also, i'm not done cleaning in here, but i need to get to the spirit of the new time allotment, down.

so, once i get that 16-bit pc up, i'm going to spin directly into the food saga.

this will be life for a while:

sat/sun/mon building the blogs

tues/wed/thurs working on the discography (starting at period 3)

fri on the alter-reality.

what that will mean for right now is:

sat/sun/mon typing

tues/wed/thurs cleaning and rebuilding

fri on the alter-reality

so, where am i with the cleaning and reinstalling, then?

- i have completely cleaned my bedroom space from top to bottom. every nook and cranny. i've scrubbed the floors. it's spotless...

- i have reassembled my dresser and washed every article of clothing in it, as well. so, all my clothes are clean for the first time in over a year. the problem was that there was a hydrogen sulfide leak in the basement floor directly beside the dresser and i wanted to be 100% sure it was fixed before i set the dresser back up and washed all the clothes. it's all done.

- i need to get a table and a bookcase for this space with the carbon tax refund, which should be easy enough, if i can find it.  

- i'm using my old homemade makeup table as a shoe rack in the closet

- putting all these clothes away meant i could clear out the space intended for recording, finally. that has been done, and everything has been cleaned as much as is possible - including a thorough scrubbing of the floors. this space was absolutely filthy....but i want to keep it clean...

- i have a lot of gear to reinstall and/or fix as i set it up in here. i'm starting with 2 of the 3 pcs, which i'm using as 16-bit and 32-bit windows recording consoles, respectively. 

- i have purchased a large bookcase for $15 that has a broken top but is otherwise perfectly fine and now overlooks the studio space. it will probably hold recording related materials in some currently unclear way. some time ago, i also purchased an organizer for wires and cables. so, this space is actually considerably more organized than it was, previously. 

- i'm going to install racks for the two bicycles along the stairwell. that will clear up space and keep dirt off the floor.

- i still need to clean the kitchen & the bathroom before i get seriously back to work. from here on in, i intend to get back to the monthly cleaning schedule that i had before i got frustrated by the sulfur smell and second-hand smoke from upstairs.

- i have put all of the various items that need to slowly be reinstalled into the other room, which i have been using as a combo storage space + dining area. the process of reconstructing the studio and generally setting things up in here will be reduced to a process of cleaning up that space, bit by bit. when it is done, i will be be done what i'm doing.

so, i've been posting less because i've been vacuuming and lysoling and scrubbing things, but i'm over a bit of a hump with it.

let's check to see if there's anything new up on kijiji regarding tables and bookcases.

ok, so i can't do a brute force hack on the pasta bowl or the eggs and i don't want to do a final run for the fruit bowl. i've got too many loose threads open and i'm just totally unravelling. how do i reweave myself back into some semblance of coherence?

i was building liner notes, and i stopped to fix my diet - thinking it would take a few days to build. six months later, and i'm reaching a conclusion, but need to move on.

i realized my fluoride data totals were wrong, and went to backtrack to fix them. in the process, i decided i'd make a final fruit bowl post because i was almost done and set about compiling it. but, then i wanted to build a book documenting the entire saga. but, then i decided i wanted to build a book documenting my comments on the pandemic. and, i kept going further back, until i decided to go back to the start...

the idea was that, if i start at the beginning, in august 2013, i can spin off a series of different narratives, not just the food saga and the pandemic commentary. these would all be little books to read. in the process, i could spin off the liner notes, as well. i'd actually be multitasking.

but, then, i realized the need to get to the alter-reality, too.

as i was cleaning, i came to the decision that i need to create a schedule and more effectively multitask or i'll continually get lost in these complex recursions. so, i need to be doing three things at once:

1) moving through the alter-reality, starting in 1989

2) actually getting back to the discography, at period 3

3) starting in 2013 with the blogs and rebuilding them, moving forwards

if i do any one of these three things, strictly, then i'll never get any of the others finished. 

so, what if i get in the habit of spending:

sat/sun/mon building the blogs

tues/wed/thurs working on the discography (starting at period 3)

fri on the alter-reality.

eventually,  these things will crash into each other.

and, i need to finish cleaning and fixing machines in here, first.

i don't actually want to do it like this but i think i absolutely have to.

yeah, the going price seems to be roughly $10/stick, meaning it would cost me $40 to buy a backup set and $80 for two. and then i need to pay shipping...

what am i willing to pay for 25 year old ram? about half that, max - but something close to $2/stick would be reasonable, and feasible to find if you search around enough.

i'm going to need to make a pawn shop rummage run for old ram when i can.

i don't need the ram enough to pay $100 for it...

but, i'll keep an eye out for it.

no sd ram for sale in windsor or ontario, for that matter...

this is a 1998 model board. i need to get it while i still can, because it wont boot at all when there's no more ram to kickstart it with. and, let that be written of these asus boards, as these macs and dell and hp laptops pile up in landfills - they last until you can't find any ram for them anymore.

that's impressive. truly.

