The UCS Rage 500 PC

The device referred to as "UCS Rage 500" is one of those computers that has possibly the patchiest and most boring stories behind it.

It was, after all, just another PC.

It was, after all, just a stock-standard PC that I had hoped my then-fiancée would practice her fledgling art and computer skills on, and that's what I eventually bought for her on 09-06-2000 for the sum total of R4290.00 from a company called Universal Computing Systems in Pretoria.

· Mini AT tower case ("UCS Rage")
· Matsonic M748LMRT system board with:
— Onboard 56kbps modem, 8MB shared VGA, Fast Ethernet, 32-bit sound
· Intel Celeron / 533MHz CPU
· 64MB RAM
· Seagate 8.4GB hard drive
· 1.44MB floppy drive
· 52x CD-ROM
· Acer 7234e 14" SVGA CRT monitor
· Pair of speakers
· Genius mouse
· CD with drivers + Corel WordPerfect Suite 8

The warranty was voided the moment the machine got home and a Memorex CD-RW4224 burner was added. Windows 95 OSR2 was loaded afterwards, and my fiancée soon began to ignore the machine after I promptly took it over to make music mixes on. In April 2001 it was had to be upgraded to Windows ME so that we could make use of its USB ports.

After we emigrated to Germany in 2001 my wife largely continued to ignore the PC -- other than playing MS-PacMan and the odd bit of typing work. She recently remarked that it had been "useless without internet", although that's not entirely true: it did have a built-in modem and later a D-Link Wi-Fi card for a while -- but surfing wasn't exactly a memorable experience.

The CD-RW drive eventually found its way into another PC while this one was retired and packed away in 2008. Occasionally it got used for Frankenstein-like component recoveries or tests.

Despite its surprisingly flexible motherboard, in June 2012 the UCS Rage 500 PC was stripped of further parts and all remaining dignity before it was unceremoniously discarded.

The end.