The (hopeful) immortal life of my Mac Tower

Birth

I obtained my Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.8 (Early 2008) from my company's "Internal Computing" department, after giving them the Windows desktop and SUN Microsystems workstation from a recently-laid-off co-worker in exchange. It came with 2 GB of RAM, and a 320 GB hard drive. It performed the same functions that the old SUN did (local development environment), plus had (most) of the conveniences of an office system (access mail, read documents, spreadsheets, et cetera). Life was good.

Bringing it Home

When my number was called to join the growing ranks of the previously-employed, they were allowing each of us to keep a computer, as a consolation gift perhaps. In the "out-processing line", a tech from Internal Computing gave me a choice of my laptop (a Dell Latitude, the specific model so unremarkable that I cannot recall what it was), or my desktop; I chose the desktop, which prompted the tech asking the question to comment, "Nice choice". After being sanitized for corporate data, I was informed that it was ready for pick-up.

Upgrades

• added second hard drive from generic Windows system after it was damaged in some manner; originally partitioned to serve as backup space to the other computers in the family, but rarely used for this
• in three different rounds, added pairs of 1 GB (once) and 4 GB (twice) DIMMS purchased from eBay, bringing its memory footprint from 2 GB to 4 GB, then 12 GB, then to its present 20 GB
• added a pair of 2 TB drives, then joined them together as a mirrored RAID drive to serve as a media repository
• added an unused second monitor; the aspect ratios are not the same between the two, but they still work
• added a PCIe wireless card (detailed below)

Breakdowns

The system has two internal Ethernet ports, so when one was knocked offline (likely from a lightning strike), I just moved the cable to the other port... until it too was disabled. Nothing I could do from a configuration or hardware standpoint would make it work again, so for a week, it sat offline... until I was able to run to the local "we have every part for everything you can think of" store, and picked up a PCIe wireless card (the first attempt at this involved purchasing a standard PCI wireline card, but as the system only had PCIe slots, this did not work). After agonizing over make and model in the "Network Adapters" aisle, and getting next to no help from the sales personnel nor from the labeling on the merchandise (yes, I know you are Windows-compatible, but what about Mac?), I finally landed on a review page from MacSales.com, which informed me that the TP-LINK N900 adapter was tested on my hardware. With zero config, it was plug and play.

Future

It still its original keyboard and mouse (the former is the large scale clicky-clacky type; the latter a 'Magic Mouse' that has been disassembled and glued back together). Strongly considering upgrading them to more modern versions, but had paused that while the networking was offline. The 'second' hard drive could be upgraded, but the RAID is only half-full now, so there is not a pressing need for more file storage. I have investigated upgrading the processor, but not unlike brain surgery, that seems more risky than simply adding memory or drives or an expansion card; one wrong move there, and it is Game Over.