD's in, it has enough space to slip the second drive under the PSU, but  ive had to depower the CD drive or the poor old 350w PSU starts to complain and overheat.  I have a spare recovered PSU on standby if it has a heart attack.....


Im running WIn 7 SP1 32bit, but i have a linux partition on the secondary  drive  on as well, its loaded with Checkpoint antivirus  and loads of other tools in case i have to recover the primary boot partition. You cant really  devirus a live partition, because there will always be open infected files the virus hides in. The best way has always been to either take the drive out and stick it in another machine as a secondary drive , or have two bootable partiions you can switch between.



I also have a HP elitebook 8470 laptop running win 8.1. You always need two ways to access the internet, just in case your first device needs fixing.

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pjohns (06-27-2020)

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## JustPassinThru

> Back in the 90's if you spilled a cup of coffee over a keybaord, you could take the screws out, dunk all the parts in a buckets of warm soapy water to clean it, leave all the bits propped up against  a radiator, and reassemble it next day and it would be clean and work fine.
> 
> The keyboard i use at the moment is an old 90's HP keyboard. It can be cleaned by that method, and in fact you can unclip individual keys and clean them with a toothbrush.
> 
> I also use a large industrial trackerball, orginally made by IBM, and was used in a local engineering firm back in the 90's for a CAD/CAM system. I retrieved it out a skip one day, and when they stopped putting asynchronous serial ports on computers had to cobble together a serial to USB interface to keep it working. The ball is 4 inches diameter
> 
> The monitor I use is a 32 inch ALBA flat screen TV, which was an export only model made for the Russians, and the on screen menu and settings only work in Russian. But it was dirt cheap at the time, and still works great 10 years later
> 
> The box is an HP  8300 small form factor i5 3200Mhz from 2010, but only has slots for 4GB ram, which makes playing Minecraft a bit tricky.....I have two 1 Terabyte HDD's in, it has enough space to slip the second drive under the PSU, but  ive had to depower the CD drive or the poor old 350w PSU starts to complain and overheat.  I have a spare recovered PSU on standby if it has a heart attack.....
> ...


Yup.  Always.

I have two desktops and two laptops.  Unmentioned in my listing, is my Kensington trackball I keep more-or-less permanently plugged into my Podcast-Retrival laptop.  It's a completely-obsolete HP netbook - I ran Ubuntu Linux in it, until the cucks at Ubuntu changed their system so it wouldn't work (not well; it bogged down slower than a crashing system) on the old machine.  Loaded an earlier version of Ubuntu in, and it's fine.

But I can no longer surf online - all the modern drivers and protocols, Wi-Fi, web pages, don't work.  What DOES work is an HTML RSS page - something that all the web browsers made NOT work.  Because RSS links to podcasts, enable users to bypass iTunes or Google, and the tech dweeb Napoleons don't want that to happen.

So I use the three-year-old version of Ubuntu on the ten-year-old netbook, to get my podcasts drama-free.

But, attached, is a Kensington trackball that I bought with my first computer in 1999.  Still works, and better than my other point-click devices.  It's just not that convenient, compared to a mouse, and with that long cord.

But, yeah...over the years, I've gotten a lot of ways to get online.  Now, all I need, is for us to return to the free-exchange-of-information we had, back in the day.

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## UKSmartypants

Kensington trackerballs have always been the best  (after the absurdly over engineered IBM ones  :Big Grin:   ).  Wireless mice just dont to seem o work as good as wired mice on old kit. Ive added a usb wifi mouse dongle, but I think theres an interrupt conflict somewhere, cos every now and then it either freezes or disconnects. Once upon a day you could have dug into this and foiund the conflict, but Bill  Gates has spent the last 20 years trying to stop you fiddling about with the OS.  Like cars, they are becoming unfixable, and the job, like jet piloting,  is deskilling

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pjohns (06-27-2020)

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## pjohns

> What are you using for an OS?  Win95?


I am still using Windows 7.  (It does all I want; so I really see no need to replace it.  Well, except for the fact that IE 11--the final version of Internet Explorer--is no longer compatible with Windows 7.  But I just went to Firefox, instead.)   




> Mouse is about 15 years old - and with a cord.  For some reason wireless mice don't last - something happens, they no longer recognize a held-down key.  If you're highlighting or moving files, it can really mess up your work.


Yes, I much prefer a corded mouse, also.  (I now have two cordless mice--one that came with the system, and one that came bundled with the Logitech keyboard--but I purchased a corded mouse at Staples a few years ago, and I much prefer that--even if it does seem old-fashioned.  It is not frequently quitting on me.)

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## pjohns

> I have two desktops and two laptops.


Well, I have only my single desktop.  (I once had a laptop--I think I purchased it in the late 1990s--but I sold it for a mere $25 to our housekeeper, several months ago, as I never used it anymore.  But perhaps I should keep a spare.)

