Success on one front. I have internet connectivity (typing this on my BSD machine…see). All I had to do was plug in the appropriate hardware (and ethernet NIC) and I was up and running. Thanks Desiree!
Success on another front. I have sound…or rather I have proved that I could have sound. I plugged in my other speakers. I think they are incorrectly powered for this machine (this thing only produces sound through powered speakers) because they don’t sound right. While I have sound, for some reason the CD Player thing doesn’t produce it. I am wondering if it is a memory problem. I suspect yes because even when I click the “test” button for sound it takes about 15 seconds for the test to actually sound off.
Now I have to see about getting the printer running. Then I will have a proper running home machine.
To answer your comment from the previous post, Grumpy Z:
Yes, internet. Yes, office (excel-like, word-like, powerpoint-like). I know the least about Quicken so I can’t say there is something that full featured out there. Yes, home network. That is actually what UNIX excels at. In fact a machine like this (UNIX, BSD, Linux, etc) is really good as a web server, or a file server, or a print server (which I have in mind for it), although this PC-BSD distribution is intended as primarily a desktop solution and there are others specifically “built” for those other purposes.
Boy that got long. All I intended to say was I have PC-BSD mostly running.
blief 
I have an old PC that is sorely in need of a new operating system. Hopefully one that works.
I tried to find some information on that BSD OS, but all I could find was a download area and a lot of accessories. What does BSD stand for? Why did you choose it?
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From Wikipedia entry:
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) is the Unix derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley starting in the 1970s. The name is also used collectively for the modern descendants of these distributions.
I chose this PC-BSD variant for approx 3 reasons (depending on how you slice it)
1) I wanted to install some version of Linux on this machine and started at Wikipedia for an introduction to the latest and greatest.
2) One of the articles linked to FreeBSD which a guy I worked with used to blather on about. (Blather in a good way Jordan. 🙂
3) I picked PC-BSD because I wanted it to be easy and as user friendly as possible just to get my feet wet…I didn’t want to have to do a bunch of command line/terminal work if I didn’t have to…yet.
Depending on the specs of your old machine I wouldn’t recommend PC-BSD because the one I have is only about 4-5 years old and with the amount of memory it has (64MB RAM) keeps it on it’s knees.
I don’t have another recommendation in the meantime, for older/slower machines. But they are out there, and I may have some soon.
We need to get another tech night going.
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Great information! Thanks! I found an article on PC-BSD a couple of minutes before I found your reply, and it is all starting to make sense. It says that PC-BSD is a fork of UNIX that is more similar to Solaris and Mac OS X than it is to Linux.
My old PC has 32MB of RAM, and it runs at 133Mhz, so BSD may be too much for it. Maybe I should go ahead with the boat anchor plans. This current PC has 512MB though, and runs at 1.2Ghz, so it would work just fine.
All of my software would need to be replaced. Ouch! But I’ve already tried a couple of open-source programs and have no problems with them. I may not make a clean break, but I can certainly begin moving in that direction (as you have).
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Paaaaleeeeeese Enough already, what I really want to read about is little missy, big missy and/or missy’s daddy, NOT BSD!
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Monya, you should go look up “little missy” on Wikipedia and see what it says.
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What are you seeing? Cause when I look it up I don’t get anything?
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I’m with Theresa. Enough computereeze. Can’t you guys pick up the phone for cryin’ out loud? I may discontinue my subscription if we don’t see more photos and gardening tidbits. Does Angela still live there? Mamma mia!
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