620 Words

Eli Roland set his computer before him in parts, case open and barren, for parts scattered about his desk, tawning and rick and brilliant as he assessed each new old stock part. Yes. Yes, his 486 was ready for assembly. First entered the motherboard. It was a ghood one, he felt, perfect for assn IBM 486, or even a Pentium, if he dared upgrade later. Into this he slipped an IBM cpu into the ZIF soocket, and applied a small bead of thermal paste and spread it before he applied a heat sink, connecting it, screwing it in. He leaned back and removed the wrappings, stowing his paste away before studying his motherboard. With but a hand, he plucked up the AdLib card he'd bought years ago at Goodwill, and slot it in place snugly, before sliding in a graphics card. Doing thius, he leaned to peer at the p[orts, affirming it offewred suitable game ports. Pleased, he slowly set in the power supply ere he forget, connecting it carefully before adding the ethernet card. Merrily, Eli turned merry eyes ion his oprical drivers.

This was the serious work. Did he add 3'5 drives? 5"? Did he add CD-ROM? He considered, tapping his chin. He'd hoped by now he might afford himself a choice, but no... No he did not. Admittedly, he could add an SD card solution to mount disk images.

He had a lot of disk images.

Slowly, Elit reached, adding the controller daughterboard befotrte mounting the solutrion, neatly wiring it out of the maching for access. Admittedly, the solution meant he needed to use anm HDD, and he wasn't eager. Still... The whirr... Eli shook hias head, before fishing a Seagate 1GB drive out. It would serve him very well, he felt, and connected and mounted it. Satisfied as he tidied cables, Eli flit to his shelves.

He picked Windows 3.1 of course. He could install MS-DOS 6.0 foir it, and Eli beamed, booting the comoputer. BIOS greetted him like a nagging wife, but he knew this beast, and he sat. Oh, it would be hours. He could even be productive. power up like that cat he'd m,et would likely argue he should, but the male did not care today. Surely there were others. Surely. Besides, he wanted tyo play games on real hardware. Eli circled, fingers tented calmly as he regarded the machine. DOS would certainly take time to install, as would Windows. Nothing came easily with Reytro computers. Eli stretched thoughtfully. Yes, yes this machiune would play the Side scrolling Duke Nukums, possibly Myst or other fun games. The ideas made him smile, and he went to look over his backups. Oh, the games. Wolf 3D, Elder Scrolls Arena, and more;Commander Keen and othwer Apogee games; as well as their 3D Realms side. The idea was tantalizing as he loaded his SD card for the new machine, humming cheerily.

It took longer for DOS than he expected though. Once it installed, Eli had to test the DOS Installation first. It booted properly, and he beamed, wondering if he ought test thinga -- games danced in his mind as he ran basic tests. And it worked. Oh, how it worked, brilliant and gleaming in it's newness, old parts or not. li sighed contentedly, ans toyweed with his Windows disks, considering. Did he want to run that now? It did mean hours more of waiyting, diuskswapping, more waiting... Nope. He shut down his new machine and closed the case, sliding his SD card into it's mount before stretching, and powering. Sailor Gagarin beamed, and slipped out his window to disperse for a walk about town. When he finished, he had something to look forward to.