I~~~~~~am a motherboard, working inside a desktop computer. When I left the factory, an Intel i845d chipset was implanted into my brain, so everyone calls me 845. I’m the longest-serving member in the office. Besides doing my own job, I’m also responsible for arranging office positions for every new coworker, and in daily life I have to pass messages for them too. After a long time, everyone respectfully called me a model nanny. No wonder my proper name is “motherboard.”
My closest coworker is BIOS. He too was soldered onto me back at the factory. Even though some people think he’s just an accessory of mine, I’ve always treated him as my most intimate and most loyal friend. Every time a power-on request comes in, I simply turn on the power, and leave everything else to brother BIOS. BIOS is very popular around the office. Every day he warmly checks on all the coworkers. If anyone has so much as a headache or fever, he reports it to me to handle, and if a new coworker joins or someone skips work, he records every bit of it. BIOS is in good health and almost never gets sick, unlike that big hard disk, which gets infected by some kind of virus every so often. But on October 26 this year, brother BIOS came down with a strange illness that scared everybody badly. The owner secretly told me that this illness was equivalent to the human SARS virus, and even gave everyone a long vacation. In the end BIOS was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with a CIH virus infection. He stayed there for half a month before recovering, and even had several thousand cc of blood replaced, which kept me by his side every step of the way.
The twin sisters South Bridge and North Bridge have also been my best friends ever since we left the factory together. Girls are more obedient and clever, and they’re eloquent too, so I let them pass messages among the coworkers. South Bridge is responsible for communicating with the I/O ports and IDE devices; North Bridge is responsible for dealing with the CPU, memory, and graphics card. With them by my side, my work is much easier. But the tacit understanding among us made the Creative sound card that joined later jealous to death. He often moans for no reason with that old poem: “Had the east wind not favored Zhou Yu, the two Qiaos would have been locked deep in the Bronze Sparrow Terrace in spring.” Actually I know the owner only likes listening to pop songs, so there’s no way he’d let the Creative sound card play that sort of stuff. He belongs to the type that does private work during office hours.
Among my close friends there are also the sound card and graphics card, both integrated on me. But my owner didn’t seem satisfied with them, and forcibly stuffed a Leadtek graphics card into the AGP office area. Of course South Bridge, North Bridge, and I spoke up for our own brother, so we joined forces and deliberately “accidentally” dropped some of the Leadtek graphics card’s data. The result was of course that the Leadtek card got fired, while our own graphics card stayed on the job. After that the owner stuffed a Creative sound card into the PCI office area. This time we didn’t dare drive him away, afraid the owner would get angry and fire all of us. But because of the special relationship between the original sound card and me, he wasn’t laid off. Every day he didn’t have to work and could still laugh and chat with the other coworkers. Disaster turned into good fortune, and he became the happiest one in the office.
The busiest and also the sloppiest one in the office is Intel’s CPU. They all say his family is smart, but their names are really rustic and totally uncreative. His grandpa was called Pentium 2, his dad was called Pentium 3, and he himself is called Pentium 4. I hear the several generations on his mother’s side also have pretty rustic names, all called Celeron-something. I joked to him, “In the future, don’t let your son be called Pentium 5. Look at AMD’s kids—Duron and Thunderbird are both pretty good.” The CPU grinned foolishly and answered, “Uh-huh, my niece has quite a special name. I gave it to her myself—Tualatin.” Although the CPU is very enthusiastic about work, he often leaves North Bridge beside him dirty all over. Because of this, cleanliness-loving North Bridge keeps complaining to me that the CPU’s stinky sweat and the dust he keeps shaking off are unbearable for her.
Other than suggesting to the owner that he replace the CPU’s fan with a CoolerMaster pure-copper ultra-silent one, there’s nothing else I can do. After all, he’s the employee most favored by the owner. Whenever the owner introduces his machine specs to friends, he always shows off the CPU. I really can’t understand why humans are so hypocritical, not mentioning a single word about me, this loyal motherboard. Could it be my fault that I’m good and cheap! Originally I didn’t want to talk about other people’s privacy, but ever since Mu Zimei published her sex diary, the whole social atmosphere has completely changed. Even the honest big hard disk in our office put his first love online, and after that the memory also publicly exposed its own diary. Since that’s how it is, I’ll talk about our big hard disk’s love affair too:
Actually, every flirtatious little move between the big hard disk and that IBM notebook hard disk could never escape my eyes, because every bit of data they exchanged had to go through South Bridge and North Bridge in the end, which meant it was under my control. This isn’t hindsight. From the very beginning, when the IBM notebook hard disk came, I didn’t agree. First, the office was too small. Many times I asked the owner to move us to a bigger room, but he just wouldn’t agree. Later he said the IBM notebook hard disk was only a temporary worker, here for one week, so only then did I reluctantly make room for her in a spot near the corner. Second, all this time the coworkers had all gotten along fine with the big hard disk. I was afraid everyone wouldn’t adapt to the new coworker and that conflicts would arise when exchanging ideas. There was another reason too: the two older brothers of that IBM notebook hard disk who had come to develop in China—IBM 40G hard disk and IBM 60G hard disk—would often throw away data for no reason, refuse to work, and shamelessly refuse to apologize to Chinese users. Even I, with 5/6 American blood, felt the IBM family had gone too far. But honestly speaking, the newly arrived IBM notebook hard disk was still quite satisfying at work. She had 2M cache, spun at 7200 RPM, and was gentle and delicate-looking as well. No wonder the big hard disk gradually fell for her.
