Computer Fun

I'm sure you are all wondering what I was doing yesterday as I was trapped inside due to the snow. Well, I had a little project. And I spent pretty much all day yesterday, and much of Monday, working on it.

Warning: Long Geeky Computer Rant Ahead

I've been messing with computers for many years. My fascination with them started in elementary schools when the Renton school district got a roving computer lab of Commodore Pets. It visited virtually every school in the district, and was the first exposure many of us had to "real" computers (as opposed to game consoles). I strongly urged my family to get a Commodore 64 when they became available, and was delighted when my parents did decide to spring for one. My brother and I spent many hours learning all about the system, and loving most every minute of it.

Eventually, I learned other systems. When I got to middle school, the district got a whole lab of Apple IIe's for the school. I spent many many hours after school in that lab, riding the later running activity bus, just so I could learn more about those computers. I don't remember when my family got its first PC, but I played with that thing, too. I remember the absolute wonder of connecting to Prodigy, and realizing we were talking to people around the nation.

In college, I learned more. UNIX was the system of choice for the techies I hung out with, and I learned the basics. I also learned about MUDs, and spent a very memorable weekend playing and chatting with people across the world. For awhile I had a C64, but I couldn't connect to the internet with it, and I needed that.

When I married right out of school (to a man I originally met on Prodigy, no less), I was forced to use his Mac to connect to my ISP eskimo.com. I also kept my university account active until someone got wise and deleted it. After a year at my job, I was able to afford my own PC, which was running Windows 3.11. I later built my own computer with some advice and assistance from an old school friend. When we got cable internet, I set up a router so hubby and I could both access it (him on his Mac, me on my PC).

So I tend to think I know a lot about computers. Heck, I even volunteered at the senior center teaching seniors how to access e-mail during my period of unemployment. I'm confident enough to take on any challenge related to computers. And that is my downfall.

See, I know just enough to screw things up completely, instead of just mostly.

My thinking went along these lines: The laptop is very neat. I really like XP over Windows 95. My desktop would be much improved if it can actually run XP... and if it can't, I've got my Windows 95 disks to restore it. While there are several programs I don't really want to lose on the desktop, I can check to see if they run on the laptop first. Then maybe I should try upgrading the desktop.

So I did. I checked the main programs I didn't want to lose, and they worked fine on the laptop. Then I burned a couple of CDs with anything I thought might be useful from the desktop. Then I wiped the disks. The desktop has two harddrives in it, both about 3 gigs. I wiped them both, destroyed the obnoxious partitions I had to use under 95, and was cruising along.

The less said about the actual installation of XP, the better. It took considerably longer than I anticipated, and I was really glad I had the laptop connected so I could check on what I was doing wrong. At one point I started to seriously consider switching over to LINUX, even. But eventually it worked, and I was ready to start installing things. Except, something was missing. Something was wrong.

There was no sound. The sound card might as well have not existed. I checked and checked, but couldn't find any sign of it using any of XP's searching capabilities. I finally hunted down the type of card I have (by opening the case and looking, then hunting for the original drivers). After a couple hours of increasingly frustrated searching, I found that the soundcard, a MediaVision Jazz16, will not work under XP. Period. End of story. It will not work. You can't get updated drivers (believe me, I tried EVERYTHING). Now, the soundcard was always a pretty crappy little generic-y thing, but it worked. Is it entirely unreasonable of me to expect it to work under the latest and greatest Windows version if it worked under Windows 95?

Anyway, that was strike one. No sound. It's not as bad as it could be. Sound cards aren't too expensive, and I can use other old cards from the same era and have them work fine. I've even already got an offer from a friend to send me an old card to see if it'll work. It's annoying, but not the end of the world. Or even enough to make me go back to Windows 95.

After determining that I had no working sound card, I started to check everything else. Ethernet cable works great, the internet is finally available to the desktop again. CD-Burner works (without a burning program, even!). Zip Drive works after installing new drivers. Printer works after I play with the settings for 15 minutes. Hmmm... can't find the modem or the scanner. Modem is not important as long as we have cable internet, so I'll put off checking that out. But the scanner is VERY important! Both hubby and I use it for website images, and I also us it as a sort of FAX machine, especially now during our refi.

I have a Microtek ScanMaker E3. After checking at Microtek's site, I find the windows XP drivers for the scanner no problem. I install the drivers. No scanner. The computer just can't find it. After thinking it through, I remember that I had to install a SCSI controller card to connect the scanner. So I Google to find out what kind of SCSI card shipped with the scanner. I find it, an Adaptec 1502. It is another card that simply doesn't work with Windows XP. Again, I ask, is it unreasonable for me to expect something that worked fine in Windows 95 to work in Windows XP? Strike two. There is no workaround here, either. I have to get a new card or a new scanner.

But for those problems, the desktop is actually working pretty well. I didn't expect fantastic performance... and I'm not getting it. I've got a solid working machine for a number of little things I want to do. The big problem is restoring the scanner somehow, and I guess I'll figure that out. I went to bed last night thinking I knew all the problems with my computer system.

When I got up this morning and checked my computers, the desktop had restarted itself. I don't know why. And there was some sort of conflict. It claimed that it had the same IP as another computer. I clicked to see if there was a message, but the warning just vanished. Grr. Then I checked the laptop... same warning. Great, my PCs are both trying to claim the same internet address. Why? And how do I fix it?

Twenty minutes of Googling later, I learned how to make the PCs claim different IP addresses from the router so the problem won't happen again. That's solved, but I still don't know why my computer restarted itself. Like I said, I thought I knew a lot, but all I really know is how to find the answers when I get stumped. I fool myself into thinking I'm some hot computer saavy chick, but really I'm just lucky.