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## UKSmartypants

> Well, I have only my single desktop.  (I once had a laptop--I think I purchased it in the late 1990s--but I sold it for a mere $25 to our housekeeper, several months ago, as I never used it anymore.  But perhaps I should keep a spare.)


yep you need two devices. If the main ones dies how you gonna google the fault and buy the spares online?

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Big Bird (07-05-2020)

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## nonsqtr

All my computers are mutts.

I like to think of them as... um... "multicultural". lol  :Wink:

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Big Bird (07-05-2020),pjohns (07-01-2020)

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## JustPassinThru

> All my computers are mutts.
> 
> I like to think of them as... um... "multicultural". lol


Eventually, the Cupertino Fruit Company is going to declare my Macintosh as past its Use-By date.

Since it's basically, in hardware and motherboard-logic, a robust machine...even if deliberately made useless for independent computing, as most remotes can't be searched, copied off or to...those being "features" added to tether Fruit Company cucks to the Mothership...

...with those issues...there's a guy in town who will load Linux onto it.  For money.  And he's not cheap.  But since the thing is almost ten years old, and still, itself, usable...just obsoleted by the Macincucks at the Fruit Company (led by the Big Fruit, Timmy Cuck)...it'll have no value unless I have that upgrade done.

That should see me through to the tail-end of my computing career.

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pjohns (07-01-2020)

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## ruthless terrier

i'm on my third keyboard and just installed new led screen in my ancient dell laptop.

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## Big Bird

2 laptops that are Dell's. 2 media box's and 2 desktops are homemade. All run linux. We haven't used Micro$oft for 20 years.

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## UKSmartypants

> Eventually, the Cupertino Fruit Company is going to declare my Macintosh as past its Use-By date.
> 
> Since it's basically, in hardware and motherboard-logic, a robust machine...even if deliberately made useless for independent computing, as most remotes can't be searched, copied off or to...those being "features" added to tether Fruit Company cucks to the Mothership...
> 
> ...with those issues...there's a guy in town who will load Linux onto it.  For money.  And he's not cheap.  But since the thing is almost ten years old, and still, itself, usable...just obsoleted by the Macincucks at the Fruit Company (led by the Big Fruit, Timmy Cuck)...it'll have no value unless I have that upgrade done.
> 
> That should see me through to the tail-end of my computing career.



Has anyone tried loading android  onto one?

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## wbslws

I built my own from parts I purchased different places.  My latest purchase was a lighted keyboard that really helps.

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## UKSmartypants

> I built my own from parts I purchased different places.  My latest purchase was a lighted keyboard that really helps.


The first couple of desktops i had back in the 80's were hand built, but the snag with hand building is you can get problems when yo uhave slight mismatches between hardware. In the old days thes ewoud lcause BSOD's, nowadays they ar eles scommon but can make it run slow or do odd things.

I found in the end it was better and quicker to get a second hand production machine and improve it. And even better is get a decent file server , stick a better graphics card in and new O/S use it as a desktop.

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## APACHERAT

> I love my Dell computer. Sorry to say but the mouse & keyboard that came with it broke within 2 months. I've still got the monitor that came with it BUT it's sitting on the floor in the corner. I replaced my monitor with something, don't know what brand it is. I moved my couch further back from the computer so I bought a much larger monitor so that I could see it better. I've got a logitech keyboard & mouse but I'm a bit unhappy with the keyboard. It's not a plug in so it skips letters sometimes & I have to sit a certain way for it to connect. That seems to be a common problem with logitech now days. 
> 
> I had to get this keyboard because one morning about 4am I got up to get more coffee. I filled the cup & then had to take the dogs out before returning. Finally I grabbed my coffee & headed back to the computer which had gone into sleep mode. I sat in my chair (in total darkness) & sat on my keyboard. What a pain in the ass in more ways than one.


On the political side of your thread, no Marxist is going to call you a racist.

Your computer system is politically correct, diversity.

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## fmw

Other than my laptop, all my computers are mutts - assembled by yours truly.  The problem now is that I can buy refurbished name brand computer for about the same as a main board with processor.  So I may stop building them myself.

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UKSmartypants (07-11-2020)

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## UKSmartypants

> Other than my laptop, all my computers are mutts - assembled by yours truly.  The problem now is that I can buy refurbished name brand computer for about the same as a main board with processor.  So I may stop building them myself.



yea, there's very little point in building PC's these days. maybe drop in a better graphics card or bigger hard drive or more ram, but that really the limit and extent of possible messing  about.

Whats more factory produced hardware tend to suffer less glitching than home built kit, as a rule . especially if you are using mix'n'match cards.

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Oceander (07-11-2020)

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