so, i went to boot the reconstructed machine and...

nothing.

shit.

no beep codes? no pc speaker.

so, i had to build a new pc speaker out of electrical tape and a piece of cardboard (i exaggerate only slightly.) to get the beep codes to figure out why it wasn't booting. and, it was ram.

so, i stripped the thing right down and did a component-by-component test to realize that....everything works after all.

hrmmn.

so, did it just need a reseating? that's maybe an oversimplification. reseating it on it's own didn't help. rather, it seemed like once i triggered the circuit with a 65 mb chip that the 256 mb chips started flowing, too - meaning it's more like i had to warm it up than that i had to reseat it.

the machine is currently sitting at the bios screen with just a video card and hard drive, in addition to the maxxed out 1 gb of ram. so, it works. hooray. 

and, it's quiet - which i don't even understand. it should be as loud as it ever was. but, i'll take it.

i need to check kijiji for 256 mb pc100 sd ram. that's the most the device can take, and a little back up will definitely help.

it's otherwise nice to get things back and running again, even if everything around me remains in disarray.

i've also found my windows 98 se + sp2 disc (lol.) & a series of winlited xp installation discs intended specifically for this pIII. the most recent one will be in the drive when i turn it on.

i'm probably going to want to build a new winlited xp installation disc from scratch, we'll see.

so, i've rebuilt the hardware in the machine, at least.

but i don't have the iso i was looking for...

i was able to find an iso at archive.org. we'll have to see if it works or not.

i may otherwise be stuck trying to find the 16-bit drivers and software for the device. i at least seem to have a useful user manual that will remind me of what i'm looking for and ought to have.

so, i'm making some fruit and will get back to it afterwards.

hey, if it works on both partitions then great.

i may have an iso of it on my storage drive.

if i still have that pile of old install discs, i don't know where it is.

i think i left it outside my door once in the old apartment, with the intent to put it away in storage when i got around to it, and the retard upstairs decided it was garbage.

fucking retards. they ruin everything.

i actually have two legacy soundblaster cards, and i kind of had them installed in a foolish way, because i was splitting the functionality of the machines off pretty strictly.

so, i put the older live! card in the recording machine because i wanted to connect it to the bay in the front. then, i put the newer audigy in the older machine, to use it as a media pc in the living room.

but, i really want the audigy in the newer 32-bit box and the live drive! in the 16-bit environment.

i'll have to find the old disc if i even still have it, but the problem might have been that they sold me a demo with reduced functionality....so i had to load the install from the disc, and the setup file wouldn't launch in the 32-bit environment.

there are other reasons why i want a 16-bit system besides this, so trying to force the eax to work in a 32-bit system is missing the point.

the eax + the live drive meant i could plug my guitar into the device and use it as a real time reverb processor, which is something i haven't been able to emulate since.

but, the audigy can also connect to a front end, and i should probably see if i can find something cheap on ebay. one thing at a time; i need some furniture for in the other room and haven't heard anything back yet.

i need this, too, to make sure i get the connections right. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q8aZAvX24IRDNLTL2i8at3-6HSz6QSZg/view?usp=sharing

did i always have it set to condenser mic? it might explain why the audio in was often less than stellar. lol.

there's a jumper to trigger it for use with an actual 1/4" microphone. that's been set, now - maybe for the first time. rtfm, right?

but, this is what i wanted, and isn't in the manual. i'm going to archive it here in case i need to find it later, and that page (dated to  2005-06-16, 14:32) disappears. but, it turns out that there's not much of use here.

JP2 - When jumpered, connects SPDIFIN#1 from a cascaded Digital I/O Card to the AUD_EXT header (back to the Live! card).

JP3 - When jumpered to DD (default), connects SPDIFIN#2 from the Live! Drive's Digital DIN header to the AUD_EXT header. When jumpered to CDB, connects SPDIFIN#2 from the cascaded Digital I/O Card's Digital DIN header to the AUD_EXT header. (I'm not aware of anything that even uses this input...)

JP4 - When jumpered to OUT0, sends the SPDIFO#0 signal (front-channels) to the CS8414 CODEC for the headphone output. When jumpered to OUT2, sends the SPDIFO#2 signal (front and rear channel mix) to the CS8414 CODEC for headphone output (default).

