CRASHED

My computer hard drive crashed this past week. Now, this goes way beyond data and bytes and backups. I was saddled with the job of installing a new one. Being a good ole' country boy from rural South Carolina (a redundancy?) I had to strip away my typical crude tendencies to complete such an intricate, sensitive task.

I was raised to work on my own car and cut my own grass, so what could be so hard about working on a computer? I mean a man can do anything he sets his mind to, as long as he is willing and he starts his day with a good bowl of grits right?

I do have to admit, the precision involved in computer applications is a little more complicated than digging a post hole or bailing hay. Well, anyway, I put on my trusty "Red Man" chewing tobacco hat and proceeded to pop the top on my computer. What I saw inside was a formidable conglomerate of confusing circuitry. This was no John Deere I was working on.

I put my hammer down and decided to read the installation instructions. The first word I recognized was "motherboard" but, this one was alot more delicate than the plank my momma used to whip us with. And the "floppy" I read about here was alot different than the ears on our old hound dog, Blue. Before this turns into a "Hee-Haw" skit, I should note that I actually know alot about computers. But could there be anything worse than a country nerd? Garth Brooks singing about the internet love: "It's Either, I Be Lonely or IBM."

I called my friend Greg to come and give me some help. I knew he had installed a hard drive in his computer before and I could use a second opinion. Needless to say, Greg is from the mountains of Tennessee so, he had a skewed point of view too. I knew it would be trouble when he showed up with a roll of duct tape and some clothes hangers. We decided on a strategy over an RC cola and some moon pies.

Greg started reading the instructions as I carried them out on the computer. After reconfiguring the CMOS followed by the mounting of the Maxtor 2500RTL 2.5 Gig drive, I interfaced the IDE connector to the lateral controller card. I then set the parameters, first by sector per track then by cylinder type, followed by setting the jumper switches to the appropriate master and slave specifications. Ha ha! This was as easy as slopping the pigs after a Sunday peanut boil.

Not unlike changing the brake shoes on a 67 Impala, this job just needed teamwork. And, I didn't have to lather up with GoJo afterwards. I booted up my computer, made a few simple fine tunings and Voila, we were done. Well, done with the hard drive; we did still have to jack up the rear end and add the spoiler.

Billy Murphy 10/10/97