Slowly, one piece at a time, my home office is coming together.
When I first moved into my new office, I lined the walls with white plastic indoor/outdoor tables. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it’s what I had on hand at the time. Susan suggested I buy some white table tops and matching legs from Ikea, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make my own tables out of plywood… and then didn’t do it. Two months later, Susan wanted to make a trip to Ikea for her own office needs, and while we were there she talked me into buying the white table tops. She suggested I buy the legs at the same time, but I didn’t want to do that, either. I told her I would build legs for the table tops when I got home… and then didn’t do it. After another month, I ended up ordering the legs online.
I could have been done with this project four months ago if I had just listened to Susan.
The tables are laid out like a letter “M”, and the left side of the room I’ll be dedicating to old computers. Right now I’ve got a Raspberry Pi acting as my Commodore 64, PyANS (another Raspberry Pi that displays ancient BBS ANSI artwork), my MiST FPGA machine (currently configured as an Amiga), and my old DOS machine (486 DX4/100). The last piece of the puzzle was a PS/2 keyboard, which my sister was able to provide after digging through some old piles of hardware.
The right hand side is a bit more serious, with my main workstation and my work laptop. I’m not 100% sure what I’ll put on the island that juts out. It would be nice to have a clean, flat surface for working on occasional projects, although I know I have a tendencies to turn clean, flat surfaces into piles of odds and ends very quickly.
The old computer display/selection is not complete. This weekend, I’ll be replacing the Raspberry Pi C64 setup with my original vintage C64. I also need to break out my Apple //e and get it set up. When we moved into this house I made a commitment to myself that whatever I didn’t have room for and/or wasn’t going to enjoy, I would get rid of. I will be putting that commitment to the test very soon.
I have six retro computers hanging on the wall behind me in my office, with an Amiga 500 and C-64 on tables below them. I’ve gotten a few compliments on them during/after Zoom meetings.
That project took me (checks calendar)… about eight years.