The Dynasty Continues

After a great experience acting as the photographer for Sandro and Megan's nuptials, I finished what I think/hope is my last week working at the Equipment Room. The deal with that is - a friend who was working for a former teacher of ours left her job, and recommended me as a replacement. So I'm supposed to begin editing some golf tip videos this week. Its an editing job, and it pays a lot better than the ER. 

To do an editing job, one requires an editing studio. So I bought one. I'm typing this from my new desktop computer, which I call - The Mark IV Dynasty. 

The Dynasty began with the Mark I, a sexy Compaq Presario 486 bumping Windows 3.1 on top of a whopping 4MB of RAM, all from a 500MB hard drive. It was a one piece built into the monitor, its only companion was a 14.4 KBPS external modem, and it booted to DOS Shell. I brought it into my room on the weekends, learned about Norton Utilities, ZIP files, MS Paint, played Nomad, and chatted with total strangers on AOL 3.0. It was a glorious time,  and I learned a lot. Then I saw Eric's computer. Eric was beta testing Windows 95 at the time and I never looked at our family computer the same. It prompted me to learn enough about computer parts that I figured out how to upgrade the RAM from 4 to 20MB by installing a 16MB module. Holy Crap it was awesome. But the glory faded. The hard drive filled up. And Word Perfect running off DOS, couldn't cut it anymore. 

Introducing Mark II. An IBM Aptiva with a real 15' monitor and an (gasp) internal modem. I'm pretty sure that Mark II had a 266mhtz processor, and maybe in its heyday as much as 128MB of Ram. This one I took with me to college and it was good enough to play Total Annihilation and download music, but Eric and Jeremy each had $3000 computers and they played TA $2200 better - which is to say, slightly. Anyway, it was enough for me. Mark II and I had a tumultuous relationship. It was mostly my fault. I couldn't keep my eyes off of other computers, couldn't stop myself from handling other mice. But there were good times. It was there for the birth of the T1 connection, the CD-burner, and file sharing programs - joys Mark I and I never dreamed of.

I spend a semester in London sharing a single, rather bunk laptop with a very flaky modem with like four other people. It was there on those lonely nights in my flat where I conceived of Mark III. When I got stateside, I put my plan into effect, and was immediately ripped off by an internet retailer who kept forgetting to send me a replacement for a broken part. While a 17 year old pretending to be my lawyer pursued that grievance, I found another retailer to supply Mark III's heart and soul - the ASUS A7A266 Motherboard. 1.2ghtz Athlon Thunderbird chip, 64mb ATI video card, and a score of hard drives and memory chips from 2001 to 2005 - this was a great computer, and I will always remember it fondly. This machine was very tough, and even though my processor was usually underclocked it opened the door to Unreal Tournament and video editing on Adobe Premiere. 

However, when I tried to go pro and run Avid Xpress Pro HD - it couldn't deliver. And I couldn't go to the forums and ask why I was getting Error "X" and then post my outrageously under-spec system details. But I've ALREADY ACCEPTED A JOB AS EDITOR. That's where Mark IV comes in. 

Behold, Mark IV Dynasty,
ECS K8M800-M2 Motherboard w/ onboard LAN, Audio, Video
Athlon 64 3000+ (Newcastle)
128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9200
1.0 GB PC3200 RAM
160GB SATA 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
And donated from Mark III
(2) 80 ATA Hard Drives
DVD Burner
DVD Rom