A computer without enough hardware

I walk the line

I finally did something with the machine I was having trouble with. Turns out I won’t be using it for a NetBSD machine after all—it’s been set aside as a machine to run Café World, from FaceBook. Why? Because it’s not running anything else except for Google Chrome, Xubuntu and Café World. It's not able to be pimped out any more than it already is, as I don't have the CDROM drive that goes in the multi-function bay. What were Compaq thinking when they released this range of machines? That people would not want to add a second hard drive or more memory? I’m guessing that at the time it was released, they thought nobody would want more than 512Mb of memory on their machine—where have I heard that quote before...

Anyhow I set the machine up as an attempt to try running Café World better than the last time I tried to run it on Windows XP. So far at least, it appears to have been somewhat of a success, even though it has less resources available than the 2.8GHz Celeron machine. To refresh memories, the machine has a 1.3GHz Celeron, 512Mb of memory, and (now) a 10Gb drive with Xubuntu on it. Nothing else to get in the way of running Chrome, and running Café World in that browser. I ought to retain most of the speed I saw on fatty (the 2.8GHz machine) without the game slowing down because the computer’s going to fetch something or rehash the stored files database or check out what packages need updating, or whatever. The only time the game slows down is when it’s swapping, which can really impact gameplay negatively. Currently the only other disadvantage is that I have to keep switching the monitor over between the two machines.

So, what else will happen to this machine? Other than me putting the CMOS battery back in (done), and figuring out what the weird GRUB2 error message is, there’s nothing much else to do to it. Aside from adding twin (a screen-like terminal multiplexer, but with window borders), that is. And no, I don't have the nice monitor any more—that went back to the owner.