#544 Yes! Yes! I Have One!

Wednesday, 01/25/06

At last Thursday's dinner I mentioned that my computer is more than ten years old, probably twelve, since I remember being jealous when we bought both Daughter and Father-in-law new PCs when Daughter was in college, but Jay wanted to keep this one, and I'm so afraid it will overheat some day and I'll have a head crash and lose everything. I have no backup. None.

The guys told me that what I should do is get an external hard drive, and dump everything to it periodically. Sounded good to me, so I went shopping for one this afternoon, after my workout on the spa machines (man, is my left arm sore!)

I found a mature salesman who seemed to know what he was talking about. It seems that an external hard drive will connect only to a USB port. He said that my hardware is old enough that I may not have one, so he showed me what it looked like so I could go home and look. Also, the external hard drive works only with Windows 98 SE (Second Edition) and up. Do I have 98, or 98 SE? I dunno. So I had some homework.

"Now," I asked him, "just in case, if I don't have a USB port, or 98 SE, what can I do?" Apparently not much. I'm beginning to realize that I'm going to have to upgrade soon, or I absolutely won't be able to transfer files at all. So, just in case, what if I buy a new processor? Would I be able to transfer files from the old CPU to the new one?

The answer to that is apparently yes - since that can be done (in many hours) over a parallel connection. He showed me the software that you install and run on both machines, and then it transfers the files, and it will work with parallel and on Windows 98 (non-SE).

Um, but there's still a problem, I said. I already have a good display, keyboard, and mouse, and prefer not to buy new. So how would I go about running that program on both machines at the same time? That stumped him.

When I got home, I got out the flashlight and crawled under the desk, and Yes!! we do have a USB port! The camera is plugged into it. I don't know if it works, though, because the few times I tried to work the camera the code said it was offline, no matter what buttons I pushed on it. But the light on top of it flashes on IPL, so I don't know. It used to work - Jay put it in the front window and took pictures of deer in the front yard, and stop-action streams of sunrises. Well, that's a problem for later. It's enough for now that I do have a place to plug the cable in.

Next I checked the system level, and Yes!!! it IS Windows 98 SE! I'm in business!

If there was anyone standing on my front porch this evening to hear all the "Yes! Yes! Yes!!!"ing, they'd have thought I had finally brought a man into the house.