*yawns*
I have just stayed up all night, fixing the router here at home, so that the internet connection would work for those who want it when they get up in the morning.
You see, I was at a friend's place, when the phone rang, and was handed to me. When the first words out of my mouth were "is the boot floppy in the drive?", everyone around me either laughed or groaned; they knew what the call was about.
Last night, there was lightning about, and plenty of it, too. Probably three strikes in a 200 metre radius of my house (including a spectacularly bright -- and loud -- one in the backyard of my neighbour's place). So, first thoughts are to turn all sensitive electronic equipment (read: computers) off. This was not a problem.
The problem came about when I had already left, and the computers were turned back on again. My brother had forgotten to plug the modem back in (understandable, if you had any idea how many cords there are around that area of the house), and because of this, the internet connection didn't start routing through automatically. Realising what he'd forgotten, my brother plugged things in properly and rebooted the computer. Unfortunately, on attempt number two, the floppy became corrupted, and as such, the machine wouldn't boot into linux (as it should). Instead, a very old install of Windows 98 came up (one which I hadn't seen for a fair while).
So, because I'm tired, I'll cut out a lot of the details and get to the crux of things. I came home, and realised that I needed a computer with a working floppy drive, and either linux or a working cdrom drive instaled (for reasons that I can't be bothered to go into right now). Unfortunately, none of the computers available met these criteria, so I had to go parts scavenging, and then transfer data via floppy over multiple trips (something which I'd hoped to leave behind in the 20th century. No such luck.)
So, credit where credit's due. Thank you to ltools and tomsrtbt, both very handy collections of software which I was lucky enough to have lying around (as trying to get my hands on them in the wee hours without a working net connection would have been a bit of a task).
And now, bed. Sorry for the rant, for those who couldn't care less. I'll just stick in a few tags so that you have to click to see that mass of text that I just wrote.
You see, I was at a friend's place, when the phone rang, and was handed to me. When the first words out of my mouth were "is the boot floppy in the drive?", everyone around me either laughed or groaned; they knew what the call was about.
Last night, there was lightning about, and plenty of it, too. Probably three strikes in a 200 metre radius of my house (including a spectacularly bright -- and loud -- one in the backyard of my neighbour's place). So, first thoughts are to turn all sensitive electronic equipment (read: computers) off. This was not a problem.
The problem came about when I had already left, and the computers were turned back on again. My brother had forgotten to plug the modem back in (understandable, if you had any idea how many cords there are around that area of the house), and because of this, the internet connection didn't start routing through automatically. Realising what he'd forgotten, my brother plugged things in properly and rebooted the computer. Unfortunately, on attempt number two, the floppy became corrupted, and as such, the machine wouldn't boot into linux (as it should). Instead, a very old install of Windows 98 came up (one which I hadn't seen for a fair while).
So, because I'm tired, I'll cut out a lot of the details and get to the crux of things. I came home, and realised that I needed a computer with a working floppy drive, and either linux or a working cdrom drive instaled (for reasons that I can't be bothered to go into right now). Unfortunately, none of the computers available met these criteria, so I had to go parts scavenging, and then transfer data via floppy over multiple trips (something which I'd hoped to leave behind in the 20th century. No such luck.)
So, credit where credit's due. Thank you to ltools and tomsrtbt, both very handy collections of software which I was lucky enough to have lying around (as trying to get my hands on them in the wee hours without a working net connection would have been a bit of a task).
And now, bed. Sorry for the rant, for those who couldn't care less. I'll just stick in a few tags so that you have to click to see that mass of text that I just wrote.