Work Journal
For Week of August 16, 1999
Page Updated Wednesday, December 22, 1999 10:01 PM
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I over clocked the Intel Celeron 300A processor in my main workstation. I cranked it up to 450 by adjusting the CPU speed in the CMOS. My Abit BH6 mother board is what Abit calls a pin-less board which means all the settings are modified via software. The only time I consciously notice a speed difference is when I open an application. I have been running the computer this way for a few days with no ill effects so far.
I have one PC which has both a SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM. I was wondering how good the CD support on a Windows 98 Startup disk is so I booted the SCSI PC with it. It turns out that the Windows 98 Startup disk has pretty good SCSI support as all my SCSI devises are visible and functional.
During some cleaning I came across a second RS-232 cable for my UPS. I tried swapping it for the one I have been using. The second cable would not allow Power Chute to talk to the UPS so the UPS and server were left running when I ran a test scheduled shut down.
I also came across a CD which came with my Abit motherboard but the CD did not hold any information which would help me configure the board so when the UPS powers-up again that the server would start as well.
I may have found a case I can use to hold the floppies and CDs I am putting together for my Windows repair kit. I found an old daytimer case which I used some years ago. It is a good quality case with zipper and good quality binder in it. It is a bit bigger than I what I thought I would like but it also has pockets for business cards, notes and a pen which increases its usefulness beyond just carrying floppies.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
My mother likes several things about her Armada Laptop. She always comments on how nice the screen is, and also finds that the glide-pad has a better feel to it than her old laptop. She likes the backup routine I setup for her, as she has more confidence in it than her old method of using WinZip to zip files up on a floppy. She never used WinZip enough to feel comfortable with it.
I am slowly but surely getting my Windows repair kit put together. I started working on labels for the diskettes using an Avery label template in word.
I have to go though my TechNet CDs and update the binders. This way I can use the nice envelopes the CDs come in to hold CDs and floppies in the daytimer I am going to use carry my Windows repair kit around in.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Ever have a friend or client who has set the boot.ini startup list show time to zero to save on boot time, but then later needs to boot to VGA mode cause they installed a bad video driver. At first it seems like they stuck but are not. It is quite simple to get through this situation.
When you see "Press space bar NOW to invoke Hardware Profile/Last Known Good", press the space bar to bring up the Hardware Profile screen. When you have the Hardware Profile screen up you can try booting to the last known good configuration or you can press F3 to bring up the startup menu and select VGA mode so you can boot up and change the video driver.
Where you get into a tight spot is when the time to wait for user intervention for selecting a hardware profile is set to 1 or 2 seconds. You have to be quick and hit the ESC key to stop the counter countdown so you can make a selection from the list of hardware profiles. You can also press the F3 key to bring up the startup list, or alternately you can press the L key to start from the last known good configuration. Interestingly if the counter time is set to zero the screen comes up and waits for user intervention.
I haven't had time to do much testing but the same basic rules mentioned above appear to work Windows 2000 too.
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I had to do installs of both Windows 95A and 95B tonight so I could make startup disks. My only copy of Windows 95A is an upgrade and I had to dig up disk one of the install media for Windows 3.1 so that the install program could find a valid upgrade product so I could complete the install.
This reminder of requiring a valid upgrade product to complete an installation means I had better add a copy of the Windows 3.1 install disk 1 to my Windows repair kit.
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There was a good article on security on the SlashDot News web page on Tuesday. It can be found at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/08/17/1327246&mode=thread. Explains how the less is more principal to computer security can be very effective if done properly.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I spent my day at work updating the applications on a Digital HiNote 575 laptop computer with Windows NT4 installed. Once I had the application installed and configured I went to test Dial-up Networking and the USR PC Card modem would not work due to an apparent problem with recourses. There is a program by SystemSoft called CardWizard installed on the laptop which is suppose to make managing PC Cards in Windows NT easier. I had no problems with a 3Com PC Card NIC but when CardWizard manages the modem, I think it uses the wrong driver, and I could not find a way to reconfigure the utility to use a different driver.
I was feeling a bit under the weather today so my mind wasn't very sharp. Hopefully after a good nights sleep I can find a fresh approach to getting the modem to work tomorrow.
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The home project today is cleaning up from the multiple Windows installs I did yesterday and install Novell 4.11. I have a few ideas for some projects which require a Novell server. I also like to setup a Novell server every once in a while to refresh my memory on what Novell looks like.
