In early 2000s Greece, affordable Intel Pentium systems were everywhere—often assembled with cheap, incompatible components made in China. Backup solutions were still bulky and expensive, making data loss a constant risk. My first computer was one of these unreliable machines, an Intel Pentium 3 2.66 Ghz / 512 DDR3 running Windows XP and it would go on to play a pivotal role in my early recordings—before meeting a frustrating, untimely demise.

It was on this system that I recorded Perdition in 2004, along with countless other musical and lyrical ideas. Unfortunately, what I suspected to be a failing memory module caused frequent blue screens of death. Strangely, unplugging and reattaching the module allowed the system to boot normally, making it just functional enough to keep using.

Seeking a proper fix, my cousin, an IT instructor at the local polytechnic, introduced me to one of his students, allegedly an excellent technician. Trusting his expertise, I left my machine at his shop with clear instructions. But fate had other plans—when the system miraculously powered on without issue, the so-called expert decided formatting it was the best course of action.

That single decision wiped out hundreds of song ideas, including fully completed tracks. I wasn’t just frustrated—I was devastated. Even the technician, who had only met me twice, immediately recognised the gravity of his mistake and didn’t charge me, clearly hoping to defuse the situation. Despite the setback, I wasn’t entirely left empty-handed; I still had hundreds of ideas shelved and, thankfully, Perdition had been transferred via an external backup during a file exchange.

The computer itself refused to go down quietly. Even after multiple repairs—including a motherboard replacement at a shop recommended by Chris Gioldasis—it eventually became completely unsalvageable. The shop owner, who also ran an internet café where I used to work, played a role in securing some of the early deals for the band, making this a strange, full-circle moment in our early days.

My late friend Labros had a particular fondness for this ill-fated machine. He jokingly named it Euclid, after the computer in Darren Aronofsky’s π, cementing its place in our inside jokes about my uncanny bad luck with technology. And with the countless crashes, blue screens, and catastrophic data losses, it certainly earned its legendary status.

The story was first published on https://phaseship.com/2024/10/11/back-on-track-8-hypoxia/ and this article is based on elements found there.