I bought an iBook for my Dad. sort of for his birthday as he shut his screen on a pair of scissors and busted the screen. This was a day after daughter and I looked up from playing poptropica on the office computer, we were stealing the shops new DSL, (but don't tell any of my relatives), to see my 92 year old father trimming his nose hairs with a pair of pinking shears. I guess they were just really big scissors. I said "don't run with those," and daughter almost lost it. Somehow, I guess after an intense personal hygiene session, they got shut in the lid of his iBook ruining the screen.
So I found a dead iBook for $50 on ebay.
Well, it turns out that it was only the power cord connection and after borrowing the battery out of my wife's iBook and then logging in to the terminal mode (which I've never done before) I was able to create a new administrator account and then with some more fooling around-I was able to look at all the personal information and photos of the previous owners. It is kind of boring but has kept me occupied for three hours longer than I ever meant to waste. I really don't want to take the screen out for my father at this point. This is fun and since my iBook has a broken hinge and a bad airport card and is only a little 12" one I am having a hard time turning this 14" fully loaded with other people's information G4 iBook loose. However, the power connector is loose on the mother board and I will probably ruin it when I try to resolder.
Sunday afternoon I'll just pull the screen and fix Dad's.
Oh well...
I spent the afternoon with a crappy PC tablet I use for GPS, which would not recognize the second serial to USB adapter and so the GPS didn't stop recording when I was not planting. Gained an extra five acres that way.
PC's are such utter crap I cannot believe the world is powered by them. I love the FarmerGPS program but I hate the platform. Perhaps he will write a version for the Android and I can have an iPad type GPS computer. Ooooh, write FarmerGPS for an iPad. Now that would be livin!
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Maybe if you used a PC that wasn't 20 years old?
ReplyDeleteAlso: Life may be easier if you don't fix his computer! Keep the iBook. I have a low wattage soldering iron for electronic circuits I can loan you if you so desire.
ReplyDeleteDoes seem a shame to butcher a working G4 with 14" of visual real estate. On the other hand, I am running the same machine vintage 2004, and am increasingly unable to participate in software updatees as developers abandon support of the PPC chip. Maybe give your Dad the screen, then look a little shallower in the digital age version of the La Brea Tarpits for an early intel ibook.
ReplyDeleteWill you still write for us little people after you become a famous software developer??
ReplyDeleteI can (with very little shame) say that I haven't used an Apple computer since the 8th grade. So I don't really have anything to compare our PC's to. Dumb and happy I guess!
ReplyDeleteAre you planting with the 2-155 or still using the 2-135?
I am afraid that I cannot use the words 8th grade and computer in the same sentence.
ReplyDeleteI am using a IX300 Itronix rugged tablet computer which I think has a 900 clock speed and 512 ram with windows XP tablet edition. It is painfully slow in essential thinks like opening programs and recognizing things hooked to it.
ReplyDeleteMy brother's powerbook Pismo with slower clock speeds opens programs quickly, can recognize usb converters, connects to the internet quickly, and only falls short with large new programs. My iBook G4, 1.33/1gig ram only gets painfully slow with large Photoshop files and sometimes Lego Movies.
Saturday I tried to connect to the Micro-Trak spraymonitor. The Tablet would not recognize the USB converter or find the drivers which are on the disk or unstuff the downloads and kept asking for software updates. AND the icons won't open when you click on them and if you click multiple times it opens multiple windows.
Of course Apple never made a tablet or an outdoor viewable screen and Mr. FarmerGPS did not write the program for Macs.
I can't believe people are using his progrma with netbooks.
The parts G4 only works off battery and won't charge so I'm taking it apart.
Orin, yes I am planting with the 2-135. Waiting for parts for the 2-135.