In the next week we’ll begin installing a new phone system, and removing our antiquated unstable system. Our current system only needs to survive a few more days, but I guess that’s more than we could ask for. Thursday the voicemail machine died. I took it back to the lab and checked it out and sure enough the power supply was dead. Now the voicemail machine is just a computer so it doesn’t seem like a big deal to replace a power supply… but this computer is a 486
.
Now my Dad was a packrat, he saved stuff you just couldn’t understand why. I suppose I’ve inherited that. So when we needed a power supply for a 486 I took a drive to my house and dug up my first PC. It was a 486 DX2 50mhz machine, it was smoking in it’s short lived time, but I retired it years ago. In fact I even loaned it and when it was returned I still hung onto it; I don’t really know why, maybe it had something to do with the $3000 I had invested in it.
I drove home and retrieved this old friend and took it on a last ride. I pulled the power supply out of it and put it in the voicemail machine and it sprang back to life. I looked at the carcass of my first computer and felt quite pleased that it had served me one last time.
I think my Dad would have been proud.
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