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written by officialandriey; started on: 07.04.2021, completed on: 07.04.2021 at 10:48 (GMT +1)
From the beginning of the Razorback server you may heard about the "Old Mushroom Jr." a regular, not so special PC from 2007/2008 running a Pentium Dual-Core E2160 1,8GHz at 3GB of RAM. "Not so special", eh? For me, it holds a special place in my mind and heart... from the moments when I was 3 years old. Join me for today's story how the "Old Mushroom Jr," keeps going after it's 13th birthday!
We got this computer somewhere near 2007/2008. I was 3 years old, already diagnosed with a kidney disease that pulls me to today, barely speaking. My mom purchased the computer as a prebuild by the store (since it has stamps inside of it from the store). I don't know nor she remembers the price of it (and, no we lost the reciept). It was bundled in a "computer set", basicly a monitor (which I have to today), speakers, mouse and keyboard bundled with the tower. All I remember was a green box, and I even did not it was the Old Mushroom Jr. No, we did not have any computers previously, so that marks why I don't have any Windows 98/2000 family PC earlier. Still, we received all parts boxes and CDs with a Windows XP Home Edition SP2 disk in Polish with a sticker that I own to this day!
It's just a family PC - Part 2 This segment is placed in 2008/2009 Now you know how the "Old Mushroom Jr." was born, now let's talk about how it was used and what was it's workflow. The computer was at my older sister's room (currently it's the living room) at a very corner. My parents used it mainly to browse internet, look up news from Poland and my local city, but my dad also discovered gaming and played some browser games that he still knows to this day. I used it also for gaming... ...a lot. I was so addicted, that when my time was up, the keyboard was on the wall (later on, in 2020 I've learned that this and some of my weird to look at things were related to an early child autism, that I just grew up from it) but still I played a lot. My sister discovered early Youtube and social media used at that time in Poland Back than, we did not have Facebook, Youtube was a great place. Poland used "Nasza Klasa" (literal translation: Our Class) and a communicator simillar to AIM called "Gadu-Gadu".
picture of me playing possibly some browser games, first picture of Old Mushroom Jr. ever taken probably (2008)
Vista Inspirat 2 and dumb loss of data - Part 3 Ah, Vista Inspirat 2. Skin for Windows XP that changed it's look to Windows Vista look-a-like. It was pretty alright (I've been using it recently too). Although it had it's problems, uninstalling left sounds and icons + was quite risky since it could anytime screw up the system. And that brings us to one faithful night that costed us a lot of time. There was a problem on a computer, ok cool normal PC problems. So my dad, not quite familliar with Windows and me barely knowing anything about IT. That ended up... in deleting drivers resulting in some error that would appear in the logon screen and when pressed OK, restarted the PC... Imagine the rage... Eventully we reinstalled Windows with help of my dad's friend and Old Mushroom Jr. had it's new itteration.
In previous parts, I talked about some random stories and how the computer was used in it's early days. Now let's get going with the cleaning procedure. It was fast, we've taken apart the PC, unplugged it and begun cleaning... of course with a fucking vaccum cleaner. I'm still laughing how the PC pulled out through multiple cleanings not getting killed by the electrostatic enviornment! After physical cleaning, we also ran a clean install of Windows XP and never replaced the thermal paste until 2020...
The computer pulled it's normal routine, sooner we got a laptop that was a lot faster, newer and that marks kinda the point were Old Mushroom Jr. was completely my PC.
When I got the Old Mushroom Jr. for myself - Part 5 It was back in 2019 when I finally got the Old Mushroom Jr. for myself to do what ever I want (not quite, since it needs to be functional if my main PC goes down). Back from the day we got the computer, it was running Windows XP (in 2014 of course it got EOL'd) so many software vendors (including Steam, stopped support for XP) so I had no choice but to move to Windows 7, that ran actually pretty smooth and was a great experience for me.
picture of my Windows 7 desktop taken (6.04.2021) Although many games and software ran fine, my Sony Ericsson software didn't, so I decided to dual-boot my PC. Since I met Kugee back in 11.11.2019, he helped me to pull this off and eventually we got 2 operating systems on one drive running on 1st try!
picture taken 2 hours after the dualboot application and XP activation through internet (19.11.2019)
The "Andriey Syndrome" of the power supply - Part 6 It was new year, beginning of the shitshow, 2020... I noticed the computer was really slow and running really loud, so I've taken it apart and, oh my fucking god... Imagine spider webs and fans full of dust and crap. No time to wait, so I cleaned everything I could, replaced the fan and thermal paste. Turning on the PC and... nothing... (I only used compressed air and brushes) Me and my dad lost hope, but after a minute, the computer turned on by itself. We had like a WTF moment. But, hey! It's working. Later on I've experienced the same symptoms. After that, I managed the way to turn the PC on, by pressing the power button, turning off the power supply and once the PC "blinked" the power at few milliseconds turn the power supply on to catch the power and turn the computer on. This worked for 6 months around. My dad found a very risky solution, imagine a paperclip, like "Clippy" inside a fucking 20-pin ATX plug. Yeah, that works, although it's easy to get killed so don't do this. 1 Soon or later I need to replace the power supply either way.
Side notes: 1 Just got information from a friend of mine "Scan Lines", that if the paperclip is stuck to correct pins, it's totally safe for your health, phew...
Commercing of "The New Mushroom Jr." operation - Part 7 It was September 2020, I came to my new middle school from primary. Finally gathered money to buy my dream PC which would help me with everything pretty much. Imagine running 2 VMs on 3GB of RAM... yeah... Is this the end for the Old Mushroom Jr. ? No. As my quote sayes: "The Old Mushroom Jr. - never dies". So I turned it into my replacement rig and vintage gaming rig to play GOG games I get.
Why the name "Old Mushroom Jr."? - Part 8 I mainly chose this name because this computer is old and "rusty" of it's old parts. The name came up by inspiration of Kugee's infamous "Hardcore Windows **" as seen here:
scene from that movie And why Junior? It's much younger than the PC from this video.
The future of Old Mushroom Jr? - Epilogue queue "The Journey's End" tracker module I see the future very bright for this machine. The major thing it requiers is restoration, not visually, but hardware wise. The most important thing to replace is the PSU from a cheap Polish "Mode Com" 335W to a better one like "be quiet!" or "SilentiumPC". Next I would love to increase the RAM size to 8GB if possible, next replace the GPU from a GT 610 to some old GTX. For the CPU, that rests for the future, but I see a Core 2 Quad carrying the "Old Mushroom Jr." The journey is not ended yet, I hope this PC will carry on till the last power spark going into it... Thank you for sticking on with me on my journey of "the 13 year old experience"... Check the gallery for all pictures I found of this PC!
picture of the XP desktop taken on 06.04.2021 character on wallpaper: "Zero Two" from "Darling In The Franxx" original source: https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/67649511 (source find thanks to "jwi", one Razorback member)
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