JP6 - The default position on my Live! Drive was to OPT/P_IN, which routes the incoming coax S/PDIF signal to SPDIFIN#1 on the AUD_EXT header. Moving the jumper to the RCA_IN position sends that signal instead. The RCA_IN signal appears to come from the CT4861 riser card, which hosts the optical S/PDIF and AUX I/O, and is found on the Live! Drive II.

for now:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=40230

this device actually has a very powerful dsp in it, that i could never get to work with a 32 bit os. virtual machines didn't work right - and this is relatively complex, on an old processor. i kind of gave up on it because you just can't put windows 98 on the internet, and you have to conniect to the internet. right?

but, access to that dsp is actually sort of fundamental to completing unfinished work that was left incomplete and started over a certain period of time.

at this point, the device is essentially useless to connect to the internet with, anyways. so, i'd might as well put 98 on it and just leave it offline. 

i'm actually going to dual boot it with a winlited 32-bit xp install that i built as a glorified type writer for that machine specifically, if i can find it. that way, i've got access to a basic xp typing environment as an absolute backup, in addition to regaining full access to the hardware. so, i should be able to access this machine in both 16-bit and 32-bit windows environments.

it's a somewhat unusual but actually very functional project that i don't expect to take so long. uch-o.

it's been so long that i needed to download the user manual:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vo0H6V0-PhGen--eatQtiegDfTFpiiUC/view?usp=sharing

i'll leave that there for now, given that i'm on this chromebook, and it will wipe in time.

so, i think i have an answer for the bookshelves figured out, and it's nice and easy. i also might have an upgrade for the rickety headboard i've been improvising for too long, now - but that's tentative. one thing at  a time...

that would be all of the furniture required for the bedroom, for now.

i'm also toying with getting a big bookshelf from ikea to cover over the sliding doors in here. i know you haven't seen pictures, yet.

i've decided what i want to put into the 16-bit machine as well, based on what was in there previously. when this was a production machine, it had a regular cd drive and a cd burner - not dvds, cds. i replaced the cd reader with a dvd reader when it broke, and bought a dvd-writer for it in 2006 to replace the cd-writer, which ended up in the other machine when this one was converted into a media playback centre. so, to reconstruct the spirit of the initial machine, the three slots should be a dvd-writer on top, a dvd player below and the sb! live drive! card on the bottom. ok....

i need a nap.

unfortunately.

so, if i go back to june 15th, 2017 and read forwards to about july 15, 2017 i think i'll have a good idea of the logic i had constructed.

but, i need to eat..

let's hope the fucking idiot doesn't succumb to retard hour. it's -15 out, but i'll open the window and drive up the heating bill, if he wants to pay for it.

....because polluter pays. that's how it goes.

so, i've sorted through my notes from 2017 and pulled out the following:

old laptop - nothing <---it was in the closet, at the time.

old desktop - nothing  <----still the tv

access point - rca sound out, ps/2 mouse/keyboard combo.   <----this was the converted recording pc, with several parts stripped out.

cq60 - guitar interface   <-----i wanted to turn the compaq laptop into a real time guitar effects processor. that's no longer feasible, due to the broken screen.

pav g6 - editing software?  <--- at the time, it still booted, but the screen was dead. i was going to connect this to the access point via rj-45 and use it as an external processor for editing videos for vlogging, strictly. and a big part of why i haven't uploaded any vlogs in several years is that i never got around to it....

new desktop - square dvi or hdmi monitor,  new audio receiver & studio monitor speakers <---new recording pc, built from new components and old parts.

how can i update this?

old laptop - i need to get more ram for this thing. i can max it out for cheap and should. it could still work as a tv.

old desktop - i previously upgraded the ram in this machine for cheap and put a firewire connector in it. it's pretty much maxed out, but i can't use it as a tv, as it just can't run an html5 browser, even maxxed out. but, it is maxxed out and that's something i can take advantage of in putting 98 on it. it has a working dvd-reader (no writer) in it, which is ironically less important than it was even five years ago. it has a tv tuner (and could take a cable in if i had one) and i'm putting the sb live it came with back in it, with the front-end interface. so, it's going to be just like when i bought it, but upgraded as much as is possible to take maximum ram specs. i don't think i need to add anything else to it

access point - i was using the cq60 as the access point and would like to go back to it if i can get it to work. i have newish ram, a newish battery & a newish hard drive. but, the machine has seemingly been heavily hacked, for what reason, exactly, i don't fully understand. until then, i need to use the chromebook to get on the internet - and the ability to powerwash the device is highly useful given the constant police harassment that i'm apparently under.

guitar interface - i no longer have a laptop that i can convert into a guitar interface. this idea is not entirely ejected, but no longer makes much sense to think about it. i mean, the logic was that i had this extra laptop that was perfectly fine - i no longer have an extra, perfectly working laptop but rather have four mostly broken laptops.

pav g6 - if i can fix this, i'd like to convert it into a video processor. if i can't, i need to find something else to process video with.

recording pc - keep the same, more or less. this machine works, but i need to keep it off the internet to prevent interference in what i'm doing.

new pc - build into 64 bit recording pc for eventual use. i'm penciling in the matlab project, iirc.

the new item is "mobile device", which i had used both the broken hps for in the past and never really got to use the chromebook much for. i should try to fix the chromebook one way or the other; if i can fix it well enough to salvage it as a mobile device, great. for now, it's the access point. and, it would no doubt make a better tv, if it comes to it. but, then i need a new mobile device.

ok.

i've got these ideas clear in my head, again.

now, i need to find a more detailed post that explains what i wanted to keep in the old pc and move to the new one, before i put the old pc away for a bit.

polluter pays.

right?