Work Journal
For Week of August 2, 1999
Page Updated Wednesday, December 22, 1999 10:01 PM
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I got the external CD-Rom which goes with the NEC laptop today. It is a Sony external CD player which has a PC Card SCSI adapter. The current install of Windows 98 on the laptop has never has the CD player attached. I plugged power adapter in and connected the cable between the player and the SCSI card, then inserted the card into the laptop. Windows 98 recognized the new hardware, installed the driver and added the CD as a new drive letter. All very slick and simple.
My beta copy of Office 2000 on my Windows 2000 test machine expired today. I haven't had this system running for a while. I set the clock date in Windows back to January and was then able to start Outlook which is the only Office 2000 application I had installed.
I copied the data off the NEC to put on the Armada the other day. I found that not all to the data had been recovered last month when the laptop had crashed, so I had to go through the data dump on the Novell server to find the data I missed. Now I want to burn a CD with all the data to make the transfer to the Armada easier. I put a Zip drive with the data off the NEC on a networked PC. Now the data can be moved to the NT server from where I can access it with my production PC which has a CD writer.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I picked some LS-120 Super Disks for the Armada which I had hoped to receive today. Unfortunately the supplier is running a bit slow so I have to wait till tomorrow to get it.
I plan to do some testing with the LS-120 drive before I ship the Armada to my mother in a few days.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
It seems that every time I go to a visit a friend or relative who has a computer there is something that needs fixing and half way through the repair job I find that I need a Windows Startup Disk. The same type of thing happened at work where Partition Magic would have been handy but my copy is at home, and the company doesn't have a copy.
Partition Magic is one of those utilities you should not leave home without. The DOS version can be put on a boot disk to carry as part of a tool kit. It can be used to delete NTFS partitions which fdisk cannot, convert fat32 partitions to fat16 and vise versa, resize partitions etc..
I have finally started to build a tool kit which will hopefully go with me where ever I go ( it should get packed along with my tooth brush as a necessity on all trips ). I have started with a Windows 98 Startup Disk to which I added scandisk and sys. The nice thing about the Startup Disk Windows 98 creates is that it provides you with a startup menu with the option to startup the PC with or without CD-ROM support. The CD-ROM support is nice as it gives you the ability to access CDs from which you can reinstall the Operating System or access a CD with some additional utilities on it.
Other things to add to the kit are Startup Disks for Windows 95A and 95B. I have learned from experience that if you have to work on multiple versions of Windows that having a boot disk from the particular version of Windows you are working on can be a life saver. I also need to create a rdisk for Windows NT.
For now the disks are going into my tool case with my screw drivers. I need to look for a case just for the disks and the CD I am going to make with a few utilities like Check-it and Norton Utilities on it.
***
The power just went down in the house for a second. Just long enough for all my PCs to shut down and for me to lose all the work I had done since my last save. Lucky I have a habit of saving quite often.
This event also reminds me to do a full data backup tonight.
My internet access has gone along with the power. I have reset the cable modem to see if that will help. The modem is not getting a signal on the cable after resetting it.
I shut my PC off and unplugged the power cord for the modem and left them off
for 20 minutes. I plugged the modem back-in and powered up the PC and now my
internet access is working again.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
At last the Armada is in town and is being delivered to my house tonight. The Armada is a Compaq 1750 notebook computer with a 333 Pentium II processor, 64 MB RAM and a 6 Gig hard Drive. I ordered it with Windows 98 but it came with Windows 95. I let the Compaq auto-install setup Windows 95 so I could take a quick look at what it installed. I also swapped the floppy drive for a LS-120 drive. A hot swap did not work so I had to reboot for the LS-120 to work. I copied a few directories to it to test it. I makes a fair amount of noise but transfers files fairly quickly.
I want Windows 98 on the Armada mostly for USB support. So I booted with a Windows 98 Startup Disk with CD support. I used fdisk to delete the primary partition and created a new primary partition. There was also a Compaq Diagnostic Partition which I left in place cause it is required to change hardware settings. I went into the hardware settings and changed the boot sequence to Multi bay first, Optical disk bay second, and hard drive bay third. I tried to boot to the CD which failed so I booted with the Windows 98 Startup Disk and started the install of Windows 98.
The first problem I ran into was that the Fn key seems to be stuck so it took a bit of figuring to input the correct key strokes to change drives, then directories and start the install. Some of the keys double as a numeric keypad and with the Fn key stuck I kept typing numbers instead of letters. This also caused problems inputting the key code for Windows 98. I found that by pressing Fn + Num lock I could fix my little problem.
I downloaded the latest drivers from the Compaq site and burned them on a CD so I can install them on the Armada. If I dedicate this CD to drivers when ever my mom visits I can update the CD for her so she can have the latest drivers for updates. I installed the video, audio and modem drivers. the video is great. 1024 X 768 looks wonderful. The audio is crisp and clear. I tried to record some sound with the built in microphone but even with a load voice the output is minimal.
