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3 Apr 2005 Modems: The Bane of Modern Technology.
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I never have any fun with modems. I can never get them to work first time when I plug them in and try to connect. I always have to work up a sweat before it works properly. It's like some sort of curse or a sick joke being played by some higher power. And what happened the other day is no exception.
On Saturday I went to my mums house to reformat her computer, so she can have a fresh computer and a clean start. Now bear in mind this an old computer with 700mhz process, 64mb RAM and a 3 gig harddrive, which means its a good 6 years old roughly. Regardless I backed up all the needed files, cleaned the hardrive, and installed Windows 2k with all the other bits and pieces. And for a time, it was good. Then it came to the modem.
Now my mum and her partner are not very IT literate and don't use their computers much, just to check emails and other simple things. So they didn't really need things like broadband, they used a dial-up modem. Fair enough their choice. But there was a problem...
For some bizzare reason Windows 2k didn't recognise the old modem, even though I installed drivers for it from the CD. It just said it was an unknown PCI card or something similar. And every time we tried to dial out there was no dial tone. Not even a beeping noise to dial the number. So after an hour of clicking on the 'Connect' button, uninstalling and reinstalling, and cursing I called my friend up and he happened to have a newer modem that we could use.
So after a 30min drive there and back to retrieve the worthless device I slapped it in the copmputer and it installs properly. I plug in the phone line into one of the free sockets and we got a dial tone. Huzzah! So we dialed the number that Microsoft uses to bring up the selection of available ISP providers. However after dialing the number it wasn't making the usual modem noises. It wouldn't connect. It was then I realised it was plugged into the wrong phone socket at the back of the modem. I'll hold my hands up and say that was my error.
Once that was sorted it was time to get the dial up settings set up. "Right then we've got username; check, password; check, dial-up phone number..." Once again hands are in the air. I should have known better than to not take notes of the phone number and assume that they would have the details noted down somewhere. So after calling u p my mum's Internet providers to get the number I finally managed to the modem working with the right details and everything was hunky-dory.
It wasn't suppose to take all bloody day to sort out. I'd figure that it would take a few hours max to sort out their computer, which would allow me time to catch up with my mates in the afternoon. I had to cancel on them after I'd spent the week bigging up meeting-up event all week (much apologising the next day). The whole thing nearly broke my spirit as a computing person, I was almost ready to renounce my faith in computers and isolate myself in a dark cave and become a hermit. Really.
Well there's one thing for sure; my mum won't ask me to fix her computer any time soon. :P
p.s. This weeks SimpleImg will be a few days late due to me being super busy, but it is on it's way. Here's a preview; this weeks word is lazy.
Posted at: 22:34 PM
Your Thoughts
RAZII JINX said on Tuesday 5th of April 2005 at 12:27:51 AM
rawr. Stupid old computers. I would know, I have on myself. I suped it up as far as it would go. =\
It works alright, at least I was able to get XP on here. :3