[Geek] And the downside of technology
Apr. 20th, 2004 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenJust made a splendid carrot/sweet potato/plantain/okra/pea phall tonight, as I didn't have anything else in to use with all the veggies in the fridge. It slid down very pleasantly while watching ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sinnymaker's copy of Finding Nemo - which evokes lovely memories of a very pleasant evening with theladyeve in late summer.
Came upstairs to submit an article and discover that my broadband connection has died. Try to reconnect... no joy. Reboot the firewall... and it won't. It's died again. Second time in a few months. It is, naturally, a really bad time.
It won't even start in single-user mode. Aaaaargh.
So. Find an old PC with PCI... check. Carcase of an old P75 (with Overdrive chip) given to me by David Morton. No RAM. Bugger. Find the RAM bag... there's 2 8MB EDO SIMMs. Try that. Works: 16MB. Good. Need more than that though... What are these? Try them... 4s. Bugger. 24MB's not enough. What about these? Old double-siders. Mismatched but the same number of chips. Suck it and see. Yay! 32MB! That'll do.
Right. Connect floppy drive. No cable. Bugger. Scavenge fromsheridanwilde's PC, the CPU of which I still can't sodding find. Doesn't work. Remove PSU; adjacent IDE cable, the orientation of which I copied, is in the wrong way round. Fix both. Floppy now works.
Find a hard disk... Hmmm. 850... too big. Might have a use for that. 420... perfect, that'll do. In it goes. Find a CD-ROM - old 4X, might work, don't know. Try it. Turn it on... good grief! Windows 98! Wonder whose that was? No CD. Hmm.
Find the Smoothwall floppies from last reinstall... It boots. It finds the CD! Hurrah! Set it going just to see... Yup. No NIC, though.
Find the bumper big bag o' NICs. Pick a random one... ISA. Yeah, that'll do. What is it? NE2000+. $DEITY knows the settings. And a USB card... there's one around somewhere. VL-bus EIDE, nope. PCI 3D card, nope. Ancient ISA NIC, nope. Aha! Gotcha. Plug in random USB ADSL modem for testing.
Right, let's see if Smoothie'll autoprobe this NIC. Nope. Bugger. Figures. OK, pick a value... I like to use &300... from memory, the syntax goes "ne io=0x300". Stone me! Look at that! Right first time!
And so Setup finishes and I have a Smoothwall. Doesn't recognise the modem but I thought it wouldn't.
Remove CD, remove floppy, disable the ports... No serial, no parallel, no floppy, no CD. No mouse, natch. Mount HD in place. Find the lid, stick it on. Plug in all the cables... No hard disk. F-ing marvellous. Disconnect, lid off: cable's the wrong way round. [Sigh] Rectify, reassemble, reconnect...
It boots! Change the ADSL modem type to Speedtouch... Upload the firmware... Set the PPP values... Doesn't work. Bum. Reboot. Nope. Check the login name... Ah. Oops. Try again... nope. Reboot. Nope, timeout error. Reboot again... Bingo! We're off! Or rather on.
Well, that was an exciting way to spend a few hours. There's something about a cobbler's children's shoes that seems very applicable. Still, it's good to know the piles of antiquated kit I have around the place do have their uses sometimes.
Moral: prepare your backup machines before you need them. [Note to self: try to find out what's wrong with the old one and fix it BEFORE you need it. Bet I won't.]
Conclusion: Smoothwall Express 2.0 is a very nifty little piece of software.
Right. Now. [Deep sigh] Linux pictures for this article...
sinnymaker's copy of Finding Nemo - which evokes lovely memories of a very pleasant evening with theladyeve in late summer.Came upstairs to submit an article and discover that my broadband connection has died. Try to reconnect... no joy. Reboot the firewall... and it won't. It's died again. Second time in a few months. It is, naturally, a really bad time.
It won't even start in single-user mode. Aaaaargh.
So. Find an old PC with PCI... check. Carcase of an old P75 (with Overdrive chip) given to me by David Morton. No RAM. Bugger. Find the RAM bag... there's 2 8MB EDO SIMMs. Try that. Works: 16MB. Good. Need more than that though... What are these? Try them... 4s. Bugger. 24MB's not enough. What about these? Old double-siders. Mismatched but the same number of chips. Suck it and see. Yay! 32MB! That'll do.
Right. Connect floppy drive. No cable. Bugger. Scavenge from
sheridanwilde's PC, the CPU of which I still can't sodding find. Doesn't work. Remove PSU; adjacent IDE cable, the orientation of which I copied, is in the wrong way round. Fix both. Floppy now works.Find a hard disk... Hmmm. 850... too big. Might have a use for that. 420... perfect, that'll do. In it goes. Find a CD-ROM - old 4X, might work, don't know. Try it. Turn it on... good grief! Windows 98! Wonder whose that was? No CD. Hmm.
Find the Smoothwall floppies from last reinstall... It boots. It finds the CD! Hurrah! Set it going just to see... Yup. No NIC, though.
Find the bumper big bag o' NICs. Pick a random one... ISA. Yeah, that'll do. What is it? NE2000+. $DEITY knows the settings. And a USB card... there's one around somewhere. VL-bus EIDE, nope. PCI 3D card, nope. Ancient ISA NIC, nope. Aha! Gotcha. Plug in random USB ADSL modem for testing.
Right, let's see if Smoothie'll autoprobe this NIC. Nope. Bugger. Figures. OK, pick a value... I like to use &300... from memory, the syntax goes "ne io=0x300". Stone me! Look at that! Right first time!
And so Setup finishes and I have a Smoothwall. Doesn't recognise the modem but I thought it wouldn't.
Remove CD, remove floppy, disable the ports... No serial, no parallel, no floppy, no CD. No mouse, natch. Mount HD in place. Find the lid, stick it on. Plug in all the cables... No hard disk. F-ing marvellous. Disconnect, lid off: cable's the wrong way round. [Sigh] Rectify, reassemble, reconnect...
It boots! Change the ADSL modem type to Speedtouch... Upload the firmware... Set the PPP values... Doesn't work. Bum. Reboot. Nope. Check the login name... Ah. Oops. Try again... nope. Reboot. Nope, timeout error. Reboot again... Bingo! We're off! Or rather on.
Well, that was an exciting way to spend a few hours. There's something about a cobbler's children's shoes that seems very applicable. Still, it's good to know the piles of antiquated kit I have around the place do have their uses sometimes.
Moral: prepare your backup machines before you need them. [Note to self: try to find out what's wrong with the old one and fix it BEFORE you need it. Bet I won't.]
Conclusion: Smoothwall Express 2.0 is a very nifty little piece of software.
Right. Now. [Deep sigh] Linux pictures for this article...