At first all the coworkers thought well of this pair, but one day the monitor told everyone shocking news: “Online they say the IBM notebook hard disk is going to marry the Hitachi hard disk as a concubine!” The big hard disk was furious. He went to the IBM notebook hard disk and asked whether it was true, whether she liked him or that little Japanese guy. The IBM notebook hard disk was heartbroken, and through tears said: “Big hard disk, my heart will always be yours.....” That night they swore eternal love and spent a night together in deep passion. The next day, the big hard disk woke from his sleep, looked at the empty data cable beside him, and sighed to the heavens: “Ai, Japanese, I cannot live under the same sky as you!” From then on the big hard disk was depressed, worked very sluggishly, and all day long sank into painful yet sweet memories. We advised him to pull himself together, to put his career first and not be troubled by feelings, but the big hard disk only gave a bitter smile and said, “Love—you’ve never experienced it, so you’ll never understand.” None of us had ever been in love, so we could only stare at each other.
On a stormy night, the keyboard suddenly told me a piece of terrible news: the owner had decided to format the big hard disk. I sensed the seriousness of the situation, and instructed the monitor to remind the owner: “you will lose all data on 大硬盘,proceed with format?(y/n)”. The owner muttered, “faint, why did it come out in Chinese this time,” and resolutely pressed ‘y’.
A bad premonition rose in my heart. This time I didn’t notify North Bridge, but went personally to the big hard disk:
“I know it’s hard to forget someone, but you can’t live in memory for your whole life. Forget her. Erasing that memory might make things easier for you.”
The big hard disk looked up to the sky and sighed: “I can’t do it, I can’t do it. Good brother, help me with one last favor. From now on, don’t send signals through the data line between me and the IBM notebook hard disk anymore. On that data line are the tears she shed when we parted. I hope to be buried or discarded together with the data line she once used......”
230 milliseconds later, the owner saw the big hard disk’s final work report on the screen:
...... track 0 bad, disk unusable ......
My closest coworker is BIOS. He too was soldered onto me back at the factory. Even though some people think he’s just an accessory of mine, I’ve always treated him as my most intimate and most loyal friend. Every time a power-on request comes in, I simply turn on the power, and leave everything else to brother BIOS. BIOS is very popular around the office. Every day he warmly checks on all the coworkers. If anyone has so much as a headache or fever, he reports it to me to handle, and if a new coworker joins or someone skips work, he records every bit of it. BIOS is in good health and almost never gets sick, unlike that big hard disk, which gets infected by some kind of virus every so often. But on October 26 this year, brother BIOS came down with a strange illness that scared everybody badly. The owner secretly told me that this illness was equivalent to the human SARS virus, and even gave everyone a long vacation. In the end BIOS was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with a CIH virus infection. He stayed there for half a month before recovering, and even had several thousand cc of blood replaced, which kept me by his side every step of the way.
The twin sisters South Bridge and North Bridge have also been my best friends ever since we left the factory together. Girls are more obedient and clever, and they’re eloquent too, so I let them pass messages among the coworkers. South Bridge is responsible for communicating with the I/O ports and IDE devices; North Bridge is responsible for dealing with the CPU, memory, and graphics card. With them by my side, my work is much easier. But the tacit understanding among us made the Creative sound card that joined later jealous to death. He often moans for no reason with that old poem: “Had the east wind not favored Zhou Yu, the two Qiaos would have been locked deep in the Bronze Sparrow Terrace in spring.” Actually I know the owner only likes listening to pop songs, so there’s no way he’d let the Creative sound card play that sort of stuff. He belongs to the type that does private work during office hours.
Among my close friends there are also the sound card and graphics card, both integrated on me. But my owner didn’t seem satisfied with them, and forcibly stuffed a Leadtek graphics card into the AGP office area. Of course South Bridge, North Bridge, and I spoke up for our own brother, so we joined forces and deliberately “accidentally” dropped some of the Leadtek graphics card’s data. The result was of course that the Leadtek card got fired, while our own graphics card stayed on the job. After that the owner stuffed a Creative sound card into the PCI office area. This time we didn’t dare drive him away, afraid the owner would get angry and fire all of us. But because of the special relationship between the original sound card and me, he wasn’t laid off. Every day he didn’t have to work and could still laugh and chat with the other coworkers. Disaster turned into good fortune, and he became the happiest one in the office.
