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The small monitor is not dead.
Jun. 8th, 2005 02:05 pmYay! Eric didn't find any problems with it at work yesterday, though he said one moth flew out when he opened it up. No cocoons inside, thank goodness! It just wasn't getting a signal or enough power or something.
We plugged it into a kitchen outlet and it powered on. Then we powered it off and hooked it up to my laptop. It worked great! That left either the graphics card or the surge protector as the problem.
We bought new surge protectors on sale a year or so ago, but we'd never installed them. Eric said he didn't believe the people who told me to replace them periodically. He's an electrical engineer, so I went along with him though I worried about it. I found them and started unravelling the tangle of cables behind my three tower PCs. All three had their cables back there. The two newest systems were hooked into a switch so I could have them share my monitor, keyboard and mouse. The mouse sharing never worked so that was disconnected. We'd bundled the trios of cables together so all of them were still there. As I disconnected everything it occurred to me the switching device was another possible problem. OK, then. Since I haven't used my Win 98 machine in over a year, I'd leave it disconnected and hook everything directly up to the XP PC. It took me a couple of hours to disconnect all the cables, untangle them, neatly coil them and sweep out the backside of the desk.
This task required me to lie on the floor on my side and shimmy my way between two computers because the cables have become rather short due to the massive tangle. I had to get back there to detach everything before I could pull the computers out to get easier access.
I discovered the rat had chewed through to copper on the keyboard cable close to where it attached to the switch box. That was before he threw the switch box down behind my desk. Luckily, I was still using the cheapo keyboard from when he'd chewed completely through my ergonomic one. I guess the jabanero sauce had worn off. He had also bitten through the sound cable for the secondary speaker on my 98 machine. Oh well, that's just a regular sound cable and is easily replaced. It made me glad that he'd pushed my XP speakers off the desk early on! He is named Braticus for a reason, the brat. He isn't shoving all his trash off the back of the desk anymore, thankfully. Since he pushed most of my equipment off the desk there aren't places to hide and he doesn't feel safe running around on the desktop anymore. Now he dumps his trash off the front of the desk where his cage is.
While I was wrestling with cables, speakers, switch boxes (I had another for the old printer) and the three computers, I noticed a phone jack on the 98 machine. Ooooh! I'd forgotten it had an internal modem! When Eric ordered my XP box, he didn't include a modem because we were networked. This is a problem because if I had a modem, the scanner and PC could be a fax machine! Once I had everything untangled, the area cleaned, and was about ready to put it back together in a better way, I washed my grimy hands and moved that modem to my current PC. Hmmm.. Neither machine had the covers screwed in place. I had the two screws from the newer machine but who knows where the screws are for the old one? I used one screw on each PC. Done.
I examined the three phone cords I'd untangled from the mix. All of them have damage of one sort or other. Two are rat chewed, one is bitten through on one side. You'd think I don't give him chew toys! I do. He especially loves the rubbery ones that feel like cables. I haven't tested the modem yet. I think I'll get another phone cord for that.
Since I haven't used the 98 machine in over a year, I decided to leave it disconnected for now. The 486 was definitely not getting hooked back up. I still want the contents of the hard drives because they have several of our Christmas cards on them, but I don't know how to get rid of the hardware anyway. Schools don't want computers that old and they're considered toxic waste. I changed the order of the machines under the desk. The 486 had been in the closest position to everything. As systems came in the door, they were put next to the active one. So the most current PC had cables stretched as far as they'd go without straining. The 486 is now the farthest away. I just moved the other two over and the cables now fit with lots of slack. I can even pull the system out a bit without a problem.
Hoping that the big monitor would work with the new surge protector and no switch box, I hooked it up and booted the system. Nope. It's dead. The small monitor worked perfectly. Yay! I lowered the resolution so I don't have to strain to read the text on it. Not sure I like that. I think I can increase the font size and leave the resolution larger but that will happen later.
Since I was doing maintenance work, I decided this would be a perfect time to add encryption to our wireless network. I've been meaning to do it forever. I've now done that, but Eric's laptop is being stupid and won't show the new network on the available network screens. It keeps showing Linksys and I've renamed it to something obscure. It used to be Scarecrow because we're Wizard of Oz fans. Now it's something completely unrelated, just in case our neighbors have been using our network and try to get back in by typing Tinman or Dorothy or whatever. Of course, they won't have the encryption keys.
I've already noticed a marked increase in response time online. I think someone must have been using our bandwidth. Ha ha! I'd love to see their face when they discover the free access is gone! Originally I left the broadcast SSID setting alone but changed it to not broadcast after I got everybody hooked up. This time, I changed it to not broadcast as I entered the new SSID. In case you're wondering, I lost my ID and Password to the router so I had to reset it back to factory settings.
Now if only Eric's stupid laptop would connect to the network! It likes the key I gave it but it says it has limited or no connectivity. Argh. I guess the HP support page is my next stop. It's a lot easier if everything is the same brand. His is built-in, unlike the external NIC card on my laptop.
