Tony is a Geek

So, I finally managed to take a week off... no work stuff was done during this time period ( at all ).  Very hard to resist, but I forced the scenario.  How?  Well, I took a photo of my home/office work desk area, attempting to fix two old PCs and get the netgear pci cards to work ( I failed ).  How did this prevent me from doing work/work?  Well, here is the photo in question: ....and when I looked at it I realised I had subconsciously made a "Sam cave" ( rewind many years ago to a nice old gentleman who I once knew, ex-marconi, fixer of PCs, loved drinking guinness / whiskey, wore sandles all year around, bearded, pot belly, coded in C - the stereotype before the stereotype was made cool - he had a home/office that had a desk and his chair in the center, everything else was stacked around him.  There was only his chair, that, I'd like to believe is so that you could enter the room, stand near the door, but not get too comfy or outstay your 10 minute welco...

Okay, so these particular one's are not "new", they have been sitting on the shelf for the past few years gathering a bit of dust.  I did stick 2xAA batteries in the back (as that is all they need), but they turned on and went straight off again.... I assumed they were broken or something.  Then I found the CMOS battery slot hidden behind the IR cover, swapped that out for a new one and plugged the external PSU for the Atari Portfolio (more about that later!) in and lo'and'behold, we have working devices!  I started with the 1MB model, just to make sure I didn't fry anything and then I moved over to the more "precious" 2MB model.  I also switched out the Duracell batteries for rechargeable ones and then had to find out how to "up" the contrast so I could see stuff! Well, I was mightily impressed by these little devices, they are awesomely powerful with their little 486 motherboards and no moving parts.  They run MS-DOS v5 too...  I'll f...