The busiest and also the sloppiest one in the office is Intel’s CPU. They all say his family is smart, but their names are really rustic and totally uncreative. His grandpa was called Pentium 2, his dad was called Pentium 3, and he himself is called Pentium 4. I hear the several generations on his mother’s side also have pretty rustic names, all called Celeron-something. I joked to him, “In the future, don’t let your son be called Pentium 5. Look at AMD’s kids—Duron and Thunderbird are both pretty good.” The CPU grinned foolishly and answered, “Uh-huh, my niece has quite a special name. I gave it to her myself—Tualatin.” Although the CPU is very enthusiastic about work, he often leaves North Bridge beside him dirty all over. Because of this, cleanliness-loving North Bridge keeps complaining to me that the CPU’s stinky sweat and the dust he keeps shaking off are unbearable for her.
Other than suggesting to the owner that he replace the CPU’s fan with a CoolerMaster pure-copper ultra-silent one, there’s nothing else I can do. After all, he’s the employee most favored by the owner. Whenever the owner introduces his machine specs to friends, he always shows off the CPU. I really can’t understand why humans are so hypocritical, not mentioning a single word about me, this loyal motherboard. Could it be my fault that I’m good and cheap! Originally I didn’t want to talk about other people’s privacy, but ever since Mu Zimei published her sex diary, the whole social atmosphere has completely changed. Even the honest big hard disk in our office put his first love online, and after that the memory also publicly exposed its own diary. Since that’s how it is, I’ll talk about our big hard disk’s love affair too:
Actually, every flirtatious little move between the big hard disk and that IBM notebook hard disk could never escape my eyes, because every bit of data they exchanged had to go through South Bridge and North Bridge in the end, which meant it was under my control. This isn’t hindsight. From the very beginning, when the IBM notebook hard disk came, I didn’t agree. First, the office was too small. Many times I asked the owner to move us to a bigger room, but he just wouldn’t agree. Later he said the IBM notebook hard disk was only a temporary worker, here for one week, so only then did I reluctantly make room for her in a spot near the corner. Second, all this time the coworkers had all gotten along fine with the big hard disk. I was afraid everyone wouldn’t adapt to the new coworker and that conflicts would arise when exchanging ideas. There was another reason too: the two older brothers of that IBM notebook hard disk who had come to develop in China—IBM 40G hard disk and IBM 60G hard disk—would often throw away data for no reason, refuse to work, and shamelessly refuse to apologize to Chinese users. Even I, with 5/6 American blood, felt the IBM family had gone too far. But honestly speaking, the newly arrived IBM notebook hard disk was still quite satisfying at work. She had 2M cache, spun at 7200 RPM, and was gentle and delicate-looking as well. No wonder the big hard disk gradually fell for her.
At first all the coworkers thought well of this pair, but one day the monitor told everyone shocking news: “Online they say the IBM notebook hard disk is going to marry the Hitachi hard disk as a concubine!” The big hard disk was furious. He went to the IBM notebook hard disk and asked whether it was true, whether she liked him or that little Japanese guy. The IBM notebook hard disk was heartbroken, and through tears said: “Big hard disk, my heart will always be yours.....” That night they swore eternal love and spent a night together in deep passion. The next day, the big hard disk woke from his sleep, looked at the empty data cable beside him, and sighed to the heavens: “Ai, Japanese, I cannot live under the same sky as you!” From then on the big hard disk was depressed, worked very sluggishly, and all day long sank into painful yet sweet memories. We advised him to pull himself together, to put his career first and not be troubled by feelings, but the big hard disk only gave a bitter smile and said, “Love—you’ve never experienced it, so you’ll never understand.” None of us had ever been in love, so we could only stare at each other.
On a stormy night, the keyboard suddenly told me a piece of terrible news: the owner had decided to format the big hard disk. I sensed the seriousness of the situation, and instructed the monitor to remind the owner: “you will lose all data on 大硬盘,proceed with format?(y/n)”. The owner muttered, “faint, why did it come out in Chinese this time,” and resolutely pressed ‘y’.
A bad premonition rose in my heart. This time I didn’t notify North Bridge, but went personally to the big hard disk:
“I know it’s hard to forget someone, but you can’t live in memory for your whole life. Forget her. Erasing that memory might make things easier for you.”
The big hard disk looked up to the sky and sighed: “I can’t do it, I can’t do it. Good brother, help me with one last favor. From now on, don’t send signals through the data line between me and the IBM notebook hard disk anymore. On that data line are the tears she shed when we parted. I hope to be buried or discarded together with the data line she once used......”
230 milliseconds later, the owner saw the big hard disk’s final work report on the screen:
...... track 0 bad, disk unusable ......
弄花香满衣，掬水月在手。
明月鹭鸟飞， 芦花白马走。
我自一过后，野渡现横舟。
青云碧空在，净瓶水不流。
http://dos.e-stone.cn/guestbook/index.asp
＝＝＝＝＝＝中國DOS聯盟＝＝＝＝＝
我的新网页http://rsds.7i24.com欢迎光顾
明月鹭鸟飞， 芦花白马走。
我自一过后，野渡现横舟。
青云碧空在，净瓶水不流。
http://dos.e-stone.cn/guestbook/index.asp
＝＝＝＝＝＝中國DOS聯盟＝＝＝＝＝
我的新网页http://rsds.7i24.com欢迎光顾
