zmajček

(Machine, USA)

Traditionally, starting with Njujork, we gave the server, as the strongest box in the house, some descriptive name. It would usually be Zver (beast) or Azdaha (aždaja/aždaha, female dragon) or Zmaj (dragon) or some such. When I finally got my own machine in 1999 (the previous ones don't count as mine, they were at least half owned by DBA or Avai, and even though I did pay them this way or other, I didn't have much of a say what went inside, I got what was available or set aside for me, for the time until it got sold), and then Go's machine a couple of months later, we got this longish cable, about 20m, made by Ted, stretched it across the house, and made a home network. And the machines had to have names... so mine became Zmajček. Officially Zmycheck. It's a slovenian diminutive form of zmaj, i.e. means little dragon in slovenian, and I think they called their national (hockey? basketball?) team zmajčeki.

The first incarnation of it had a 200MHz Celeron and perhaps 16M of memory, wasn't much of a beast, hence the diminutive. Tower box, strong as hell, can climb on it, from CompUSA.

During 2003, the system was on the f: drive and the rest on g: (d: and e: in previous incarnation), because someone at Redmond thought it would be cool. And it was, for a while, but then they changed their mind, because a heap of software couldn't follow that - even at the time I was finding lots of apps which would still write to locations at c:\windows and below. Some were completely unable to launch without a c: drive.

In december 2004, I got something through Ricardo, in a different box, while the original gathered dust. Actually won it on eBay, for some 370$ (AMD 2600+ 512MB 40GB 52X CD-RW) and crammed it into the box he had, with a sliding drawer on which the motherboard goes.

Some time in winter 2005 I had to do something quick for Gary, and discovered that I don't have disk space to do it. Rushed out to the nearest shop some time in the evening and got me a 90G disk.

Then in 02-III-2006. I got it updated to #3, back in the old box. I put some stuff in the other box and briefly experimented with LAMP stack in june that year, between the UniJewel and Sean gigs, imagining a MyHood social platform, where anyone could post what's up (a dance, movie, sport event etc) which would be served to the visitors by geographical preference. Installed BSD Unix, set up Apache, MySql, learned enough PHP and got a first couple of pages working in two days. It got nowhere, because I got busy with the next gig.

Two weeks later I replaced the monitor with ViewSonic 19"8MS DVI VA1912wb. It still works when needed, is attached to Neša's spare machine that he uses during visits.

The Sony 200$ dvd burner, bought in 2003 or so, has finally died, so in january 2007 I bought a LG GSAH22N for 35$ (via Newegg). It worked at least a dozen years, when it got forgotten. I'd burn the cds on nanovo when need be, which was about a dozen every six years. Two months later I bought a Sennheiser headset for 40$, needed that for skype chats in Firriver. Machine name at the time was Dragon, pun intended.

I was using the old 19" crt as my right monitor, upright (!) at the time, even though it lost the blue color and was showing various shades of red, green and yellow. On 20-XII-2007. I got a MNTR VWSNC|LCD 5MS BLACK Q20WB R and she got a Toshiba laptop.

Added a logitech 5.1 sound system 24-I-2008..

28-IV-2008. got a better monitor, at 1050 px height - the 1080 was the current standard for hi-def at the time, and those 30 extra pixels cost about 20% more, for which I didn't really care.

In august 2008, got a 640G WD disk, then another identical disk in december. Can't remember why, perhaps wanted to get rid of other disks. September, a drawer for external disk (25$) with its own power supply, IDE and SATA.

March 2010, a 90$ HD 1T SAMSUNG HD103SJ. In preparation for the big move. Also got batteries for the HP laptop, PSP and few other gadgets. July, moved to Serbia and left the Logitech sound with Nina and Ender, got some small 2x20W boxes by Genius, then about 2012 moved those to be used for gaming when they are here and got something 2x30W, again by Genius, still in use.

April 2010, it's zmycheck2 until december, then zmycheck3.

In september 2011 zmycheck4, than 5 in october (between 18th and 20th).

18-X-2011. got a new motherboard from Nena. Another one 15-XII-2015., though that lasted one day, then I tried to mount the processor myself but fucked up, having forgotten how ZIF sockets work, bent a few needles. Took it back to the shop (and a liter of brandy) and Rile said "why that board? I have a better one for you", so swapped that and his hardware guy put it together allright.

Around 15-I-2013. it suddenly became zmycheck7, just a few days after still being 5. Probably had to reinstall and tried some interim version of windowses, so 6 lasted just a couple of days and had to be replaced. Perhaps I switched from W2008 (problems with lack of sound, due to some fuckup at m$), to W7.

June 2013 (24-VI-2013.), it's zmycheck8. I'd say I had to reinstall again.

15-X-2015. next motherboard, MSI Krait with an 8-core Athlon processor. Along the way it got expanded from 8G to 16G, the LG dvd burner got disconnected, and two SSDs were added. Ditched the old monitors and took the two 1920x1200 that Go bought here in 2013.