Homework.. I really need to get to my homework. This wasn't supposed to take five hours.
We plugged it into a kitchen outlet and it powered on. Then we powered it off and hooked it up to my laptop. It worked great! That left either the graphics card or the surge protector as the problem.
We bought new surge protectors on sale a year or so ago, but we'd never installed them. Eric said he didn't believe the people who told me to replace them periodically. He's an electrical engineer, so I went along with him though I worried about it. I found them and started unravelling the tangle of cables behind my three tower PCs. All three had their cables back there. The two newest systems were hooked into a switch so I could have them share my monitor, keyboard and mouse. The mouse sharing never worked so that was disconnected. We'd bundled the trios of cables together so all of them were still there. As I disconnected everything it occurred to me the switching device was another possible problem. OK, then. Since I haven't used my Win 98 machine in over a year, I'd leave it disconnected and hook everything directly up to the XP PC. It took me a couple of hours to disconnect all the cables, untangle them, neatly coil them and sweep out the backside of the desk.
This task required me to lie on the floor on my side and shimmy my way between two computers because the cables have become rather short due to the massive tangle. I had to get back there to detach everything before I could pull the computers out to get easier access.
I discovered the rat had chewed through to copper on the keyboard cable close to where it attached to the switch box. That was before he threw the switch box down behind my desk. Luckily, I was still using the cheapo keyboard from when he'd chewed completely through my ergonomic one. I guess the jabanero sauce had worn off. He had also bitten through the sound cable for the secondary speaker on my 98 machine. Oh well, that's just a regular sound cable and is easily replaced. It made me glad that he'd pushed my XP speakers off the desk early on! He is named Braticus for a reason, the brat. He isn't shoving all his trash off the back of the desk anymore, thankfully. Since he pushed most of my equipment off the desk there aren't places to hide and he doesn't feel safe running around on the desktop anymore. Now he dumps his trash off the front of the desk where his cage is.
While I was wrestling with cables, speakers, switch boxes (I had another for the old printer) and the three computers, I noticed a phone jack on the 98 machine. Ooooh! I'd forgotten it had an internal modem! When Eric ordered my XP box, he didn't include a modem because we were networked. This is a problem because if I had a modem, the scanner and PC could be a fax machine! Once I had everything untangled, the area cleaned, and was about ready to put it back together in a better way, I washed my grimy hands and moved that modem to my current PC. Hmmm.. Neither machine had the covers screwed in place. I had the two screws from the newer machine but who knows where the screws are for the old one? I used one screw on each PC. Done.
I examined the three phone cords I'd untangled from the mix. All of them have damage of one sort or other. Two are rat chewed, one is bitten through on one side. You'd think I don't give him chew toys! I do. He especially loves the rubbery ones that feel like cables. I haven't tested the modem yet. I think I'll get another phone cord for that.
Since I haven't used the 98 machine in over a year, I decided to leave it disconnected for now. The 486 was definitely not getting hooked back up. I still want the contents of the hard drives because they have several of our Christmas cards on them, but I don't know how to get rid of the hardware anyway. Schools don't want computers that old and they're considered toxic waste. I changed the order of the machines under the desk. The 486 had been in the closest position to everything. As systems came in the door, they were put next to the active one. So the most current PC had cables stretched as far as they'd go without straining. The 486 is now the farthest away. I just moved the other two over and the cables now fit with lots of slack. I can even pull the system out a bit without a problem.
Hoping that the big monitor would work with the new surge protector and no switch box, I hooked it up and booted the system. Nope. It's dead. The small monitor worked perfectly. Yay! I lowered the resolution so I don't have to strain to read the text on it. Not sure I like that. I think I can increase the font size and leave the resolution larger but that will happen later.
Since I was doing maintenance work, I decided this would be a perfect time to add encryption to our wireless network. I've been meaning to do it forever. I've now done that, but Eric's laptop is being stupid and won't show the new network on the available network screens. It keeps showing Linksys and I've renamed it to something obscure. It used to be Scarecrow because we're Wizard of Oz fans. Now it's something completely unrelated, just in case our neighbors have been using our network and try to get back in by typing Tinman or Dorothy or whatever. Of course, they won't have the encryption keys.
I've already noticed a marked increase in response time online. I think someone must have been using our bandwidth. Ha ha! I'd love to see their face when they discover the free access is gone! Originally I left the broadcast SSID setting alone but changed it to not broadcast after I got everybody hooked up. This time, I changed it to not broadcast as I entered the new SSID. In case you're wondering, I lost my ID and Password to the router so I had to reset it back to factory settings.
Now if only Eric's stupid laptop would connect to the network! It likes the key I gave it but it says it has limited or no connectivity. Argh. I guess the HP support page is my next stop. It's a lot easier if everything is the same brand. His is built-in, unlike the external NIC card on my laptop.
Homework.. I really need to get to my homework. This wasn't supposed to take five hours.
