[vox-tech] Toil! But success

[MB]

Bill,

That sounds great!  I still have not found that modem.  It's probably 
hiding under one of those big piles of #%@! on my desk.  Anyway, glad 
you got things running.  That box should last quite a while as it has a 
bunch of memory and a speedy little amd.

Mark

Bill Kendrick wrote:

>Man, I just had fun(tm) getting this new box I bought from Mark Breitung
>working. :^)  It's got a rather old network card, which happens to have
>three connectors on it (10BaseT, the RJ45 style we're all used to these
>days, as well as BNC and something that looks kinda like a joystick or MIDI
>port.. AUI, I think it's called?)  It's a 3COM Etherlink III '3c509(b)' card.
>
>It seemed the EEPROM was set to make the thing always try and use the BNC
>connector, so I was never able to get onto my network.  I finally
>discovered a tool called '3c5x9setup' which can write new settings to the
>EEPROM.  Of course, a lot of my problem is I still don't understand those
>oldfangled IRQs and IO Ports.  I'm used to "plug it in, it works" from the
>good old days of one-vendor computing (read: Atari 8-bit, and Apple Macintosh)
>
>I seriously hate hardware and PCs, by the way. ;^)
>
>
>Anyway, no network?  Let's try a floppy disk!  Install mtools.
>WHAT!?  Debian Potato want's X-Window common stuff, too?  Force the hell
>through that.  Dumb old Debian! :^)
>
>Okay, mtools installed.  Oh wait, the floppy's not working!  Seems we plugged
>the cable in backwards. ;)  Easy fix.  But oh no!  Having trouble reading the
>disk!  Is the drive broken!?  No... just an old disk.  WHEW!
>
>Okay, time to crack this puppy open.  Erg... install bzip2 and libraries
>off the CDROM, THEN crack it open.
>
>
>Then finally, under Knoppix, after much tweaking and testing, I was FINALLY
>able to ping my router.  Then my other desktops.  HUZZAH!  I've got network!
>
>Time to apt-get dist-upgrade to the latest stable (Woody).  WHEW!!!
>
>
>I'm glad I didn't give up.  And I REALLY thank Knoppix for its help
>(detected lots of useful info when it booted up).  I'd be pretty lost,
>since I've honestly not done very many Linux installs... and I always stick
>to the same set of hardware (Soundblaster, Tulip-based Netgear, etc.)
>
>I almost feel like I'm ready to help more at Installfests.
>Wait, what am I saying!?!? :^) :^)
>
>
>Anyway, thanks again for the box, Mark.  Sorry to rant.  I'm sure if I were
>doing this with the more popular OS (Windows), I'd be just as lost... if not
>MORE lost.  (Most info I found while Googling for this net card was posts
>from people using Linux, even though I didn't include "linux" as a keyword :) )
>
>I made the mistake of telling my dad I've got a computer, and he's already
>asking me when I'm delivering it.  D'oh!  Gotta install some software first,
>dad! ;)
>
>-bill!
>bill@newbreedsoftware.com           "Hey Shatner, ya remember that episode of
>http://newbreedsoftware.com/bill/   Space Trek where your show got cancelled?"
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