May 2016 it's zmycheck9.

26-VIII-2016. I got fed up with m$ 's bullshit and uninstalled Windowses. Put 16.04 Ubuntu and then installed a W7 into a virtual box. This worked as long as I needed it. This led to split personality - the host system was zmycheck12u, and the one in the box was zmycheck12w. The boxed one was in use for almost three years, no updates allowed. Then I revamped it briefly in january 2020 when Gary needed his zod refresher, which turned into getting him a copy of Byo instead, and adding a few features to it. Then I closed the w7 again and haven't used it thereafter.

In october 2016, Ender was putting together a fancy player machine for Raja, with a foot long graphic card and liquid cooling. At the same time, he put a strong cooler into zmajček, because I got fed up with the noise from AMD's bundled cooler and fan. This thing has two 120mm fans, which rarely go over 900 rpm. Only on skype video call when it's fullscreen.

On 11-VI-2020. I finished switching to linux mint 19.3, and renamed the box zmycheck13u, though the u is now misplaced, but I did start with ubuntu the day before, and didn't think of changing the letter when it ended in mint. (checked: it's zmycheck13m now, probably remembered to change the u into m on second install - I installed twice because I was confused with grub2 still writing everything in /dev/sda1, so I thought I got the install wrong, but it was ok, my selection in bios was wrong)

Since then I have 5,12T of space - 2T on SSD, 1T on old Toshiba, 2T on Samsung and 0,12 on the little SSD.

19-IX-2020. the next motherboard. There was a brief powerout on 11th, which was resolved on 13th by resetting the CMOS; next one on 16th fried the old Crait motherboard, power supply and probably the processor - couldn't know because the guys didn't have any motherboard which would still run it. So on 22nd it got a new one, with new Ryzen 2600 processor. No installation of anything was required, linux just booted and remembered everything, including the position where it left off playing the last song in qmmp and the high scores in shisen sho.

Similarly when it crashed around 03-VI-2022. - I switched to linux mint 20.3, postgtres 12, all in a couple of hours. Hardware unchanged. I did fiddle with it for two more days, all the small stuff and whatever was disrupted by the crash - in the script which Byo left for insertion into postgres, there was a double dollar sign. I use these as placeholders during some operations, which usually finish in a second, well, this time one didn't so that stayed in the article. And that's a sign for start-end of a bloc in postgres, and its parser doesn't ignore it when between quotes. Ergo, trouble.

Current name is zmycheck14m. Checked now (march 2023) and it's just zmycheck14.

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Mentions: 11-XI-1999., 17-V-2001., 31-V-2001., 13-VI-2001., 08-VII-2002., 27-III-2004., 02-VIII-2004., 24-VIII-2004., 15-X-2004., 01-I-2005., 17-II-2005., 09-I-2006., 02-III-2006., 20-XII-2007., 24-I-2008., 28-IV-2008., 20-V-2008., 24-IX-2008., 06-XII-2008., 02-VI-2009., 27-VI-2009., 16-VII-2009., 05-IX-2009., 05-IV-2010., 07-VII-2010., 09-VII-2010., The big return, 15-VII-2010., 26-VII-2010., 12-XII-2010., 10-V-2011., 10-VIII-2011., 18-X-2011., 19-X-2011., 11-I-2012., 26-II-2012., 15-I-2013., 24-VI-2013., 28-X-2013., 11-II-2014., 02-IV-2014., 19-IX-2014., 15-X-2015., 10-XI-2015., 15-XII-2015., 25-III-2016., 25-IV-2016., 13-V-2016., 26-VIII-2016., 24-X-2016., 14-XI-2016., 06-XII-2016., 05-VII-2017., 30-XI-2017., 12-VI-2018., 05-XI-2018., 29-VII-2019., 11-VI-2020., 12-IX-2020., 19-IX-2020., 02-IV-2021., Change of horses, 20-VII-2021., 09-VIII-2021., 12-XII-2021., 25-III-2022., 03-VI-2022., 19-VI-2022., 05-VIII-2022., 12-VIII-2022., 19-VIII-2022., 30-VIII-2022., 25-IX-2022., 07-XI-2022., 28-XI-2022., 08-XII-2022., 19-II-2023., 18-IX-2023., 11-X-2023., The fire, 12-X-2023., 16-X-2023., 22-X-2023., 04-I-2024., 21-II-2024., 24-II-2024., Avai, Byo (Byo), DBA, Eleese Aquila (Eleese), Ender Aquila (Ender), Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Gary Brandywine, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Majkrosoft (m$), nanovo, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nevena Žaja (Nena), Njujork, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), Rista Stančulov (Rile), Ryu (Raja), Sean Chertoff, statcounter.prg, Ted Gulding, UniJewel, Zero Distance (Zero), zod, in serbian