I went through my CNE Product Link CDs and find I don't have a copy of the beta of Novell's client32 for Windows 2000. A quick check on the Novell web page doesn't put me any closer to a copy of the client. I'll do a more thorough check of the Novell site tomorrow when I have more time.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I found Novell's Beta page today at http://support.novell.com/beta/, but the beta client for Windows 2000 is not available as a public beta yet.
Novell has there first TV commercial viewable on their web site. It debuted during the broadcast of a golf tournament Novell sponsored in Utah. From what I have seen Novell pass off as print advertising in the past and now a TV commercial, I continue to think that the people at Novell haven't a clue about advertising or how get people to care about their products.
Microsoft pervades the world conscious partially because most people work with Microsoft products in one form or another, as well Microsoft targets their advertising at the end user. The people that sign the cheques for the IT department are primarily computer end users themselves thus are well targeted by this advertising. They also hear from their IT departments more and more that they want money so they can manage the desktop better. They want to manage the desktop better because it is the one common point of access all users have with the network, and its easy of use and reliability is a reflection of how well the whole computing equipment for the business is managed.
Most people in a company don't care whether it is a Novell, Microsoft, Unix or whatever server they get their resources from or through. All they care is that recourses are available and working when ever they need them. Now back to my original point about Novell's advertising. They are trying to sell the backend. What they need to do is sell the backend through the front door which is the desktop. Sell that they can make the desktop better through high availability servers and desktop management tools such as Z.E.N.works. This I think would make Novell's advertising much more successful and in the end maybe make Novell and more successful company..
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I have house guests who have small children coming to stay for the weekend so tonight I am busy trying to get my house ready for children. The big project was getting the basement door installed so no little people go for a tumble down the basement stairs.
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My adventures at work with the Digital HiNote are winding down. When I finally got the modem to work today for the first time after much resource juggling Windows NT got terminal on me. I then had to put the existing drive image on the HiNote again and start over. With some help from drivers off the web I finally had the modem and NIC working reliably at the end of the day. I left work with an image of my working configuration being written to the network. Now if things go south again I will have the new disk image as a good starting point to work from.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I finally have PC Cards working reliably with NT Workstation on a Digital HiNote laptop computer. The CardWizard software used on the HiNote I found to be a good tool to inform you that NT recognizes a PC Card and also tells you how you should configure the resource. I tried to do the opposite and configure PC Cards in CardWizard to match the configuration NT wanted to use when the card was installed. I had mixed results trying this method. When I went the other way and used CardWizard as a guide I had very good success configuring and using PC Cards in Windows NT on the Digital HiNote.
If I booted the laptop with no modem card in it, I could insert the card while the laptop was running and CardWizard would inform me that the card had been installed and in which slot. As long as I had the card working in the laptop once before, the modem card would be functional and could be used to dial an ISP etc.
Then I had to tackle the port replicator. The port replicator was actually quite easy to work with. I created a second hardware profile to use only when connected to the port replicator. I then connected the laptop to the port replicator and turned on the laptop. The mouse and keyboard connected to the replicator worked fine, I just needed to install the driver for the NIC built into the port replicator. Once the driver was installed and the laptop rebooted the NIC in the replicator worked.
When I then tested the undocked hardware profile I had a small problem that the port replicator driver would try and load. I modified the setting in Devices so that the port replicator driver would only load when using the docked configuration.
I did a few test boots using both configurations and encountered no problems. The NIC and modem worked fine in both configurations
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I have been looking at other web pages just to see how they are designed, and how they work. I like the way frames always provides access to a menu of my site, but dislike how seeing the URL to the page being viewed is not possible due to everything going through frames. This makes bookmarking places within my site impossible unless you right click on a link and open the page in its own window. The problem with this solution is that you lose the menu because the page is opened without frames being present.
I found one site where they use CSS to produce menus for site navigation. The nice thing about CSS is that it appears that full URLs for each page are show in the web browser address field.
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My house guests are on their way a day later than they planned, and are we are going to meet at the Calgary Zoo.
The Koala Bears which are not really bears at all, which are on loan to the Calgary Zoo from San Diego were very interesting to see. It was also interesting to people watch at the zoo as the animals seem to turn everyone into children again as they look in wonder at all the animals.
I normally do not spend any time around children. But when I visit friends or go places where there are lots of children I am always amazed by these little people from whom most adults could learn a lesson or two. They will talk and play with perfect strangers as if they had known them their whole lives, irregardless of colour, race, or religion.
If we all let some of the child inside us out everyday I think the world would be a much better place.