An excellent example of this is the movie "Hidden Figures". If you don't know what it's about go read up on it. Anyway, the woman in this scene successfully programs an IBM 7090 computer that NASA bought but had no idea how to use it. In the background is either a Type 535A or 545A on a cart. I can't find the actual scene where she connects the scope to the 7090. We watched that movie together and afterwards I explained what she was doing. Lady Cop's response? I knew you would know exactly what she was doing but I don't get it.
That sounds like a very interesting movie to share with SWMBO. Plus, it would come as a surprise, rather than her suggesting what movie to watch. Thankfully, she does make suggestions from Marvel Comics, various Star Treks among many others that we will never find the time to watch.
Certainly SWMBO's mother is
NOT one of those ladies from Hidden Figures. Also, this is where reputation as the geek in the family is a disadvantage. I got the dreaded phone call that both her computers were completely non-functional. I knew this was going to happen, hence I have made recent references to a shiny disk for OS installation.
First up is her old "archive computer". This thing is an old AMD Phenom processor, but more importantly, the hard drive contains archives of all past computers put together by a computer shop that scrapped those said past computers. That shiny disk was a Win10 (that is what is currently licensed on the machine) installation DVD. The machine booted eventually fine from the DVD. Taking a look around, it appears that archives of Win95, Win98, WinXP and Win7 all got copied into C:\windows. Instead of taking any risks with the archives, I installed a SSD with Win10 and got that machine running. The hard drive is a project that I do not want to take any responsibility for any data losses. I know I will get stuck with searching for data files; so my plan is to copy from that disk and never ever modify any files on it. The potential wrath of a mother-in-law is not something I will intentionally draw in my direction.
Second computer is her "writing computer" for that book that I have doubts will ever be published. The story I heard was that the duration of time the computer would operate before freezing up was getting shorter and shorter until it would no longer boot up at all. Of course, after playing a game of
20 30 questions, it turns out there was an error message that the ADATA SSD was reporting drive errors. I assumed that meant putting in a new SSD would get this computer up and running. The biggest challenge would be data recovery of the
manuscript 4 years web browser history from the old SSD. It is always worse than assumptions. With a new SSD installed, the machine boots fine and then freezes up after 10 minutes. Rebooting immediately results in running fine and then freezing up after 5 minutes. That made me think of overheating. Sure enough, there is a small heat-sink over top something on the motherboard that is very hot to the touch, but not hot enough to burn. Will have to look into this further. Any suggestions on a software that can log or display on-board temperatures or parameters that might help in narrowing down the issue? This one will not be allowed to be stuffed into the crawlspace of doom (also, the crawlspace is where the electronics bench is going to move to, but that is another story).
Edit: Does this mean I feel a bit like Saskia these days....?