Back On The Air!

[bjarvis]

Around 10:30 PM last night, in the middle of catching up on LJ, my router died. It was a Linksys model which had been providing connectivity for my Linux box, iMac and multiple Windows PCs both 100baseT and 802.11g for 5-6 years. It was working beautifully one moment, then suddenly all lights but the red diag LED went out.

Power cycling the beast did nothing. On the chance it was overheating, I let it cool for an hour and retried it: no happiness.

Being a geek, I have an inventory of spare parts kicking around but the older Belkin 802.11b wireless router seemed to have difficulty of its own talking to our DSL modem. The wireless and routing functions otherwise worked well, but that's a small comfort when no one can reach the outside world. After tinkering & swapping cables for an hour, I gave up and went to bed.

This morning, I dashed down to Staples a couple of blocks away and purchased a replacement Linksys router (WKPC54G). I would have preferred more time to consider alternative models but frankly I'm booked solid this weekend so I have no time for a comprehensive effort. With the router down, I get no e-mail whatsoever and bounce messages start going out to friends who then start wondering aloud if I've been shipped to Guantanamo, kidnapped by aliens, brutally killed by a squirrel with an attitude or something like that. This is how rumours get started and it behooves us to head off these things as quickly as possible.

Anyway, the router was installed and configured within 5 minutes and all is superb once again. I still need to upgrade the firmware but I'll worry about that tomorrow.

Comments

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Aaaahhhh... So you have a computer parts box too eh? Same here - and I have a plastic Rubbermaid tub (smallish one) for A/V cables and other sundry wires and mics too. :-)

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have shelves, drawers and bins of spare bits. Some I have for nostalgia (two shoebox-sized 5 MB hard drives, a Mac Classic, two Commodore 64 computers, etc.) but occasionally it's damned useful to have extra 100baseT cards, internal modems, routers, cables, power supplies, CD-ROM drives, etc..

That said, I really should trash some of the surplus bits to clear away the clutter.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

You are worse then me then but when I've cannaballed a dead puter, I grab anything useable, mainly CD ROM drives and the like. I even have 2 extra keyboards, one of which is crappy but functional. My old MB/processor/memory, an old power supply that may or may not be good, extra computer speakers and such.

I still have the 4x CD ROM drive my Dad purchased in 1995, still works too but it's not in service though.