Garage Music Revisited

There are basically two requirements for trying to get older technology to perform today's tasks; time and patience.

I finally allowed myself the time to set up an old laptop computer in the garage to play music streamed from my network attached storage device. As for the patience, read on.

The computer is over 10 years old and it takes forever to load a Windows operating system, but it's only being asked to do one task - play music - and right now it's doing that better than my old PDA was. With old technology come comparisons to new technology. I quickly realized I have flash drives with more space than the computer has memory or disk space. Yet it manages to quickly come out of standby, connect to the network by way of an ancient Netgear MA401 802.11b PCMCIA card, and load iTunes.

It may not be the best way to access the music server and play iTunes, but it was all cobbled together from unused gadgets I had laying around the house, and it gives me a great deal of satisfaction knowing that I'm resourceful enough to more fully utilize my technological investments.

BTW, I did try a Puppy Linux Retro v.4.1.2 installation on an alternate hard drive before deciding to stay with Windows. A network connection was established, but couldn't be maintained after subsequent reboots probably due to our hidden SSID. I also had a problem getting Firefly Client to work. The Puppy distro did not include the Java JRE, and getting it installed and working with all its dependencies was too time-consuming.

I threw in the towel after several hours and dozens of time-consuming reboots on the ancient laptop because I already had Windows working. As I mentioned at the top of this post, time and patience are required when attempting to adapt or repurpose older technology, and there comes a time on every project when you have to know when to switch tracks and go with what you know will work.

What matters most is the end result, the finished product, the bottom line. And to that end I have my very groovy tunes to look forward each time I work in the garage. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.