As Christmas was rolling up at full speed, I set out to prep a decrepit PC for a second wind. Over the summer I came into the possession of a Gateway Astro (circa 2000) to be handed down to a lucky seven year old girl. This is one of those PCs that really should have been trashed a few years ago, but there is a certain kitsch factor to it – like the PC equivalent of a Mac SE.
Given the intended use there was no need to gut everything and do a full-fledged update, after all that 13.9″ CRT wasn’t going anywhere. I investigated what I was dealing with (besides many scary dust ferrets hidden inside):
- 433MHz Celeron CPU
- 128MB PC100 RAM
- 60GB HDD (obviously updated somewhat recently)
- CD ROM and Floppy drives
- Windows 2000
Huh, pretty pathetic, but it’d be fine for running a web browser. First order of business was a complete tear down and clean up. Then on to a few updates inside. I replaced the CD drive with a CD/DVD player (no need for a burner here). Then I bumped the RAM to 256 – unfortunately the max the system could take. I removed the floppy altogether – just part of my civic duty to eradicate them. Lastly I moved on to dumping Win2000 and loading XP.
The next phase was more fun, and frankly what would matter most to a first grader. It was time to make this odd duck fit for a princess. I decided on a two tone pink color scheme and began giving all the case pieces a light sanding. After several coats of paint and lacquer it was looking downright…cute. I proceeded to amp it up with a hot pink cold cathode which would illuminate the now vacant floppy slot.
I ordered a new keyboard and mouse to go along with it – the old ones were SO old. And beige. Unfortunately, when the new mouse/keyboard combo arrived it was more purple-ish than bright pink as expected. Not one to compromise, I disassembled the mouse and keyboard and painted them to match! You can see a bit of the color difference in one of the pictures of the keyboard.
I was happy with how everything turned out, but our niece was even happier judging from her Christmas day squeal of excitement.
