My Computer Collection

Welcome to Wonderland's Computer Museum! Or rather, my personal collection.

2020 M1 MacBook Air

Let us start this tour with the most boring piece in my collection – the 2020 MacBook Air. Why most boring? Well, it's relatively new, runs the latest version of macOS, can run all the latest software, and there are virtually no issues with it (except one which I'll get to). It does its job and does it well.

What's the fun in that! Don't you want your computer to be obsucre and old, so that when you try doing something useful there is a bit of tension? Like you gotta find fixes, workarounds, fight with it a bit, you get me, right?

Ah well, perhaps not everyone is such a PC masochist. Let's go over the specs.

(neofetch because it looks cool and I am too lazy to make a table)

And before you ask, 8GB of RAM is indeed not enough! That is my only real issue with this computer. As soon as you have more than two browsers open (which I do a lot since I do web development) it starts chugging. Alright, maybe more than two browsers, but you get the point. This thing was 1000€ and I really expected it to fare better. I guess no amount of "Apple magic" can get you over the fact 8GB of RAM is 8GB of RAM.

Fujitsu ESPRIMO E720 E85+

(catchy name I know)

Next contender! (since when is this a competition) To make this whole showcase a bit less Mac-centric, here is one of my non-Apple machines.

To continue the theme of "more useful = more boring", this PC is from around 2014, making it good for basically any kind of task, maybe apart from gaming. Unlike the MacBook however, you aren't limited by the processor architecture. This allows you to run any kind of goofy OS you desire.

And by that I mean Gentoo. Remember when I said I am a bit of a PC masochist? Now you can see why. All being said though, Gentoo is legit an amazing Linux distribution which, yes, takes a lot of effort to get going, but funnily enough has been the most reliable on all of my computers. I would even use it on my Mac if there was a usable port.

But back to the Fujitsu. Here are the specs:

2011 Mac Mini

This Mac currently hosts the Wonderland and every one of my other web projects. It's small, relatively quiet (as long as you don't use it), and supports a version of macOS new enough (High Sierra) to actually be useful. Yes, I could install Linux on it, which would make it even more useful (thus boring), but hey, why fix something that works.

The problem with this thing is its cooling. It's fine when I let it run in the background, just doing server things, but as soon as you try something more demanding (such as web browsing), this dingus heats up to like 90 °C, and I wish I was over exaggerating. It makes sense that the heat situation in such a crammed space wouldn't be the best, but man this thing gets hot. And of course, when it gets hot, the fan kicks in and my room turns into a wind tunnel. You wouldn't belive how loud that tiny little fan can get. But I guess better than it cooking itself.

Maybe the thermal paste has gone bad, which I really don't want to deal with, or maybe it's just inherent bad design (wouldn't be the first or last, right Apple?). So, if my house sets on fire someday in the future, you know the culprit.

Here are the specs of this tiny devil (literally haha):

ThinkPad T400

Because every Linux nerd must have one.

Now we are finally getting into the theritory of "old enough to actually cause some tension." This laptop is still usable for most everyday things, but you do start feeling its age. Perfect system to install Gentoo on, right? Especially if you've got a day to wast- I mean utilize for educative Linux shenanigans.

The things I like about this laptop:

• the keyboard (they aren't lying when they say old ThinkPads have the best keyboards)
• the chonk (not sure what about a thick laptop is kinda fun)
• its CD/DVD drive (yes, i still use CDs for some things)
• the keyboard again because 🤌🤌🤌

Also, sorry to all the ThinkLight fans out there, but a backlit keyboard is just better. At least for its intended usage of being able to see the keys in the dark. The ThinkLight bleeds light everywhere but not where I need it.

The specs are:

(table now because I'm too lazy to find the charger, plug it in, turn it on, realize I don't even have Linux installed on this thing...yea making a table will be quicker)

I also have a photo of when I recieved it:

(don't mind the mess, I promise it has improved)

Late 2006 iMac

And finally, my personal favorite, the late 2006 iMac! A proud member of the "early Intel Mac" group (which definitelly doesn't come back to bite you in the ass).

I will cut straight to a photo, here it is running Mac OS X Server (because fuck you that's why) right after I got it:

I mean, look at this thing. It's old, obscure, wonderfully designed, what more could you want. Perhaps a usable computer but...shut.

This thing more so than the ThinkPad falls into the "old enough to cause trouble" category. Actually, not necessarily because it's old, but because it's a Mac. An early Intel Mac. This doesn't cause issues when tring to run Mac OS, which it was intented for, but Mac OS is boring af. Even Windows runs great on this thing with Apple's Bootcamp, tho I would it rather not to.

The issues come when trying to run Linux. Due to the iMac being an early adapotor of the EFI system, and it being a Mac, the EFI implementation is non-standard and more importantly, only 32-bit. This is basically unheard of nowadays. Many Linux distributions straight up won't boot, because a 32-bit EFI can't load a 64-bit kernel, and some distributions which do account for this (one of them being Gentoo) will only boot from an install medium, but not when you actually install them on the hard drive.

There is luckily a way around this, the iMac's legacy BIOS boot mode, but that requires writing some magic numbers into the hybrid MBR header of the GPT disk and that is just fucky. Not for me though, I love when things don't work because of obscure problems, but I can imagine most people wouldn't want to deal with this.

I'm probably making this nugget look a lot scarier than it really is. It's just an old Mac that needs a little extra work to get interesting stuff working. And once you do, it's still a farily pleasant experience, despite it being like...almost 20 years old. (still younger than me is this Finn lore???)

Anyhow, finally getting to the specs:

Yes, it is running OS X Mavericks, which is not officially supported on this machine. Check out this project to learn more.

You might as well notice neofetch reporting 4GB of RAM. I mean, what's wrong with that? Well...it's lying. While you can put up to 4GB of RAM into this computer, the motherboard can meaningfully utilize only 3GB. It can see the 4, but can't use all of it. So, instead of, you know, reporting this stupid limitation accuretly, it just straight up lies to you and reports 4GB. Note that this only happens in OS X, Linux reports the RAM correctly. Thanks Apple!

Honorable Mentions

That's almost everything, but I also have some computers that either aren't mine or...aren't really worth writing a whole section about.

• Toshiba Satellite 460CDT (borrowed from a friend, a really cool 90s laptop)
• Pentium 4 beige box (you deserve nothing more than this)
• Some Asus tablet I can't be bothered to remember the name of with a broken screen (still works fine as a PC tho)
• iPad Mini 1st gen (not a PC but wanted to include it anyway 'cos it's an andorable little thing)