Hmm. Well, that was interesting.

I've got my old computer, the one I replaced with this shiny new homebuilt one, the old box with old drives and old old old written all over it.

I decided hey, I'm bored and have a spare box. I'll install Fedora Core Linux on it and play around, use it like a crash box, test things without actually fucking up a live Linux box at work.

Here I sit, merrily watching FC5 installing. It asks for install disc 2, which I give it and turn back around to wait for that to finish. Before I can turn around, however, it throws me an interesting error. "Not enough free space. Exiting install."

Hmm. Okay. I chalk this up to having improperly allocated partitions in the pre-install phase. I figured I'd just restart the install process and do it differently this time, pay more careful attention to the install guide sheet I've got on one of the other boxen.

Perhaps you've heard a "clunk" from your computer in the past, as it attempts to access a hard drive. For those who have never experienced this, let me try to explain. "Clunk" is the sound of a hard drive refusing to spin. "Clunk" is the sound of a dead drive, so far as my talents are concerned. Needless to say, "clunk" is a bad sound, and tends to be followed by the computer user making a similar sound. "Fuck."

For the technically inclined and interested, what I've got in there for hard drives are a 4GB Maxtor as /dev/hda and an 80GB Maxtor as /dev/hdb. Bootstrapping shows /dev/hda responding normally; there are reported seek errors when attempting to access /dev/hdb, however, exiting with an opcode of "unknown." The BIOS identifies the drive correctly. When the install and/or rescue programs are seeking it, however, I hear said distinct "clunk" and get basically a locked-up computer as Fedora tries in vain to get around the fact that /dev/hdb is giving it the silent treatment.

Now, Fedora Core generally takes up about 10GB of space, and that's before you allocate any space for user directories. As you can see, I've only got a 4GB drive to spare. Here's where the request comes in: Should anyone out there have a spare IDE hard drive of 10GB or more lying around, I would be thrilled to put it to good use. Now, this is a crash box. It is a spare time project. It is not worth spending actual money on, is what I'm saying. If you have a drive that is sitting there doing absolutely nothing, I'd thank you kindly for the having of it. If your drive could still be of use to you, thank you anyway. Definitely do not offer me a new drive for this thing. It's not worth it. (David, I am looking specifically at you when I say that, you read me?)

So, yeah.