Doghouse

This was my first desktop system I purchased for myself (Oct97). I got it at a discount as PowerComputing was clearing inventory since they were put out of business by Apple, who rescinded their license as a third-party hardware developer/manufacturer/supplier. It got it's name from where I figured I would be if I spent too much time on it.

The PowerComputing systems gave you a lot of bang for your buck. They were more flexible than the stock Apple systems. For example, this system had both the Apple monitor connector and the PC VGA connector for video output. You couldn't drive two monitors, but if you had a PC monitor you could hook it up without an adaptor. It also had both an Apple AAUI ethernet connector (which required a dongle but allowed you to connect to a variety of ethernet hardware) and a 10BaseT connector. It had a 60 MHz bus speed which was faster than comparable machines at the time. The CPU was on a daughtercard for ease of upgrade.

It had three 5 1/4" bays which I populated with a CD-ROM (stock) and a Zip drive and a Jaz drive. Very cool. If I had an Apple system I would have had to put the Zip and Jaz daisy-chained on the external SCSI. Unfortunately it was not as elegantly manufactured as an Apple system and it was a pain to open the case and put all that hardware in. Lots of unscrewing and cable threading. I eventually added a USB card and a FireWire card for modern interconnections. The firewire had problems every now and then which really irked me. I also couldn't get much past OS 8 on the system. I think I got it up to OS 9.1, but couldn't apply the patches to get it up to 9.2.2. The hard drive was pretty full as well, and not only did I not want to spend money on a SCSI drive, but it was also a pain to get in and replace the drive physically.

Another irksome quirk was that it wouldn't go to sleep properly. Well, the screen would but the CPU wouldn't. The system would be sleeping but the fans would still be running. So I couldn't just put the system to sleep and leave it that way in a low-power state just waiting for me to use it again. I always had to power it off completely. I did replace the power supply with one with a quieter fan. Unrelated to the sleep issue, but it did run quieter in normal day to day operation.

The system was taken off-line when I acquired Pongo.

Specifics: 240 MHz processor

Upgrades: 128MB memory, Internal SCSI Zip, Internal SCSI Jaz, SCSI Card (50 pin), Ethernet Card (100 MBPs), quieter power supply

PCC PowerCenter Pro 240