Avi's Computer Lives On

Maintaining Avi's computer, the one that he built when he was 14, remains a mission of mine. At the very least, I want to maintain its appearance.

Several months ago, the computer began intermittantly to fail to boot. The reason was not obvious as there were a number of possible causes.

It turned out that it needed a new hard drive, but Avi's motherboard did not support my first choice, a SATA-2, for technical reasons not readily apparent. Avi and I would have searched the Internet together to learn about the imcompatability.

I had several questions that I wish I could have asked him, including the location of his motherboard manual and the drivers disk. The former was easy enough to locate on the manufactuer's website. The latter, however, had the needed drivers for the motherboard, without which I could not install Windows XP Pro on the new hard drive or set up an ethernet connection to get on the Internet.

Thanks to my studies and software from instructors, I resolved the issues. Avi's computer savvy would have rivaled, if not surpassed, that of my instructors.

The computer became the family PC since Avi's death. I set up users accounts for each member of the family, including one labeled "Zichron Avi" (Avi Memorial), which has his Super Mario Brothers wallpaper. I plan to set up the rest of his desktop so that I can use Avi's links to computing, Internet and security resources as I progess in my studies.