More to do tomorrow and the weekend with the Armada. I want to experiment with the LS-120 drive, setup internet access, install software, and transfer data.
***
I had a visitor in the Silicon Patch today. The Simian Man ( I could use his real name but that would not be as much fun ) swung in and delivered the Armada to me. He is the first person other than relatives to get the nickel tour of the Silicon Patch to see the collection of PCs I have which make-up my local area network.
The Simian Man is a good friend who I met while working a contract doing computer support for a large company in Calgary. We keep in touch sharing computer knowledge, and jokes.
How he got the handle Simian Man is not easy to explain so I won't bother even trying. I must admit his nick name makes for strange and humorous comments at times.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Went to a birthday party for one of the people I work with so I didn't get any work on the Armada done.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Started installing software on the Armada and no problems arose except for one dll file was causing problems for an old Family Tree program my mother uses. I reinstalled the Family Tree program and the problem was solved.
I have setup the old NEC laptop in the living room so I can type notes while software installs on the
Armada which is setup on the kitchen table. It has been a long time since I last had a computer setup in the living room. When I lived in Winnipeg I had a full desktop PC
compete with internet connection in the living room. If I find I like having a
computer in the living room again I may setup a network connection there for the
laptop so I can access network resources.
The Fn + Num Lock function which makes select alpha keys act like number keys to
create a number key pad, is active each time the Armada is booted which is very annoying. I need to find how to change this setting.
Tried using the DOS version of Partition Magic to resize the one large partition
on the Armada so that I can create a second partition for data. The DOS version would
hang up on me so I had to install the Windows version to get the work done.
Made a d: partition for data and copied all the data off the CD to the d: drive. I put a new LS-120 disk in the A:
drive, then wrote a batch file which copies the contents of the d: drive to a LS-120 disk.
I created a shortcut on the Desktop for the batch file which closes the Dos
Window when the batch file is complete. This creates a quick and simple backup
routine. The code for the batch file is as follows:
@echo off
cls
@echo on
@echo --- Please close all applications ---
pause
@echo off
cls
@echo on
@echo --- Put LS-120 disk in drive A: ---
pause
@echo off
cls
@echo on
d:
cd\
xcopy *.* a: /s /e /Y
@echo --- Contents of D: drive have been copied to LS-120 ---
pause
This will only work as long as my mother has less than a 120 Mb of data ( the capacity of a LS-120 disk ). At present she has approx. 40 Mb of data so I can't see there being a problem for a while. I have tried to make the backup process simple and straight forward in hopes that my mother will make regular backups. The main reason for spending the extra money on the Armada instead of a less expensive model was to be able to have an internal LS-120 drive to use for data backups.
I am trying to get my mother using Outlook 2000 which I have installed for her. To make the backup easy I deleted the default pst file and created a new pst file for her on the D: drive. This way when ever she does a backup her Outlook data will be backed up as well. This is likely to be the data file which will eventually put her over the 120 Mb capacity of the LS-120 disk. When she reaches this point I will have to develop a new backup routine for her which will either span multiple disks or breaks up the backup into two parts. One part will backup only Outlook data one one disk and the second will backup all other data on a second disk.
So far I am very happy with the internal LS-120 drive. It has an acceptable data transfer rate, and you can boot from bootable floppies and LS-120 disks in the LS-120 drive. The only thing you have to get used to is that the disk ejection mechanism is electronic so the laptop has to be powered up to eject a disk. The drive is also a bit noisy.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Finished off work on the Armada by testing the modem and the TV connection. The modem worked fine but I could connect at only 28.8. This shouldn't surprise me as I have never been able to get fast modem connections from my house. The modem is slow to make a connection, but I was working off the battery which may have some affect on the modem. I went back and tested the modem while connected to AC power and the modem performance did not change.
While testing the modem I got to see how my web site loads while connected at 28.8 and was pleased to see how quickly it comes up. This should not be a surprise as the site is text based and the only graphic is on the home page.
The TV connector was a disappointment. There is a built in RCA jack in the Armada to connect to a TV. The quality of the picture this feature produces is not good. Everything is hazy no matter what resolution is used. The lower the resolution the easier text is to read only because it is larger, the quality did not change with a change of video resolution. I tested with resolution from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768. I also could not get the setup to work the way it should. The transmission of video would only start when I set things up in Display. Once the settings were saved the Fn + F4 switch would change the display from TV to the LCD panel but would fail to change the display from the LCD to the TV. To get a picture on the TV I would have to go back into Display and apply the settings again. This feature is a waste of time, effort and money from what I can see. It is a good party trick at best.
I wish I had more time to spend with the Armada but my mother has work to do which requires its use. So now I have one last data backup running and then I have to pack the Armada and ship it to Winnipeg.